What is “theater of the absurd”? Which performances are allowed to be illogical, and which directors are allowed to turn absurdity into revelation? Our review includes exemplary performances of the most original genre. The ones you need to watch first.

Adherents of the absurd in art in general, following the founders of the genre (Ionesco, Beckett), affirm the meaninglessness of human existence and perceive the world as a waste dump (“a heap of actions, words and destinies” — Wikipedia). There are often no cause-and-effect relationships in their creations, and the heroes cannot understand each other. Although “theater of the absurd” in its direct and precise meaning is rare, absurdist aesthetics are becoming noticeably more popular. It already extends not only to the classics of the absurd, but also to classics in general. The recognized master here, of course, is Yuri Pogrebnichko, whose performances “Yesterday Came Suddenly..” and “The penultimate concert of Alice in Wonderland” based on Milne and Carroll, respectively, have long turned into a cult. But today Butusov also “cuts” Shakespeare, Krymov turns Chekhov into a modern horror film, and at the Gogol Center and the Moscow Youth Theater they are imbued with love for Kharms and Vvedensky. What they all achieve in the end is highly worthy of the audience's attention. Kitsch, which any flirtation with the absurd genre could well turn out to be, is absent here. Instead - taste, style and philosophical depth.

« »
Satyricon

Excessive, eccentric, master of stage shocking. Yuri Butusov turned Shakespeare's Othello into something unimaginable. Into a kind of theatrical mass that unites the incompatible: Shakespeare turned inside out (in three translations at once: Soroka, Leitin and Pasternak), Pushkin, Chekhov and Akhmatova. The energy mix is ​​so strong that not every viewer can stand it.
A phenomenal find is the black paint that white-skinned Othello-Denis Sukhanov applies to his face and hands. It’s as if hell is demonstrating its rights; with such a “mark” it will no longer be possible to live as before.
There are also crowds of women with running mascara, with breasts invitingly popping out of deep necklines, with mad longing in their eyes. Clumsy men-cowards and silent invisible servants... An excerpt from “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, dancing on the piano and even “nudity”.
Butusov makes riddles, but doesn’t even hint at the answers. Only the artist Alexandra Shishkin mastered the crazy cipher of the director's thought. There are mountains of garbage on the stage. Cardboard boxes, hangers, crumpled coats of unknown vintage, artificial flowers, beds, a skull and even a ship on wooden ropes... So many things dazzle your eyes, the meaning of each of them on the stage is unclear. But the chaos of this world is discernible and “patented.” Only in a landfill does love so quickly turn into hatred, and speculation into a sentence.

photo by Ekaterina Tsvetkova

« »
Near

Absurdity in the theater. Source: Absurdity in the theater.

The performance, which combines Volodin’s play “Don’t part with your loved ones” with the main scenes from Dostoevsky’s novel, is both a philosophical statement about the eternal and the most satire on our worthless, absurd everyday life, the terrible past and the unknown future.
Here before us is a string of married couples whose “love boat crashed into everyday life.” “Drinks, beats”, “had a woman”, “cheated on”, “no common interests”... their explanations in court are familiar to hearing and do not evoke emotions. But Pogrebnichko is what Pogrebnichko is for, to turn everyday dramas into frantic and eternal absurdity. Thus, mental anguish in the presence of a judge (played impeccably by Olga Beshulya) turns into a homerically funny show called “divorce in a Soviet country.” Scenes from Dostoevsky’s novel seem to sneak into this show as if “by chance” (fortunately, there is no need to change clothes - crinolines of the 19th century and quilted jackets from Soviet times always went perfectly together in this theater). Porfiry Petrovich brings Raskolnikov to light, Raskolnikov explains to Sonechka Marmeladova, etc. Then suddenly again the metaphysical abysses are replaced by Soviet “everyday life”, and then completely by a choral performance of hits from the past: “The daisies hid, the buttercups drooped.” All this “porridge” inexplicably sounds hysterical, but without pathos. Moreover, it speaks about the most important thing: about the pain that is eternal in people and their relationships. About how scary it is that no one knows how or wants to relieve this pain.

photo by Victor Pushkin

« »
School of Dramatic Art

Absurdity in the theater. Source: Absurdity in the theater.

