Theatre of the absurd

· main representatives are Ionesco, Adamov, Pinter, Genet, Beckett, Stoppard
· when the Waiting for Godot was first performed, it was received with acclaim and enthusiasm by the public, but wasn’t appreciated by critics, because this style was something new, still developing and it wasn’t defined yet
· absurd originally means ‘out of harmony’ in a musical context, or ridiculous, illogical, unreasonable
· the attitude of the theatre of the absurd expresses absurdity of our lives, it says that the crucial and basic values in our lives were shaken through ages, that we can’t find answers on our questions in religion as we thought before, there are no things we could rely on
· when applied to the theatre, characters live without purpose, they are lonely, they are cut off their religion and roots, everything seems senseless, there is no story, no plot
· the main features that occur in the absurd plays are:
devaluation of language – people can’t communicate with each other, words often mean nothing, people can’t understand what anybody else wanted to say, big use of phrases, silence also plays an important role
importance of actions – there is often only a very modest scenery and few actors so it is important what they do, their gestures and behaviour
indefinable characters
uncertain time, fusing of more timelines
· we can see some examples of the inability of communication in the Harold Pinter’s Last to go : there are two men who are chatting, but actually no one of them is interested in the conversation and they don’t even listen to each other; they talk about things that have no value when knowing them but they don’t start any reasonable conversation, they still repeat the senseless things which they have already said