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The theatre of the absurd was a short-lived yet significant theatrical movement, centred in Paris in the 1950s. Unusual in this instance was the absence of a single practitioner spearheading the form. Largely based on the philosophy of existentialism, absurdism was implemented by a small number of European playwrights. Common elements 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 stage before. 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, one of the great plays of the 20th century. Absurdism is commonly studied in senior high school and university drama and theatre courses. Below are the main conventions of the theatre of the absurd.

Background

not a conscious movement

exponents of the form were a disconnected group of playwrights

the term theatre of the absurd was first coined by scholar Martin Esslin in his 1961 text The Theatre of the Absurd

true absurdist playwrights are few in number: Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Jean Genet (with some scholars including Arthur Adamov).

other playwrights whose selected works have been labeled absurdist by others include Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Tom Stoppard, Fernando Arrabal, and Peter Weiss (though most deny the label of absurdist playwright)

the beginnings of absurdism lie in avant-garde experiments of the 1920s and 30s, while some argue absurdist elements exist in plays such as Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (1896) and even in ancient Greek dramas

Theory

theatre of the absurd is otherwise referred to as absurdism

absurd originally means "out of harmony" (in a musical context) - its meaning in the theatre of the absurd is different to the everyday meaning of the word as "ridiculous"

lying in the background to 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

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. (J. L Crawford: Acting In Person and in Styl e)

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 labor 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

labeled 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

... 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.

On the plot of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot - Vivian Mercier, The Irish Times, 18 February, 1956.

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

Movement

mixture of realistic and non-realistic

elements of circus, vaudeville and acrobatics

ritualistic

repetitive

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 parallelling 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 the Theatre)

Dialogue

language was devalued as a communication tool (unreliable and distrusted)

often illogical

sometimes telegraphic and clipped

long pauses

repetitive

rhythmical

frequent use of silence

slow dialogue sometimes accompanied by a frenzied, fast-paced monologue (extremes)

Stagecraft

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)

Key Plays

Other Notable Works

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter

The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter

Sources

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Theatre of the Absurd Conventions | The Drama Teacher

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The theatre of the absurd was a short-lived yet significant theatrical movement, centred in Paris in the 1950s. Unusual in this instance was the absence of a single practitioner spearheading the form. Largely based on the philosophy of existentialism, absurdism was implemented by a small number of European playwrights.

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NT video guides to using special effects

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National Theatre: Special Effects - YouTube

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The backstage team at the National Theatre are experts in all kinds of special effects. These film introduce some of those specialties, from pyrotechnics to ...

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NT video guides on how to light productions

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National Theatre: Stage Lighting - YouTube

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Lighting, special effects and video are used to create moments of stage magic. The choices a lighting designer makes about how a set and actors are lit have ...

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2003 Production resource pack in PDF

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Full text of The Chairs in PDF

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The Guardian review of The Chairs 2010

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An elderly couple sit, static and wan, under a single dim bulb and a tangle of mismatched chairs suspended at ceiling height. They have been married, they say, for 75 years and gather together each night in their isolated house on a lonely island to pass the time by telling stories. The Old Woman pleads for these ("Every night, I come to it fresh"), while the Old Man rails against their well-worn themes. "I'm sick to death of Tudor history," he complains.

The stories immediately collapse in the telling, little more than shards of tales, with all the key details obfuscated by the passing of time. Eugène Ionesco's 1952 absurdist classic is a bit like that, too, ditching as it does conventional characters, psychology and plot in favour of rootless, puzzling moments of being. Maria Aberg's revival, using Martin Crimp's celebrated translation, gathers these moments together with the same unruly energy and alluring grace that those chairs have, hanging above the couple in Garance Marneur's design, rendering the absurd rather moving, and haunting, too.

You need performances that dig deep to present undercurrents of emotion even as the play seems to resist them. Janet Amsden's Old Woman and Ciaran McIntyre's Old Man are terrific in this regard. She articulates her disappointment at his lowly job as a janitor ("If only you'd had an inkling of ambition") and sexual frustration; he explains his sense of finally making a significant contribution to life by delivering his message to the assembled - and, this being Ionesco, invisible - guests.

There are some bleakly funny lines, but mostly this is a dark exploration of big, mid-century themes. It's possible, in the context of our ageing population, to read it simply as being about the final stage of life and how one copes with it: the couple could have lost their minds, or be acting out a fantasy to pass another long night.

But Aberg's approach is spot-on, not tilting the production away from the play's grim undercurrents. It features a room full of huge numbers of invisible people a few years after the Holocaust, reveals the final message - delivered by an orator in military dress - to be gibberish, and ends in suicide. The old couple, finally, seem to symbolise all the things that, in 1952, no longer made sense or were broken beyond fixing. This play is a challenging vision of that, and it can be hard to connect with. But, staged here in an intimate venue, there is no missing its iconoclastic vitality and thrilling power.
* This article was amended on 9 September 2010. The original used the spelling Maria Alberg. This has been corrected.
Topics

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An elderly couple sit, static and wan, under a single dim bulb and a tangle of mismatched chairs suspended at ceiling height. They have been married, they say, for 75 years and gather together each night in their isolated house on a lonely island to pass the time by telling stories.

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Well...

This really is a revision guide for The Chairs.

Quite why Harry and Gilderoy Lockhart are the thumbnail is entirely beyond me.

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