Theatre of the Absurd

Down another winding alley through the Surrealist Rhizomaze, echoes of Dada antecedent Alfred Jarry5 filter through surrealism in the 20’s and 30’s, are heard, integrated and built upon by Antonin Artaud77 in his seminal text Le Theatre et son Double, 1938 (see APPENDIX C), and reverberate in the 50’s literature critic Martin Esslin terms ‘Theatre of the Absurd’.52 Jarry’s grotesque parodies of the bourgeoisie,53 mingled with the surrealist preference for the illogicality of dreamscape, percolate through Artaud’s treatises on theatre technique78 to permeate the work of Samuel Beckett75, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamov and other Absurdist76 playwrights.54 Post the horror of World War 1, surrealism attempts a spirited, schismatic attack on the logic of everyday consciousness, hopeful of change: post the even more horrific World War 2, all optimism is gone. The Theatre of the Absurd79 abandons rational theatrical devices, using surrealist, dreamscape incongruity to dramatise a profound sense of the meaninglessness of life and the senselessness of hope.55


back to map