1. THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
Samuel Beckett
Tom Stoppard
                                
Albert Camus
Harold Pinter
Eugène Ionesco

2. Albert Camus (The Myth of Sysiphus, 1942)
A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world.But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light people feel strangers. They are irremediable exiles because they are deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as they lack the hope of a promised land to come.This divorce between people and their lives,the actor and his setting, truly constitues the feeling of absurdity.

3. Eugene Ionesco(Dans les arms de la ville, an essay on Kafka)
Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose…
Cut off from his religious , metaphysical & transcendental roots, man is lost, all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.

4. Loss of meaning: the world appears frightening as it is illogical

5. Historical & Philosophical Backgound
Waning of religious feeling
Breakdown of the liberal faith in an inevitable social progress after WW1
Relapse into barbarism, mass murder& genocide in the course of hitler’s brief ruleover Europe during WW2

6. Disillusionment with the hopes of a radical social revolution as predicted by Marx after Stalin had turned the Soviet Union into a totalitarian tyranny
The spread of spiritual emptiness in the outwardly prosperous & affluent societies of Western Europe and the USA

7. Cultural Roots Mimus()Greek/Latin Drama) Ritual Drama
Allegorical & Symbolic Drama (e.g. Morality Plays or autos Sacramental)
Dream & Nightmare Literature
Tradition of Fools: Mad scenes in Drama (e.g. Shakespeare’s tragedies)
Pantomime & Music Hall
Nonsense poetry
Commedia dell’arte

8. No Communication
Loss of Meaning > the language is devoid of meaning
What happens on the stage transcends and often contradicts the words spoken by the characters
The characters talk (= use the language )to fill the emptiness between them

9. In a universe that seems to be drained of meaning the pompous & laborious attempts at an explanation we call philosophy or politics must appear as empty chatter
In a world that has become absurd the theatre of the absurd is the most accurate reproduction of reality

10. Martin Esslin (from Absurd Drama)
A well made play.
The characters are well observed & convincingly motivated
Dialogue is witty & logically built up
An Absurdist Play
The characters are hardly recognizable human beings, their actions are completely unmotivated.
Dialogue seems to have degenerate into meaningless babble

11. Beginning-middle-ending clearly recognizable
It is primarily concerned to tell a story or elucidate an intellectual problem…It can thus be seen as a narrative or discoursive form of communication
Result :Final Message
DYNAMIC
It starts at an arbitrary point & seems to end as arbitrarily
It is intended to convey a poetic image os a complex pattern of poetic images; it is above all a poetic form
It conveys a central atmosphere
STATIC

12. The action goes from point A to point B: we constantly ask ‘What’s going to happen next?’
Conditioned by clear , comforting beliefs, a stable scale of values, an ethical system in full working conditions
Action :gradual unfolding of a complex pattern .We ask ‘What is it that we are seeing?’
Absurdist playrights no longer believe in the possibility of of a neat resolution: they express a sense of wonder , incomprehension, despair at the lack of cohesion and meaning they find in the world

13. There is no faith in the existence of a rational and well ordered universe
Sense of shock at the absense , the loss of any such clear & well defined system of beliefs & values
Politics
Religion
Implicit belief in the goodness & perfectibility of people
Unthinking acceptance of the moral & political status quo
Implicit idea that the world does make sense, reality is secure , all outlines clear, all ends apparent