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Write an essay on the Theatre of the Absurd.

The term “Theatre of Absurd” first time coined by M. Esslin in his same title book. It is a clear and lucid thought on the subject of absurdist drama is found in Martin Esslin’s book The Theatre of the Absurd (1961). It is a term applied to a group of dramatists in the 1950s who did not regard themselves as a school but who all seemed to share certain attitudes towards the predicament of the man in the universe, essentially Camus (1913-1960) who first realized the absurdity of existence during the second world war and gave a vociferous expression to the meaninglessness of life in his novels and dramas. In The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus defined the absurd as the tension which emerges from man’s determination to discover purpose and order in a world which steadfastly refuses to evidence either. He diagnosed humanity’s plight as purposelessness in an existence out of harmony with its surroundings. Awareness of this lack of purpose in all we do produce a state of metaphysical anguish which is the central theme of the writers in the Theatre of the Absurd, most notably Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Arthar Adamov. Jean Genet and Harold Pinter. The lesser figures of this school of drama are Robert Pignet. N. F. Cimpson, Edward Albee, Ternando Arrabal and Ganter Grass.

The absurdist play wrights believe that our existence is absurd because we are born without asking to be born, we die without seeking death. we live between birth and death trapped within our body and our reason, unable to conceive of a time in which we are not or a time in which we will not be for nothingness is very much like the concept of infinity: something we perceive only in so far as we cannot experience it.

The absurdists of today write in such diverse styles that one hesitates to compare them in anything but their philosophical categories. However, some generalizations can be made. The modern absurdists, almost to a man, determinedly resist the traditional separation of farce and tragedy. The subject of farce is the same as that of tragedy, the terrible or comic discovery of man’s absurdity, ignorance and importance. The essential difference between the two forms is one of quality farce arouses laughters and tragedy draws our tears-tragedy awakens our sympathy, while farce dispels our sympathy and frees our cruelty. The absurdists of today, as Euripides once did, comingle the qualities of farce and tragedy, making us laugh at that which hurts us most, making us weak at that which is most foolish in our nature. They are all, in the best sense of the world, ironists.

identifies the creative posture of the absurdist. If there is one quality, it is the movement towards pure art, or ‘de humanized art’ as Ortegay Gasset puts it, Modern artists and absurd playwrights in particular seem concerned with creating works that proclaim their independence from the traditional neo Aristotelian structures of imitation or representationalism. These playwrights want a drama that proclaims. “This is not life! it is my work of art about life!” or even, “This is life itself that I’ve created….man-made life……” In order to achieve a level of abstraction sufficiently pronounced to evince such a response from their audiences, the absurdists have resorted to various devices, none of which are new to the theatre. They have taken up every conceivable symbolical device employed in allegory and dramatic expressionism. Furthermore, several of them have discarded phychology as a control of action. The action of these plays is intended to demonstrate symbolically the ideas of the playwright and to create the dramatic temperature necessary to maintain the interest of the audience. At first glance some of their plays appear to be utterly illogical until we realize that the logic of the another’s thought is not directly expressed but rather symbolically stated in action. One might well question this procedure on grounds of deliberate obscurantism- “why not come out and say what you mean?” The answer is simple and didactically sound. If one has an important body of thought to purvey, one must beware of presenting it too facilely, lest the ‘student audience’ simply recognize it and fail to learn it. Finally, the absurdists are not afraid of obscurity in art since they employ it as a direct symbol of the obscurity they find in life.

The tendency towards presentational drama is another pattern which

In absurdist drama all semblance of logical construction, of the rational linking of ideas with idea in an intellectually viable argument is abandoned and instead the irrationality of experience it transferred to the stage.

Samuel Beckett is an Irish dramatist and novelist, but he long lived in Paris and Worte both in French and English with ease and facility. Most of his later works were originally written in French. He uses a deliberately formless language to present the meaningless void of experience as encountered by his characters. In fiction he scored success by Murphy, Molloy and Watt and in drama his masterpiece is Waiting for Godot (1953).

Arthur Adamov was a Russian born dramatist who lived in France and wrote in French. It was in his autobiographical volume L’Aveu that he first expressed the deep sense of alienation which lies at the root of the theatre of the Absurd.

The future of absurdist drama does not seem to be bright. The plays of the Theatre of the Absurd are not longer thought of as the drama of the future. Absurdist drama is, in fact, dated, most dramatists of the absurd have found it difficult to sustain a whole evening in the theatre without compromising somewhat, Ionesco’s full length plays become more and more transparently allegorical, Beckett’s get shorter and shorter.