Theater of the Absurd
Theater of the Absurd is a dramatic movement that emerged in the wake of World War II, characterized by its exploration of existential themes and the human condition in a seemingly purposeless world. Influenced by existentialist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, early figures in this genre, such as Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett, sought to break away from traditional realistic narratives to reflect the chaos and ambiguity of modern existence. By the late 1950s, this movement began to impact American theater, particularly in experimental spaces like Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway venues.
While American playwrights of the 1960s, such as Edward Albee, incorporated absurdist elements, they often retained a sense of optimism that distinguished their works from the more nihilistic tones of their European counterparts. The influence of absurdism can also be seen in various artistic expressions of the time, including novels and films, as cultural disillusionment grew amidst the Cold War and Vietnam War. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, aspects of absurdist theater had permeated popular culture, influencing sitcoms and comedic films. This movement remains significant for its innovative approach to storytelling and its reflection of complex social and existential questions.
Theater of the Absurd
Antirealistic drama that evinced a sense of human futility. It treated human misery and suffering as grim farce and asked such troubling questions as whether language is a viable tool for authentic human intercourse.
Origins and History
Absurdist drama arose from the spiritual and physical devastation of World War II, prompted by the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. In Europe, such early proponents as Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter sought to unshackle themselves from the realistic thesis play that had dominated serious theater from Henrik Ibsen’s day forward by creating a new form of drama more suited to a world viewed as being devoid of purpose, legitimate moral authority, or even simple human dignity. By the late 1950’s, the movement had begun influencing American experimental drama in Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway theaters.
The effect of the European absurdists on America’s avant-garde playwrights of the 1960’s is more evident in method than in substance. The charnel house nihilism that beset postwar Europe never really fully undermined or overwhelmed American optimism. As a result, many experimental playwrights of the decade, though flirting with absurdist elements and techniques, never succumbed to the devastating ennui and despair that lay beneath them.
Edward Albee probably came closest to the soul of absurdism in his early plays, starting with The Zoo Story (1959), which was first staged with Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York. Albee’s early targets were American middle-class complacency and materialism, which he attacked in short works such as The Sandbox (1960), The Death of Bessie Smith (1960), and The American Dream (1961). These were followed with some of Albee’s major contributions to American theater, including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), Tiny Alice (1964), and A Delicate Balance (1966), plays that tear at the secrets of dysfunctional families with grim humor and, at times, infantile dialogue.
The techniques and darkly comic focus of the absurdists are also evident in the works of important 1960’s playwrights such as Arthur Kopit, Jack Richardson, and Jack Gelber. Although Kopit’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad (1961) is actually a burlesque of the technique, in it the playwright used grotesque comedy for serious material, which he continued to do throughout the 1960’s. Richardson, with a focus on the individual as hapless victim, mined the idea that illusion offered a respite from an obscene reality in plays such as Gallows Humor (1961), Lorenzo (1963), and Xmas in Las Vegas (1965). Gelber employed an improvisational technique, first exploited in The Connection (1959) then in such plays as The Apple (1961) and Square in the Eye (1965).
Throughout the 1960’s, thanks to the small Off-Off-Broadway theaters such as Caffe Cino, American Place Theater, Judson Poets’ Theater, Theater Genesis, and Café La Mama, dozens of other playwrights found hospitable Greenwich Village venues for experimental pieces, many of which reflected at least an indirect absurdist influence. The Village was the proving ground for a broad spectrum of playwrights, including such diverse figures as Megan Terry, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Terrence McNally, Jean-Claude Van Itallie, and Sam Shepard.
By the end of the 1960’s, the Cold War and the Vietnam War were having a strong erosive force on American optimism. Many playwrights, novelists, and filmmakers incorporated absurdist elements and techniques in works expressing their deep disillusionment with war and their feelings about the generation gap, sexual problems, and the conservative opposition to the drug culture and rock music. As illustrated in works such as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), the rock musical Hair (1967), and Mike Nichols’s film The Graduate (1967), in the second half of the decade, absurdist works had found their way from Off-Off-Broadway, underground presses, and art-film coffeehouses into “legitimate” Broadway houses, best-seller lists, and commercial motion picture theaters.
Subsequent Events
By the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, popular culture had co-opted many absurdist techniques, particularly in the situation comedies of Norman Lear, including Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976-1978), and the spoofs created by film directors such as Mel Brooks.
Bibliography
Bennett, Michael Y. Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd . 3rd ed. Overlook Books, 1980.
Lavery, Carl, and Claire Finburgh, eds. Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage. Bloomsbury, 2015.