The performance is based on one single phrase from “Three Sisters” (“Balzac got married in Berdichev”), the rest is a brilliant horror from Dmitry Krymov, a master of stage puzzles and visual metaphors. His fantasy does not obey any theatrical laws or even simple logic. Chekhov for him is only a reason for his own experiment.
Krymov and his team turned Chekhov's sisters into ugly clowns, like witches from a science fiction horror story. Masha “grew” bumps on her legs, and Anna Akhmatova’s nose appeared from somewhere. Irina's ears became gigantic, and Olga turned into a plump gray bun. Scary, wretched. Just like everyone else. Judge for yourself: Vershinin is without a hand. Salty - with three. Andrey in a woman's dress and with a pregnant belly, Chebutykin in the image of an incompetent maniac doctor. The heroes clearly do not realize their own inferiority - they cheerfully eat a watermelon on stage (oh, what a scene it turned out to be!), hypnotize tea cups, make fun of each other, burn a paper city in a copper basin. There is no trace of dialogue from the play, as well as the viscous atmosphere of “doing nothing.” Something happens on stage all the time, sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes piercingly sad, and sometimes tragic. The director deliberately deprives the viewer of a point of support - whether everything that happened on stage is funny or scary is ultimately not obvious. Not a single scene in a new performance can be predicted. Perhaps you won’t even be able to understand anything right away. But it’s impossible not to grasp the meaning, the idea. We are all funny little freaks who live as if they are immortal and grief does not exist. But sooner or later, both death and grief happen. And I feel sorry for everyone.

photo by Mikhail Guterman

Since the 50s of the twentieth century, plays with a meaningless plot have been increasingly staged on various theater stages, presenting to the viewer a seemingly combination of incompatible things. The so-called theater of the absurd (or drama of the absurd ) —the theater of paradox, “tragedy of speech,” experimental theater that requires improvisation not only from the actor, but also from the viewer. The theater of the absurd challenged cultural traditions and, to some extent, the political and social order.

Its origins included three French and one Irish authors — Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov and Samuel Beckett.

Wanting to give a name to such unusual plays, the English critic Martin Esslin in 1961 introduced the concept "theater of the absurd" . But, for example, Eugene Ionesco considered the term “theater of the absurd” not very suitable, he proposed another  "theater of ridicule" . And the idea for this genre of play came to him while studying English using a self-instruction manual. E. Ionesco was surprised to discover that in ordinary words there lurks an abyss of absurdity, due to which sometimes clever and pompous phrases completely lose their meaning. The playwright explained the purpose of such a play as follows: “We wanted to bring to the stage and show the audience the very existential existence of man in its fullness, integrity, in its deep tragedy, his fate, that is, the awareness of the absurdity of the world.”

Indeed, the events of any play in the theater of the absurd are far from reality and do not strive to get closer to it. The incredible and unimaginable can manifest themselves both in characters and in surrounding objects and occurring phenomena. The place and time of action in such dramatic works is, as a rule, quite difficult to determine. There is no logic either in the actions of the characters or in their words.

Let us highlight the common features characteristic of the works of the theater of the absurd: Material from the site

• fantastic elements coexist with reality;
• “pure” dramatic genres are being replaced by so-called mixed ones, combining different genres: tragicomedy, tragifarce, comic melodrama, etc.;
• elements of different types of art are used (pantomime, choir, musical, etc.);
• In contrast to the natural dynamism of the scene, static is often observed. In the words of E. Ionesco, “agony in which there is no real action”;
• The speech of the characters is subject to changes, who often simply do not hear or see each other, and pronounce “parallel” monologues into the void.

