The Theatre of the Absurd is the term derived from Albert Camus’ essay Myth of Sisyphus (written in 1942). In this work Camus defined the human situation as absolutely meaningless and absurd. The critic Martin Esslin used the term for the works of playwrights who believed that man cannot understand the university and lives in it without purpose. The playwrights working in this field are Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter and others.
The Theatre of the Absurd originates from the avant-garde experiments in art of the 1920s and 1930s. The World War II influenced significantly the movement as it showed the situations when human life loses any meaning and value. The rise of new theatre was also affected by the constant threat of nuclear annihilation.
The Theatre of the Absurd can be regarded as a man’s reaction to the lost of human values and an attempt to restore them. As the meaningless Post-War situation did not bring any art forms that seemed convincing for the audience, the highly innovative form capable of starting the viewer directly was created. The new anti-theatre was such a form. Its main features were surrealism, illogic, absence of conflict and plot. The characters’ dialogues seemed absolutely senseless but, in fact, carried their concealed meanings. The plays of the theatre of the absurd rendered the atmosphere of bewilderment and confusion. The characters could not find answers to the basic existential questions of why people live, why they have to die, why injustice and suffering exists.
It should be mentioned that there existed two types of the theatre of the absurd: the East and the West one. Though the features mentioned above are typical for the two types, the difference is rooted in the fact that the West European plays reveal a predicament of an individual or a group of individuals in a situation stripped to the bare, and often fairly abstract and metaphysical essentials, whereas the East European plays mostly show an individual trapped within the cogwheels of a social system (The Theatre of the Absurd).
Eugene Ionesco is one of the brightest representatives of the theatre of the absurd. His works focus on the futility of communication. He deals with the problem of the absurdity of life using completely nonsensical language and putting his characters into comic situations in which they cannot control their existence.
Ionesco’s native language was Romanian, when he started to learn English he created meaningless phrases that were used as a basis for the dialogues of his first play, The Bald Soprano (1948). Later, Ionesco confessed that The Bald Soprano was written by him in spite of him as at that time he hated the theatre that he was so inspired with during his youth. Other famous works include Rhinoceros (1959), and Journeys to the Home of the Dead (1981).
Nowadays The Bald Soprano is considered to be a classic example of the genre of the theatre of the absurd. The play rejects traditional forms of the narrative, plot and structure. It is an example of how the absurd possibilities could work in literature. The sentences from quasi-English were used to reveal the simple truths of life that were neglected by people and almost disappeared. The play shows how the absurdity of human experience can be explored through fragmentation of language.
Works Cited
Culik, Jan. “The Theatre of the Absurd.” 2008. Web.
Drukman, Steven. “Absurd Again.” American Theatre. 1994: 78.
Mcdermott, John V. “Ionesco’s the Bald Soprano.” Explicator 55.1 (1996): 40-41.