"The Theatre of the Absurd" is the term with denominates the dramatic production of european and northamerican writers in the fifties and sixties, in their pretension to take the place of philosophical reflections reached with Le Mythe de Sisyphe writted in 1942 by Albert Camus. The term was chosen by the critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of a 1962 book on the subject. Esslin saw the work of these playwrights as giving artistic articulation to Albert Camus' philosophy that life is inherently without meaning, as illustrated in his work (Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia - http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teatro_del_absurdo) .

The principal characteristics of this genre is the chaos and the nonsense of life transcurred on repeated dialogues, without logic cohesion neither the proper theme of the works with realistic tendencies, caused by the influence of the surreal art of the 20th century. This genre of theatre accomplished its eventual popularity when World War II highlighted the ultimate precariousness of human life. Apart from this, departs from realistic characters, situations and all of the associated theatrical conventions. Time, place and identity are ambiguous and fluid, and even basic causality frequently breaks down. Meaningless plots, repetitive or nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often used to create dream-like, or even nightmare-like moods (http://www.marcianos.com/enc/teatro_del_absurdo.html) .

The result is a combination of the plays that can be classified on the comedy genre and the environments of it, and sometimes, their works have a bit of dramatical sense within it. With this, the authors want to give to the reader a sensation that they’re reading something they know, with a surreal tone and a bit harder situations for the characters. Even so, the readers and the audience can feel represented by the characters and/or the situation http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero2/teatro.htm) .

The most important works of this genre are La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Singer) written in 1948 by Eugène Ionesco and Waiting for Godot written in 1952 by Samuel Beckett, this is, by far, the most important work of the theatre of the absurd; The Maids written in 1947 by Jean Genet and The Parody written in 1947 by Arthur Adamov. Apart from this, there are other important authors of this genre like Tom Stoppard, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal, Harold Pinter, Jean Vauthier, Edward Albee and Jean Tardieu. Playwrights who served as an inspiration to the movement include Alfred Jarry, Luigi Pirandello, Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Guillaume Apollinaire, the surrealists and many more, although their plays just presented some of the characteristics of the theatre of the absurd and to put it in different perceptions of the dramatic art, we talk about new theatre and antitheatre (http://www.theatrelinks.com/absurd.htm)

For their bet on the most histrionic elements and with another precedent from popular theatre, the theatre of the absurd has a very good fame; and in the visual camp has always a support in the scenical effects; and the presence of authors like the aforementioned. All of them bet for characteristics very different of the usual archetype of theatre, which can be watched in the name of their plays, different than the usual names (http://www.theatrelinks.com/absurd.htm) .