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Unconventional Theatre of the Absurd Techniques – 50 Explanations

ByJustin Cash Updated Genres and Styles, Senior Drama, Theatre History

Theatre of the Absurd Origins

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The theatre of the absurd was a short-lived yet significant theatrical movement, centred in Paris in the 1950s. The beginnings of absurdism lie in avant-garde theatre experiments during the 1920s and 30s.

It was not a conscious movement per se, and there was no single practitioner spearheading the emergence of this type of drama. Exponents of the form were a disconnected group of playwrights whose works were based on the philosophy of existentialism. These included Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Jean Genet (with some scholars also including Arthur Adamov). The movement’s title was first coined by scholar Martin Esslin in his 1961 text The Theatre of the Absurd.

Common elements in absurdist plays included illogical plots inhabited by characters who appeared out of harmony with their own existence. The typical playgoer had never seen anything like this on the European stage.

More contemporary playwrights whose selected works have been labelled absurdist include Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Tom Stoppard, Fernando Arrabal, and Peter Weiss. However, most of these playwrights deny the label attributed to them.

The theatre of the absurd will be remembered in history for many things, the most significant of these being Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot, today regarded as one of the great plays of the 20th century.

Existentialism refers to a particular view of the nature of man’s existence. The existentialist believes that man starts life with nothing. His life is made up of acts; through the process of acting man becomes conscious of his original nothingness. By choosing to act, man passes into the arena of human responsibility which makes him the creator of his own existence.

However, the existence inevitably ends with death. Man returns to his original state of nothingness. This existential notion eliminates the Western concept of man’s exalted nature. Life becomes meaningless and useless – a condition which is in essence “absurd”. Man’s only freedom in this condition is the exercise of his conscious mind. However, consciousness means conflict – between man’s awareness of the absurdity of his existence and his need for justification of his human action.

JERRY L. CRAWFORD, ACTING: IN PERSON AND IN STYLE

Existentialism and the Absurd

  • “absurd” does not mean “ridiculous”, as in its everyday meaning
  • the original meaning of “absurd” was “out of harmony” (in a musical context)
  • “absurd” in the theatre of the absurd can mean:
  • without purpose
  • illogical
  • out of harmony
  • useless
  • devoid of reason
  • meaningless
  • hopeless
  • chaotic
  • uncertain
  • lacking order
  • lying in the background of absurdism is the notion of existentialism
  • existentialist philosophers who influenced absurdist playwrights were Frenchmen Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Albert Camus (1913-1960) – both also playwrights themselves
  • the atrocities of World War II are considered influential events to the movement, highlighting the precariousness of human existence
  • Sartre denied the existence of a God, seeing humans with no choice but to create their own standards and moral code in life (instead of accepting standards offered by the Church, the State, or society)
  • Camus’ book-length essay The Myth of Sisyphus sees Sisyphus endlessly pushing a boulder to the top of a mountain, only to see it roll to the bottom again – this futile labour is an analogy for man’s meaningless existence, a quality seen in many characters and plots of absurdist plays

For Camus, the legendary figure of Sisyphus was the prototype of an ‘absurd’ hero, condemned by the gods forever to roll a rock to the top of a mountain, only to have it roll back down again by its own weight. He represented the epitome of futile labor and pointless existence.

Although Camus denied any connection with Sartre’s existentialism, the book (Sartre’s The Myth of Sisyphus) became a manifesto for the new existentialist drama, and later for the theatre of the absurd. In it, Camus asserted that it was legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life had any meaning. He described how man felt himself to be a stranger in an alien world, and believed that this divorce between man and life was properly ‘le sentiment de l’absurdite’, the feeling of absurdity.

J.L Styan, MODERN DRAMA IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 2

Plot and Structure

  • anti-realistic, going against many of the accepted norms of conventional theatre
  • labelled by some critics as ‘anti-theatre’
  • often characterised by a deliberate absence of the cause-and-effect relationship between scenes
  • non-linear plot developments, sometimes cyclical – ending where they began
  • occasionally appearing as though there is no plot at all to speak of
  • deliberate lack of conflict in the drama

… a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.

