Theatre of absurd

THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
The expression was coined by the critic Martin Esslin who made it the title of a 1960 book about the subject. Esslin defined the Theatre of the Absurd as “a return to old traditions” including:

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  scenic effects connected with the circus, clowns, acrobats, mimes, etc.
  
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  verbal nonsense
  
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  the literature of fantasy and dream strongly linked to allegorical elements.
  

The main playwrights of the movement are Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov and Harold Pinter.
The Theatre of the Absurd expresses the search for a way to understand a universe that, after two terrible wars, has lost its centre, its living purpose, its principles. Moreover it wants to show the absurdity of a world which has lost its religious beliefs and, consequently, its certainties.

Its main features can be synthesised in the following:

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  the plot does not exist, that is that there is no beginning, development or conclusion and it does not represent events. Some plots seem to move in a circle, ending in the same way they began; sometimes the plot presents irrational elements;
  

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  characters are not realistic and have no psychological depth or individuality; they are human beings perplexed in a meaningless universe;
  

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  settings are bare and unpleasant: place is ambiguous and, since the plot does not develop in time, time is often incidental;
  

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  dialogues do not communicate meaningful messages but only convey fears and anguish or are used to pass the time; they are based on concrete images and not on discursive speech; they are repetitive and/or nonsensical;
  

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  language creates images evoking the human condition; it can be considered one of the components of poetic imagery (together with visual elements, movement and light); sometimes it is reduced to its minimum, sometimes it dominates the stage;
  

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  purpose: the Theatre of the Absurd does not study human conflicts or passions because there is no valid character; it does not analyse or solve moral problems or provide solutions and does not want to communicate moral or social lessons;
  

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  genre of the plays: the Theatre of Absurd combines laughter and horror; it is a comic theatre because of the use of farce and grotesque representations, but the violent and bitter subject-matter turns it into a tragic theatre. In this sense, the Theatre of Absurd goes beyond the limits of the categories of comedy and tragedy.