The end of the 60s of the twentieth century was marked by international recognition of the theater of the absurd. One of its founders, Samuel Beckett, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Answering the question “ Is there a future for the theater of the absurd?", Eugene Ionesco argued that this direction will live forever, because "the absurdity has so filled reality, the very one that is called “realistic reality”, that realities and realisms seem to us as truthful as they are absurd, and the absurdity seems to be reality: let’s look around around you."

The influence of the theater of the absurd on the development of modern art is difficult to overestimate: it introduced new themes into world literature, provided dramaturgy with new techniques and means, and contributed to the emancipation of modern theater as a whole.

Didn't find what you were looking for? Use the search

On this page there is material on the following topics:

• drama of the absurd in secular literature
• dram short definition
• Absurd drama abstract
• theater of the absurd definition
• define the drama of the absurd

Ticket number 24.

Features of the theater of the absurd: origins, representatives, features of dramatic structure (S. Beckett, E. Ionesco).

Theater of the Absurd- a direction in Western European drama and theater that arose in the middle of the 20th century. In absurdist plays, the world is presented as a meaningless, devoid of logic, a pile of facts, actions, words and destinies. The principles of absurdism were most fully embodied in the dramas “The Bald Singer” (1950) by playwright Eugene Ionesco and “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett.

The theater of the absurd is believed to be rooted in the philosophy of Dadaism, poetry of non-existent words and avant-garde art of the 1910s and 20s. Despite intense criticism, the genre gained popularity after World War II, which highlighted the significant uncertainty of human life. The introduced term was also criticized, and attempts were made to redefine it as “anti-theatre” and “new theatre”. The “theater of the absurd” (or “new theater”) movement apparently originated in Paris as an avant-garde phenomenon associated with small theaters in the Latin Quarter, and after some time gained worldwide recognition.

In practice, the theater of the absurd denies realistic characters, situations and all other relevant theatrical techniques. Time and place are uncertain and changeable, even the simplest causal connections are destroyed. Pointless intrigues, repetitive dialogues and aimless chatter, dramatic inconsistency of actions - everything is subordinated to one goal: to create a fabulous, and perhaps terrible, mood.

The development of absurdist drama was influenced by surreal theatricality: the use of fancy costumes and masks, meaningless rhymes, provocative appeals to the audience, etc. The plot of the play and the behavior of the characters are incomprehensible, analogous and sometimes intended to shock the audience. Reflecting the absurdity of mutual understanding, communication, dialogue, the play in every possible way emphasizes the lack of meaning in language, which, in the form of a kind of game without rules, becomes the main carrier of chaos.

For the absurdists, the dominant quality of existence was not compression, but decay. The second significant difference from the previous drama is in relation to the person. Man in the absurdist world is the personification of passivity and helplessness. He cannot realize anything except his helplessness. He is deprived of freedom of choice. Absurdists developed their own concept of drama - antidrama. The drama of the absurd is not a discussion about the absurd, but a demonstration of the absurd.

Eugene Ionesco- the founder of absurdism in French drama.

The situations, characters and dialogues of his plays follow the images and associations of dreams rather than everyday reality. Language, with the help of funny paradoxes, clichés, sayings and other verbal games, is freed from habitual meanings and associations. The surrealism of Ionesco's plays originates from circus clownery, the films of Charles Chaplin, B. Keaton, the Marx Brothers, ancient and medieval farce. A typical technique is a pile of objects that threaten to engulf the actors; things take on life, and people turn into inanimate objects. There is no catharsis in absurdist plays; E. Ionesco rejects any ideology, but the plays were brought to life by deep concern for the fate of the language and its speakers.

Premiere of "The Bald Singer" took place in Paris. The success of The Bald Singer was scandalous, no one understood anything, but watching productions of absurdist plays gradually became good form.

