Absurdist Theatre Analysis

Theatre is a complex art that attempts to weave stories of varying degrees of intricacies with the hope that feelings will be elicited from the audience. Samuel Beckett’s most famous work in the theatre world, however, is Waiting for Godot, the play in which, according to well-known Irish critic Vivian Mercier, “nothing happens, twice.” Beckett pioneered many different levels of groundbreaking and avant-garde theatre and had a large influence on the section of the modern idea of presentational theatre as opposed to the representational. His career seemingly marks the end of modernism in theatre and the creation of what is known as the “Theatre of the Absurd.”

The Theatre of the Absurd is the name for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work expressed what happens when human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down, alerting their audiences to pursue the opposite. The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man’s reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces. Theatre of the Absurd consisted of horrific or tragic images; characters caught in

The core idea of Albert Camus’ philosophy of absurdity centralizes upon the idea that humans exist in a meaningless universe, and follows that humans must simply accept this fact to live life to the fullest. In addition to this absurdist notion, Albert Camus also uses The Stranger to show how humans still strive to create superficial meaning to fulfill their own personal needs. Through the experiences and interactions in Meursault’s life, Camus illustrates that in spite of how events in life follow no rational order, society attempts to futilely create meaning to explain human existence.

To begin with, the production of this play was done very well in order to appeal to the audience’s emotions. While reading this play, or any play for that matter it is not always easy to pick up on what the characters are actually feeling. Once those

One of the ways in which theater in Europe has changed between the medieval period has primarily during progressive times and no longer required events of religious influence. For example, medieval plays took a secular approach and introduced French music from Adam de la Halle (Carlson 2014: 13). Throughout the time between the medieval period and the 20th century, changes in European theater varied from additions to performance spaces to the actual content of the plays. During the 16th century, tragedy and comedy plays were kept separate but also incorporated ideas from both genres into stories such as the works of William Shakespeare (Carlson 2014: 17). The 17th-century theater in Europe continued to be influenced by French culture into the 18th century when the focus of plays was shifted to the French drame (Carlson 2014: 19-21). These early periods of theater built the foundation for how theater would be interpreted and influenced in the times later to come.

In life we all act differently depending on who we are with and the situation at hand. In almost every situation we act in a different way, with our friends in public, with our family members at home, with coworkers, and most importantly our boss in a work environment. Depending on who we are with you could say our personality changes. As humans we know how to act in every situation, at work you would dress more formal, whereas going out with a group of friends you would dress more causal. Along with our looks changing, we also change our behaviors, the way we talk, sit, the tone of your voice, etc. At a doctor’s office, the receptionist must play a defined role. She has to act polite, caring, professional, and must remain discreet about

Realism provides only amoral observation, while absurdism rejects even the possibility of debate. (Frances Babbage, Augusto Boal). The cynicism of this remark reflects the aberrant attitude towards absurdism, yet there is truth to it. Theatre of the absurd is an esoteric avant-garde style of theatre based on the principles of existentialism that looks at the world without any assumption of purpose. Existentialism and Theatre of the Absurd became identified with a cultural movement that flourished in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s, after the Second World War. The idea that man starts with nothing and ends with nothing is a common theme amongst most absurd plays. Despite this strange philosophy, Theatre of the

The very essence of Contemporary Theatre is that is such a diverse realm of performance art. Many different playwrights have contributed to this post World War Two theatre that instead of keeping to just one narrow genre it was able to branch out to cover all aspects and views of an ever transitional modern society. Theatrical pieces from this time period have ranged from Existentialism, pioneered by Jean Paul Sartre, to the Theatre of the Absurd, which was precedented by Samuel Beckett, and all along the way a myriad of performance genres sprung up to support this new post-war society. Most plays of the contemporary theatre tended to focus up on one single aspect of theatre, though a group of men formed a performance troupe that would

In 1880 the beginning of modernism started, the approach was to start questioning society. Dramatists, practitioners and directors saw the theatre as an opportunity to then “abandoned realism to constitute separate aesthetic realms through which they could transcend the problems of modern life” by doing this it made the audience start to see the problems characters faced on stage and compare them to their personal lives instead of reverting to going to see a performance for escapism. There are many different generations of modernism the first being 1880 succeeding until 1910 in which featured practitioners such as Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekov. Comparing plays such as ‘The Seagull’ 1896 by Chekov and ‘Ghosts’ 1881 by Ibsen with the previous classics such as Shakespeare, demonstrates they were in a whole new world of theatre taking the basics and transforming them into

Eugene Ionesco is also a very famous writer of absurd theater. He focused on isolation and exhaustion of man’s life and also gave his ironical views on spiritless situation of man in his life. His work expressed alienation of modern man and failure of communication and also loss of meaning. His plays like bold Soprano, The lesson, Rhinoceros they also depict man’s lack of communication with himself and with others in the society. Bold Soprano, the chairs are fully in non sequiturs, dialogues and the language of characters are without thinking. His plays also show the tragedy of modern man in this world and his loss of meaningful words is very much there and all his plays are lack of rational language and the language of his plays is always

The play-within-the-play complex, sometimes referred to as metatheater (Rosenmeyer), put on by Shakespeare provides irony to the general roles of the audience and the actors. Actors become the stage writes as their

Word Count: 1211 Kyle Vaughn 4/30/15 IB English Howell Meursault and the absurd in The Stranger In Philosophy, the absurd refers to" the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any." (.......) The quote refers to humans always wanting to find meaning but not being able to find any.

“Aren’t you a little old for that?” “Isn’t that for little kids?” “You need to grow up.” There comes a time where everyone hears those words. It normally happens when you get into high school. Teenagers try to ditch their childish image just as Miley Cyrus tried to ditch her Hannah Montana image. Those young adults are trying to remove the “young” part and prove they are just adults. I never personally went through that phase myself. Of course, I matured and acted like a professional when I was expected too. However, I never stopped loving the things that might be considered weird for a high school student to do in his free time. I still watched cartoons and played with bubbles and drew on the sidewalk with chalk. I didn’t see anything wrong with these enjoyable hobbies even though it made people look at me strange or tease me in the halls. I never really got over the enjoyment of acting immature in a mature way. However, I felt like I was out of place at times. It wasn’t until my the end of my junior year that I decided to say “screw it” and break the status quo of feeling ashamed of enjoying the happiness of life. I had been involved in the theatre program for almost two years. The state theatre competition was coming up and my theatre troupe decided to do a modern telling of Peter Pan as our one act play.

The play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is famous for its cyclic storyline and non-existing plot. In the lines, Beckett incorporates themes of existentialism and the loss of hope. Throughout the two acts of the play, the main protagonists, Vladimir and Estragon, spend their days waiting aimlessly for a mysterious figure named Godot. While central in the play, Godot never makes an appearance in any act, and merely exists as a name. While Pozzo and Lucky, two other characters make their appearance in each act of the play, the boy is perhaps the most mysterious and intriguing. The boy, whom appears towards the end of each act, exemplifies the never-ending cycle of the search for hope that remains unfulfilled through the use of symbolism,

According to anoisewithin.org, “theatre of the absurd” is a term used to depict writing that, “is influenced by existentialism, with the idea that each individual is free and responsible to give meaning to life.” This form of literature portrays that life has no meaning beyond what an