Theatre Of Absurd Essay

Going into the 20th century, many theatre productions were very melodramatic. They had over-exaggerated motions and actions, and were aimed towards an upper class audience. However, once realism was introduced, spurred by the influence of photography, the audience of plays shifted from the upper class to the middle class. And it was at this point that plays like Trifles, Waiting for Lefty, and Mulatto began ushering in the type of theatre we know today, where the setting often reflects the society of the time of production.

Bertolt Brecht was the pioneer of a new style of theatre, epic theatre. Epic theatre differentiates itself from Bertolt’s previous influences by presenting a series of loosely connected scenes that avoid illusion and often interrupt the story line to address the audience directly with analysis, argument, or documentation. He sought to remind the spectator that the play is an illustration of the playwright’s point of view rather than a slice from reality. This made audiences react with curiousity and participate in a dialogical argument criticising their own life and what they could do to change it rather than an emotional and empathic response that accepts events in the play as a slice of reality, accepted as the norm. He wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order to recognise social injustice and to go forth and transform the reality.

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.”

It is commonly known that theatre is mostly connected to political or spiritual ideologies. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, takes a historical fact and turns into a political play based on the Salem witch trials; can the truth be seen in this play? Yes, mostly because of the main historical debate described in the play involving Wiccan cult versus Christianity and it is known to be based on cultural concerns. “The play can be seen as symbolic of the paranoia about communism that pervaded America in the 1950s” . Thus, Miller’s play on the witch trials in Salem originates from the true events however is projected with false pretenses. Aristotle’s Poetics have six elements for theatre and there are surnamed Plot, Characterization, Idea, Language, Music and Spectacle. These elements represent the keys to a theatre performance, however where is the psychology in that? One theatre genre that can be an absolute opposition to Stanislavsky’s perception of theatre is known as the Theatre of the Absurd. The theatre of the absurd does not follow any guidelines concerning the techniques of theatre, which is why it is a good example because absurdity does not have any true or false, it is a bit chaotic and strange at the same time.

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

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

While writing and narrative (poetic or otherwise) were considered as means of survival, theatre remains outside the circle of literary survivalism. Indeed, according to Anne Ubersfield, “performance is a perishable thing.” (xxii) It is usually considered as an event that is bound by the present. The belief in the historicity of the theatrical event still dominates the critical approaches to theatre. Many contemporary critics maintain that on the stage, “drama takes place and takes time too.” (Worthen xi) They believe that it is “an historical event.” (Styan 6) that is limited in terms of space and duration. It cannot last beyond the performative moment.

Never before had someone so masterfully blend together the genres of comedy, romance, and tragedy. One of the main reasons “Romeo and Juliet” remains so popular is because of the unique combination of romance and tragedy. Prior to Shakespeare’s time, theatre only targeted the rich and wealthy. But Shakespeare changed this by appealing to the general population. He created plots and characters that everyone in the crowd could relate to, instead of only those with an abundance of wealth. Because Shakespeare’s plays were so popular, many playwrights have used him and his plays as inspiration for their works. Even some modern plays contain traces of Shakespeare in their storylines and dialogue. William Shakespeare forever changed theatre, and this has impacted many

Anger is perhaps not well understood because it is omnipresent; anger is so familiar that we assume we know what it is. Anger may be partly physiological, cognitive and psychological, yet it is also deeply ideological. Anger can be manifested in art or literature as a communal sensation towards social, political or economical conditions. (Sue J. 6)

Dramaturgy is an essential and significant fragment of both stagecraft and theatre itself, it serves to analysis and explore the dramatic structure of the play or performance that is being prepared or analysed and presented. In traditional theatrical turn of phrase, a dramaturge can be broken down as an rational deviser, or a associate of the production team who is bothered with the way in which the concepts, subjects and the ideas of a play are reflected on stage. The role of the dramaturge is both multifaceted and open to change, shaping and re-shaping to encounter the required needs of the theatre company, or of the specific production in question. A dramaturge may be called upon to complete a wide variety of tasks in the theatre. These

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything” (Shaw). Change is inevitable. Times change and ideas progress. One thing we think to be unacceptable now may very well be acceptable in the future. Look at the use of marijuana and even the homosexual agenda. Society is slowly progressing with its postmodern thinking and statistically speaking, those people are thinking it is more and more acceptable. We might not think that what I just said has anything to do with Theatre, but we need to put in perspective why we now have the theatre we do now. Ancient Greek theatre was not as open to civil human rights

Harold Pinter is one of the most prominent living dramatists of the age. The seventy-three year old Pinter, who has written twenty-nine plays and twenty-one screen plays and who has directed twenty-seven theater productions, is one of the early practitioners of the Theater of the Absurd which started in the fifties. Absurd, which is one of the many different aspects of his works, functions as a means of getting into the reality that is Pinter’s main concern.

Initially written in French in 1948 as “En Attendant Godot”, Samuel Beckett’s play was first staged in 1952, in Paris. It represents one of the most important movements of the twentieth century and is an example of the so-called “Theatre of the Absurd”, which had subsequently inspired numerous plays that were based on the idea of an illogical universe.

Waiting for Godot starts with introducing the setting as minimal, which is done to highlight the existentialist nature in the world where the humans are left alone to create a purpose to their lives. Traditional plays, like Hamlet, does not contain any stage directions about the props and leave it upon the director to assign what props the actors are to have on stage. The stage directions in the beginning of Waiting for Godot are ‘A country road. A tree. Evening.’ (1), which limits the director to have a very bare stage. The bare stage leaves the actors’ actions, or inactions, in focus. In Martin Esslin’s essay ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’, he coins the genre Theatre of the Absurd by referring to three plays which all challenged the traditional theatrical conventions. A definition of the genre is that it is absurd, ‘that which has no purpose’ (4) and therefore describes our existential lives. He attempts to explore this genre where he