In the anti-play (this is the genre designation) there is no trace of a bald singer. But there is an English couple, the Smiths, and their neighbor named Martin, as well as the maid Mary and the captain of the fire brigade, who happened to drop by for a moment to see the Smiths. He is afraid of being late for a fire that will start in so many hours and in so many minutes. There are also clocks that strike as they please, which apparently means that time is not lost, it simply does not exist, everyone is in their own time dimension and is talking nonsense accordingly.

The playwright has several techniques for intensifying the absurd. There is confusion in the sequence of events, and a pile-up of the same names and surnames, and the spouses not recognizing each other, and the castling of hosts-guests, guests-hosts, countless repetitions of the same epithet, a stream of oxymorons, an obviously simplified construction of phrases, like in an English textbook for beginners. In short, the dialogues are truly funny.

The situations, characters and dialogues of his plays follow the images and associations of dreams rather than everyday reality. Language, with the help of funny paradoxes, clichés, sayings and other verbal games, is freed from habitual meanings and associations. The surrealism of Ionesco's plays originates from circus clownery, the films of Charles Chaplin, B. Keaton, the Marx Brothers, ancient and medieval farce. A typical technique is a pile of objects that threaten to engulf the actors; things take on life, and people turn into inanimate objects.

When asked about the meaning of his dramaturgy, Ionesco replied that he wanted to “explain all the absurdity of existence, the separation of man from his transcendental roots”, to show that “when talking, people no longer know what they wanted to say, and that they are talking so that nothing to say that language, instead of bringing them closer, only divides them even more,” reveals “the unusual and strange nature of our existence” and “parody the theater, that is, the world.”

The goal of his dramaturgy is to create a ferocious, unrestrained theater, he proposes a return to theatrical origins, namely to ancient puppet shows that use caricatured, implausible images that emphasize the brutality of reality itself. Ionesco proclaimed sharp disagreement with the existing theater; of all the playwrights, he recognized only Shakespeare. Modern theater, in his opinion, is not capable of expressing the existential state of a person. Theater must move as far as possible from realism, which only obscures the essence of human life.

BECKETT.

Beckett was Joyce's secretary and learned to write from him. “Waiting for Godot” is one of the basic texts of absurdism. Entropy is represented in a state of expectation, and this expectation is a process, the beginning and end of which we do not know, i.e. it makes no sense. The state of waiting is the dominant state in which the heroes exist, without wondering whether they need to wait for Godot. They are in a passive state.

The heroes (Volodya and Estragon) are not completely sure that they are waiting for Godot in the very place where they need to be. When the next day after the night they come to the same place to the withered tree, Estragon doubts that this is the same place. The set of objects is the same, only the tree blossomed overnight. Estragon's shoes, which he left on the road yesterday, are in the same place, but he claims that they are larger and of a different color.

"Waiting for Godot."

Identification with Christ, the redeemer of human sins, with God the Father. “There is nothing more real than nothing.” This is a symbol of Nothing. For existentialists, nothing comes with a plus sign. The central characters are Vladimir and Estragon, tramps. They are tired of waiting and cannot help but wait. A boy appears and reports that Godot's appearance has been delayed again. Lucky and Potso are activists, realists, pragmatists, personifying the vanity of life. Vl. and E. are forced to eat pasture, they have no home, they spend the night in the open air. Laki and Potso are surrounded by objects of civilization. But all the characters find only illnesses in the process of existence.

Vladimir and Estragon are distinguished by their emasculated consciousness, they lack education, and Potso and Lucky even think on command. Vladimir and Estragon are friends, but they ask themselves whether it would be better for them to live separately. Potso and Lucky need each other too. Different types of human and human development.

None of the options are justified. Often characters, if they are looking for something else, are on the other side of the border. Vladimir and Estragon love to look at their own things. They hope to find something there, but find nothing. They don't try to create something themselves. To see in Nothing not only an expression of weakness, but also an expression of strength.

Beckett - the decline of human nature. Ionesco - the decline of the human spirit.

