The "Theater of the Absurd"

From Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the Absurd (Anchor Books edition, 1969):

"'The Theatre of the Absurd' has become a catch-phrase. What does it stand for? And how can such a label be justified? Perhaps it will be best to attempt to answer the second question first. There is no organised movement, no school of artists, who claim the label for themselves. A good many playwrights who have been classed under this label, when asked if they belong to the Theatre of the Absurd, will indignantly reply that they belong to no such movement - and quite rightly so. For each of the playwrights concerned seeks to express no more and no less his own personal vision of the world."

"The Theatre of the Absurd can best be understood as a combination of a number of ancient, even archaic, traditions of literature and drama… the tradition of miming and clowning that goes back to the mimus of Greece and Rome, the commedia dell'arte of Renaissance Italy, and such popular forms of theatre as the pantomime or the music-hall in Britain; the equally ancient tradition of nonsense poetry; the tradition of dream and nightmare literature that also goes back to Greek and Roman times; allegorical and symbolic drama, such as we find it in medieval morality plays, or in the Spanish auto sacramental; the ancient tradition of fools and mad scenes in drama, of which Shakespeare provides a multitude of examples."

"There can be little doubt that such a sense of disillusionment, such a collapse of all previously held firm beliefs is a characteristic feature of our own times. Previously held certainties have dissolved, the firmest foundations for hope and optimism have collapsed. Suddenly man sees himself faced with a universe that is both frightening and illogical - in a word, absurd… such a sense of loss of meaning must inevitably lead to a questioning of the recognized instrument for the communication of meaning: language.. Consequently the Theatre of the Absurd is to a very considerable extent concerned with a critique of language, an attack above all on fossilized forms of language which have become devoid of meaning. The conversation at the party which at one moment seemed to be an exchange of information about the weather, or new books, or the respective health of the participants, is suddenly revealed as an exchange of mere meaningless banalities…from being a noble instrument of genuine communication, language has become a kind of ballast filling empty spaces, and it is at this point that the Theatre of the Absurd can actually coincide with the highest degree of realism. For if the real conversation of human beings is, in fact, absurd and nonsensical, then it is the well-made play with its polished logical dialogue that is unrealistic, while the Absurdist play may well be a tape-recorded reproduction of reality."

Edward Albee: (b. 1928)
"Edward Albee is one of the few American exponents of the Theatre of the Absurd. An adopted child, he shares the orphan's sense of loneliness in an alien world, and the image of the dream child which exists only in the adoptive parents' imagination recurs in a number of his plays, notably The American Dream and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The latter, which earned him an enormous success on Broadway, is undoubtedly one of the finest American plays since the heyday of Eugene O'Neill. It is a savage dance of death reminiscent of Strindberg, outwardly realistic in form, but in fact, as in the case of Pinter's best work, existing on at least two levels apart from the realistic one: as an allegory of American society, a poetic image of its emptiness and sterility, and as a complex ritual."

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.
-Edward Albee

Samuel Beckett: (b. 1906 - 1989)
"Of the dramatists of the Absurd, Samuel Beckett is undoubtedly the profoundest, the greatest poet. Waiting for Godot and Endgame are certainly masterpieces; Happy Days and Play, Krapp's Last Tape, and the two Acts without Words (where language has drained away altogether) are brilliant and profound poetic images. His plays are concerned with human suffering and survival, and his characters are struggling with meaninglessness and the world of the Nothing. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Upon learning of the award, his wife, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, commented: "This is a catastrophe." Beckett refused to attend the Nobel ceremony. In his writings for the theater Beckett showed influence of burlesque, vaudeville, the music hall, commedia dell'arte, and the silent-film style of such figures as Keaton and Chaplin.

Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.
-Samuel Beckett

Eugène Ionesco: (b. 1909 - 1994)
"Eugène Ionesco is undoubtedly the most fertile and original of the dramatists of the Absurd, and also, in spite of a streak of clowning and fun for its own sake in his work, one of the most profound. He is moreover the most vocal of the dramatists of the Absurd, the only one who is prepared to discuss the theoretical foundations of his work and to reply to the attacks on it from committed left-wing realists. The critique of language and the haunting presence of death are Ionesco's chief themes in plays like The Bald Soprano, The Lesson, The Chairs, The Killer, Rhinoceros, and Exit The King. Amédée or How to Get Rid of It (1953) is Ionesco's first full-length play and contains one of his most telling images. It is also characteristic in its alternation between states of depression and euphoria, leaden oppression and floating on air, an image which reappears through his work."

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.
-Eugène Ionesco