Download Lec #12 Theatre of Absurd

Twentieth Century Theatre
& the Theatre of the Absurd
Photos in this
lecture come
from the film
version of
Rosencrantz
and
Guildenstern
are Dead
What are the essential qualities of theatre?


It is live; it is shared; it is communal
Each performance is unique, susceptible to change and
therefore dangerous


Unpredictable things could happen – someone forgets a line,
drops something, the lights go out, or something happens in the
audience.
It is the co-existence of the there and then and the here and
now

While in the audience,
we perceive what is
happening on the stage
as the time period
portrayed, yet we sit
there in our time
watching it all happen.
The aim of theatre theory &
practice in the twentieth century

Theatre has explored itself in relation to our in response to film
and TV

Are these media [film & TV] ‘theatre’? They are the media
through which most of us experience naturalistic, mimetic
performance.


The response is no – theatre is not finished like a film or TV show.
Even when TV is live, we are at home alone, not part of a group
audience. Also, film and TV look more real – there is much more
pretend in theatre.
Theatre in twentieth century is
no longer a mainstream source
of live entertainment and leisure

Other live entertainments are more
popular, such as concerts, sports,
comics, etc…
Directors and Actors

Directors became important and had a great
influence on the course of theatre in the 20th
century.


They often rewrote parts of scripts and completely
reinterpreted a play into a different time period for
example.
Performers also asserted themselves as creative
artists, not merely interpretative artists.

Performers had a say in their roles and lines rather than
just acting what was on a written page.
Realism vs.
Symbolism & Expressionism

Realism

popular as it mimics television and movies


However, Playwrights felt they could do more with the field
Symbolism and Expressionism





more pronounced in theatre than
in TV or film
share the characteristics of
dreams
look to the common unconscious of humankind
Distortion, Fragmentation or
blending of characters occurs
Use of silence, repetition, &
consciously symbolic lighting
effects.
Theatre of the Absurd



A reaction to the disappearance of the religious dimension form
contemporary life

Authors felt that life is meaningless; there is no hope of
salvation – thus their plays reflected these ideas.
An attempt to restore the importance of myth and ritual to our
age, by making man aware of the ultimate realities of his
condition

Not everything is scientific and can be figured out – so plays
showed illogic of life.
Shows that language is unreliable

There are so many clichés in language that it doesn’t convey
real human thought

Language in plays can be purposefully confusing. As in Hamlet,
language means something and sometimes nothing
Theatre of the Absurd


Settings are very generalized and
could be anywhere
Identity is not fixed


Often the characters forget who they are!
Merging of the comic and tragic

However frantically characters perform
only underlines the fact that cannot do
anything to change their existence