Historical background for the emergence of the drama of the absurd. The concept of "Theater of the Absurd"

The origin of the absurd genre in Great Britain occurred mainly in the second half of the 20th century and had a certain sociocultural and historical context.

Despite the devastating effects of World War II, the second half of the 20th century became a period of peaceful prosperity. Great Britain has come face to face with globalization and the needs of a post-industrial society. In this paragraph we will consider the historical and social background of the emergence of this genre. play absurd linguistic stoppard

Regarding changes in the social and everyday life of people, we can highlight the following prerequisites:

• 1) “Consumer society”. Post-war reconstruction brought the economy to full recovery. This was the symbolic beginning of the era of "consumer society". Societies where high wages and plenty of free time provided a standard of living the country had never known before.
• 2) Education. One of the important factors of prosperity was the incredible rise in the level of education among the entire population. Access to higher education ensured a larger number of students and, as a result, an increase in the number of specialists with higher education.
• 3) Youth culture . The conservatism inherent in the first half of the 20th century gave way to tolerance towards social, religious and ethnic differences. The emergence of youth culture took place against the background of the denial of strict moral principles by the youth themselves, the emergence of freedom of thought and action. People wanted just such a society - consisting of free individuals with independent views, choosing a way of life far from what the masses were used to.
• 4) Immigration flows . The post-war environment prompted the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Irish, Indians and Pakistanis, which played a special role in reconstruction, although it was met with unprecedented levels of hostility from the British. It was necessary to create special laws, one of which was the Race Relations Act (1976), which provided enormous assistance in resolving ethnic conflicts. Although some racial prejudices still exist today, the second half of the 20th century saw great strides towards fostering respect and tolerance for members of different ethnic groups. (Brodey, Malgaretti, 2003: 251-253)

Economically, social pressure and unemployment reigned everywhere. Although prosperity spread throughout Europe, huge numbers of workers and their families faced a crisis due to job losses. The closure of mines, automobile and metallurgical plants led to unemployment and social unrest in the 70s and 80s of the 20th century.

For example, in 1984, the largest miners' strike in British history occurred. Margaret Thatcher faced fierce resistance from workers when attempting to close the coal mines. However, this was just the beginning. The Thatcher years were marked by many similar incidents (strikes by railway workers, representatives of public utilities, etc.)

All of the above factors, of course, could not but influence the cultural aspect of human life. New forms of expressing reality were needed, new ways of communicating philosophy and the complexity of life to people. The response to this need was the emergence of many modern genres of culture and literature, one of which was the theater of the absurd.

In literature, since 1960, Great Britain has been swept by a wave of publication of new works. Many of them were written only for quantity, many have survived to this day as examples of quality literature. However, modern literature is quite difficult to classify, because, despite all the differences between genres and works, they are all designed to display the kaleidoscope of modern existence. Postmodern art has spread to many areas of human life, however, one thing is clear - British literature has opened up new horizons for readers of modern life, sometimes expressing it in forms that are not entirely familiar to the reader. (Brodey, Malgaretti 2003)

While prose and poetry moved away from the new canons of the 20th century, drama studied and used them. Traditional theater art described the aspirations and desires of the upper class of British society, excluding any kind of experimentation, both with language and with the production process. However, at the same time, Europe was completely absorbed in the rejection of tradition in favor of novelty and conceptuality, bringing the plays of Eugene Ionesco to the stage.

E. Ionesco's plays were called absurd because the plot and dialogues were very difficult to understand, revealing their illogicality. Absurdists received complete freedom to use language, playing with it, involving the viewer in the performance itself. There were no unnecessary distractions in the form of decorations; the audience was completely absorbed in what was happening on stage. Even the consistency of the dialogues was perceived as a factor distracting from understanding the meaning and idea of ​​the play.

The absurd genre appeared in the mid-twentieth century in Western Europe as one of the areas of drama. The world in plays of this genre is presented as a heap of facts, words, actions, thoughts, devoid of any meaning.

