Theatre of the absurd

Susannah R.

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Theatre of the absurd

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Abstract

The Theatre of the Absurd (French: Théâtre de l'Absurde) was a movement that happened in the late 1940's through the 1960's.

The term was coined by the critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of a book on the subject which was first published in 1961. Later there were 2 revised versions, and the last one came out in paperback in 2004 with a new forward by the author. Martin Esslin was a critic, writer, producer, and professor and he was born on June 8, 1918 in Hungary. He was raised in Vienna, where he attended Vienna University and he studied directing at the Reinhardt Seminar of Dramatic Art.

Introduction
The first edition of 'The theatre of the absurd'
The abandonment of the old ways
The original meaning of absurd
World War 2 and the theatre of the absurd
Antonin Artaud and the theatre of the absurd movement
The pictorial representation of life
Arthur Adamov
Conclusion

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[...] In 1955, the famous character actor Robert Morley predicted that the success of Waiting for Godot meant end of theatre as we know Whereas traditional theatre attempts to create a pictorial representation of life as we see it, the Theatre of the Absurd aims to create a ritual- like, mythological, representative, allegorical vision, which can be described as the way we view things in dreams. The focal point of these dreams is often man's primary bewilderment and confusion. This confusion emerges from the fact that man has no answers to the basic existential questions such as why we are alive or why we have to die or why there is injustice and suffering and other questions like this that no one can really answer. [...]

[...] By ridiculing conventionalized and stereotyped speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tried to make people aware of the possibility of going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more genuinely in order to communicate more accurately. Another important playwright is Arthur Adamov. He was born in 1908 in Azerbaijan, the son of wealthy Armenian parents. Following the Russian Revolution his family moved to Geneva, Mainz, and eventually Paris. In the 1930's he was associated with the French Surrealists, and his first writings were Surrealist poems. [...]

[...] Absurd may also and simply mean ridiculous, but this is not the sense in which Camus uses the word, or in the sense it is used when talking about the Theatre of the Absurd. In an essay on Kafka, Ionesco (who was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd) defined his understanding of the term like this. “Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lots; all his actions because senseless, absurd, useless”. [...]

[...] While satire or Camus expressed this new content, it was still being written in the old conventional style, but the Theatre of the Absurd goes a step further in doing both. Is tries to achieve a unity between its basic assumptions as well as actually in form in which these are expressed. Another thing to mention is that World War II was actually the catalyst that finally brought the Theatre of the Absurd to life. The global nature of this conflict caused much trauma to everyone. [...]

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