The Theatre of the ABSURD
“The theater of the absurd” is a label, which refers to a group of playwriters from all Europe who wrote plays about illogical situations and about an stupid, absurd world.
For Martin Esslin(http://honors.montana.edu/~oelks/TC/Absurd.html)“The theater of the absurd refers to tendencies in dramatic literature that emerged in Paris during the late 1940s and early '50s in the plays of Arthur ADAMOV, Fernando ARRABAL, Samuel BECKETT, Jean GENET, Eugene IONESCO, and Jean TARDIEU(…) The term theater of the absurd derives from the philosophical use of the word absurd by such existentialist thinkers as Albert CAMUS and Jean Paul SARTRE. Camus, particularly, argued that humanity had to resign itself to recognizing that a fully satisfying rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach; in that sense, the world must ultimately be seen as absurd”.
For the American Heritage the Theatre of the Absurd is “A form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations, and plots that lack realistic or logical development”.
The Theatre of the
Absurd is closely related to Dadaism and Surrealism, which became a major
movement in the European theatre in the fram in the middle of 1900. The idea was
to break free from the traditional theatre's way to relate to the world. In The
Theatre of the Absurd
the human being is disoriented, helpless and alienated. The actions and words
therefore
becomes irrational, unmotivated and meaningless - absurd.
The II World War had a great importance for the writers, Dr Jan Culík(http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm)thinks: “The trauma of living from 1945 under threat of nuclear annihilation also seems to have been an important factor in the rise of the new theatre”.
And Martin Esslin from the 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia(http://honors.montana.edu/~oelks/TC/Absurd.html): “The playwrights loosely grouped under the label of the absurd endeavor to convey their sense of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an inexplicable universe. They rely heavily on poetic metaphor as a means of projecting outward their innermost states of mind. Hence, the images of the theater of the absurd tend to assume the quality of fantasy, dream, and nightmare; they do not so much portray the outward appearance of reality as the playwright's emotional perception of an inner reality. Thus Beckett's Happy Days (1961) expresses a generalized human anxiety about the approach of death through the concrete image of a woman sunk waist-deep in the ground in the first act and neck-deep in the second; and Ionesco's Rhinoceros (1960; Eng. trans., 1960) demonstrates the playwright's anxiety about the spread of inhuman totalitarian tendencies in society by showing the population of a city turning into savage pachyderms”.
And also the speech, the language of the plays was so important:
“One of the most important aspects of absurd drama was its distrust of language as a means of communication. Language had become a vehicle of conventionalised, stereotyped, meaningless exchanges. Words failed to express the essence of human experience, not being able to penetrate beyond its surface. The Theatre of the Absurd constituted first and foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a very unreliable and insufficient tool of communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalised speech, clichés, slogans and technical jargon, which is distorts, parodies and breaks down. By ridiculing conventionalised and stereotyped speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the possibility of going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more authentically. Conventionalised speech acts as a barrier between ourselves and what the world is really about: in order to come into direct contact with natural reality, it is necessary to discredit and discard the false crutches of conventionalised language. Objects are much more important than language in absurd theatre: what happens transcends what is being said about it. It is the hidden, implied meaning of words that assume primary importance in absurd theatre, over an above what is being actually said. The Theatre of the Absurd strove to communicate an undissolved totality of perception - hence it had to go beyond language” says Dr Jan Culík on (http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm)
©Dr Jan Culík, 2000
.If we had to choose a principal example of an absurdist playwright, we would talk about Samuel Beckett let’s see what is said about him at http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~sek5/classpage.html (there is no copyright or author).
“Samuel Beckett is probably the most well known of the absurdist playwrights because of his work Waiting for Godot. Beckett's plays seem to focus on the themes of the uselessness of human action, and the failure of the human race to communicate. He was born on April 13,1906, which was both Friday the 13th and Good Friday. He had quite a normal upbringing in an upper-middle-class Irish family, and excelled in both school and the sport of cricket. He attended the University of Dublin Ireland where he received his M.A. in modern languages, he then taught for a short time, explored parts of Europe and eventually settled in Paris. It was in Paris that he met writer James Joyce. It was this literary exposure that encouraged Beckett to seek publication. It is interesting to note that many of the conversations between Beckett and Joyce were conducted in silence. In the 1930's and 40's Beckett published many works in the form of essays, short stories, poetry, and novels, but very few people noticed his work. In fact he only sold ninety-five copies of the French translation of his novel Murphy, in four years. His postwar era fame only came about in the 1950's when he published three novels and his famous play, Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Godot is probably the most famous absurd play to date. The characters of the play, are absurd caricatures who of course have problems communicating with one another, and the language they use is often times ludicrous. And, following the cyclical pattern, the play seems to end in the same state it began in, with nothing really changed”.
Some authors, like
Harold Pinter, think about Beckett:
"The farther he goes the more good it
does me. I don't want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths,
answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous,
remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the shit the more I
am grateful to him. He's not f---ing me about, he's not leading me up any garden
path, he's not slipping me a wink, he's not flogging me a remedy or a path or a
revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs, he's not selling me anything I don't
want to buy ¡ª he doesn't give a bollock whether I buy or not ¡ª he hasn't got
his hand over his heart. Well, I'll buy his goods, hook, line and sinker,
because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body
of beauty.
His work is beautiful."
-- Harold Pinter about Samuel Beckett.
There are a lot of playwrights to talk about, but where are going to speak about the new Nobel Prize, Harold Pinter, this is an opinion at this page(there is no copyright or author) http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~sek5/classpage.html
“Harold Pinter is now the leading English language playwright in the genre. In his plays, Pinter never finds in necessary to explain why things occur or who anyone is, the existence within the play itself is justification enough. In general, lack of explanation is what characterizes Pinter's work, that and the interruption of outside forces upon a stable environment. What seems to set him apart though is that unlike Beckett and Ionesco, Pinter's world within the drama seems to be at least somewhat realistic. Pinter started out in the theatre world as an actor, he attended both the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama, then found a professional acting career under the stage name David Baron. He remained an actor until he mentioned and idea he had for a play to a friend at Bristol University. His friend became interested in the idea and requested a script within a week. Pinter laughed at the idea, but within the week presented his friend with the script for The Room, which was then performed in May 1957. Pinter's career as a playwright continued on with such works as The Dumbwaiter in 1957, and Mountain Language in 1988. Pinter is still going strong in English theatre where he continues to write, direct and act”.
We had to name others authors too, like Eugene Ionesco, Tom Stoppard, Peter Weiss, Edward Albee, Israel Horovitz, Sam Shepard or Vaclav Havel.
To sum up, the Theatre of the Absurd is a tendency which changed the manner of making theatre and which surprised the audiences of all the world, with its controversial and surrealistic plays, which in the most of cases had a great success and also today are a reference to the playwrights when they are going to write a play.
Bibliography:
hem.fyristorg.com/annacarin/enabsurd.htm
http://honors.montana.edu/~oelks/TC/Absurd.html
Grolier Multimedia Enciclopedia
http://www.bartleby.com/61/57/T0145700.html
http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm
http://members.aol.com/KatharenaE/private/Philo/Existentialism/TA.html
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