VIVIAN MERCER, THE IRISH TIMES, 18 FEBRUARY 1956, ON THE PLOT OF SAMUEL BECKETT’S PLAY ‘WAITING FOR GODOT‘

Acting and Characterisation

  • both presentational and representational modes of acting
  • sometimes stereotypical
  • often an absence of character development
  • absurd characters lack the motivation found in characters of realistic dramas, highlighting their purposelessness
  • time, place and identity are frequently blurred with characters often unsure about who or where they are
  • characters are often out of harmony or out of sync with the world in which they live
Waiting for Godot Absurdism

Movement

  • a mixture of realistic and non-realistic character movement
  • elements of circus, vaudeville and acrobatics
  • ritualistic (repetition)
  • slow
  • illogical (on the surface)
  • the action sometimes defies logic or easy understanding
  • one extreme to the other without notice
  • often sombre and serious, then highly comical

… the absurdists, while for the most part accepting Sartre’s philosophical outlook, tended to concentrate upon the irrationality of human experience without suggesting any path beyond. By employing a succession of episodes unified merely by theme or mood instead of a cause-to-effect arrangement, they arrived at a structure paralleling the chaos which was their usual dramatic subject. The sense of absurdity was heightened by the juxtaposition of incongruous events producing seriocomic and ironic effects.

OSCAR G. BROCKETT, History of Theatre

Dialogue

  • the verbal language was devalued as a communication tool (unreliable and distrusted)
  • often illogical
  • sometimes telegraphic and clipped
  • long pauses
  • clichéd
  • repetitive
  • rhythmical
  • frequent use of silence
  • monotone
  • slow dialogue sometimes accompanied by a frenzied, fast-paced monologue (extremes)
Rhinoceros Theatre of the Absurd

Stagecraft and Production

  • often simple and minimalist use of stagecraft
  • barren set pieces barely denoting a location (e.g. a tree and a country road in Waiting for Godot)

Absurdism Plays

  • Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
  • Endgame by Samuel Beckett
  • Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco
  • The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco
  • The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco
  • The Bald Prima Donna / The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco
  • Exit The King by Eugene Ionesco
  • The Balcony by Jean Genet

Other Notable Works

  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
  • The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter
  • The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter

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38 Comments

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  5. Mary Michele Ellis says:

    I think it is so amazing that this is where we are in society. I wish that we could all distance ourselves from the pain and confusion and loss like Brecht wants us to do as an audience.

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  8. Ron Roberts
    The theater of the absurd is happening all around us, right now.
    We needto bring the absurd to the streets in a joyous celebration of the insanity in us all. Time to add a little color back into the act

    Reply

    1. Thank you so much for the extremely organised and clear notes! They have helped me immensely, as lots of useful information is presented in such a succinct manner, meaning i don’t have to read pages and pages of writing to find the one sentence that i actually need.

      Thank you again!

      Reply
  9. Muhammad Abdullah says:

    Miss faida ! are you done with your theise. ??Now I am doing my master thseis on absurdist tropes in Muhammad Hanif’s red birds. can you help me out?

    Reply

  10. When was this page first posted (for citing it as a source)?

    Reply

  11. Thank you so much! This helped me in my theatre class and I got an A.

    Reply

    1. That’s great news, Claire. Congratulations on your “A”! Thanks for taking the time to offer your feedback. – Justin

      Reply
  12. Vijay Kumar says:

    very clear and easy to understand for the students

    Reply
  13. Kashish Munshi says:

    Amazing and perfect for students understanding. I found it very helpful and easy.Thanks

    Reply

  15. Thanks Justin, I always use your website as a reference for my students.
    Hope you know how truly great http://www.dramateacher.com is for many Drama teachers!

    Reply
  17. Samanta Gurung says:

    A big thanks. It helped me for my notes.

    Reply
  18. Ralph Lawson says:

    Brilliantly succinct summary. Thanks!

    Reply
  19. vishnu narayan says:

    Very useful informative, motivated

    Reply

  20. Thank you so much…. it is really helpful

    Reply

  21. I am doing w thesis of master degree about Absurd Theatre (the zoo story / who is afraid of virgenia woolf written By Edward Albee ) i’ll be thankful if you can help me bye some resources . thanks a lot

    Reply

  24. Thanks for your work! Very helpful.

    Reply

  25. Hi this was a true inspearimiration to me.

    Reply
  27. Sarmistha Khatua says:

    ????????????

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  28. This is an excellent summary brings back memories of undergraduate Theatre study. I really enjoy reading the entries from this blog, thank you again

    Reply

  29. Thanks, really useful summary!

    Reply
  30. Roz Manly says:

    Just a note, my lecturer at University used to point at the language of Beckett as ‘poetic’, especially in Waiting for Godot.

    Reply