The term “theater of the absurd” was first used by the famous theater critic Martin Esslin, who saw in certain works the embodiment of the idea of ​​the meaninglessness of life as such.

This art direction was fiercely criticized, but nevertheless gained unprecedented popularity after the Second World War, which only emphasized the uncertainty and instability of human life. In addition, the term itself has been criticized. There were even attempts to redefine it as anti-theater.

In practice, the theater of the absurd questions the realism of existence, people, situations, thoughts, and all the usual classical theatrical techniques. The simplest cause-and-effect relationships are destroyed, the categories of time and space are blurred. All the illogicality, meaninglessness and aimlessness of the action are aimed at creating an unrealistic, maybe even creepy atmosphere.

France became the birthplace of absurdism, although its founders were the Irishman Samuel Beckett and the Romanian Eugene Ionesco, who created in French, i.e. non-native language. And although Ionesco was bilingual (his childhood was spent in Paris), it was the feeling of a “non-native” language that gave him the opportunity to consider linguistic phenomena from the point of view of the absurd, relying on the lexical structure as the main structure of the architectonics of plays. The same undoubtedly applies to S. Beckett. A known disadvantage - working in a non-native language - turned into an advantage. Language in absurdist plays acts as an obstacle to communication; people speak and do not hear each other.

Despite the relative youth of this trend, it managed to become quite popular thanks to the logic of illogicality. And absurdism is based on serious philosophical ideas and cultural roots.

First of all, it is worth mentioning the relativistic theory of knowledge of the world - a worldview that denies the very possibility of knowing objective reality

Also, the formation of absurdism was greatly influenced by existentialism - a subjective-idealistic philosophical direction built on irrationalism, a tragic worldview, the illogicality of the surrounding world and the inability of man to control it.

By the early 1960s, absurdism went beyond the borders of France and began to rapidly spread throughout the world. However, nowhere else did absurdism appear in its pure form. Most playwrights who can be classified in this movement are not so radical in the techniques of absurdism. They retain a tragic worldview and the main issues, reflecting the absurdity and contradictory nature of situations, often refuse to destroy the plot and plot, lexical experiments, and their heroes are specific and individual, the situations are definite, and social motives very often appear. Their embodiment is in a realistic reflection of reality, which cannot be the case with the plays of S. Beckett and E. Ionesco.

However, what is important is that in the 1960s the absurdist technique received an unexpected development in a new direction of visual art - performance (original name - happening), the works of which are any actions of the artist that occur in real time. The performance is not based at all on the semantic and ideological categories of absurdism, but uses its formal techniques: the absence of a plot, the use of a cycle of “freely flowing images,” the division of structure - lexical, essential, ideological, existential.

Absurdist playwrights often used not just absurdity, but reality in its manifestations, reduced to absurdity. The method of reduction to the absurd is a method when what one wants to deny is initially taken as truth. We take a false proposition and make it true with our entire existence in accordance with the method of reduction to the absurd. Paradox arises only as a result of the use of indirect evidence. We take a false (incomplete) proposition and make it true in accordance with the method of reduction to the absurd.

Thus, using the method of leading to a contradiction, the author implements the formula “what was required to be proven.” Although the reader himself is capable of coming to this conclusion, here we cannot yet talk about any logical internal form of the work. There is only the character’s point of view, the “false”, and the author’s point of view, the “true” - they are in direct opposition. The author forces the hero to follow his logic to the end. The logical dead end to which the writer leads his hero through the method of reduction to the absurd is obviously part of the author's intention. Therefore, we consider absurd stories as a kind of thought experiments. (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/)

But in other cases, the author does not limit himself to such a simple and formal solution to the problem. The hero continues to insist on his own, he is obsessed with his idea, he does not feel that he has crossed the boundaries of common sense. All this gives the plot of the work an absurd character. Expanding an idea towards the absurd is a process that does not always depend on the will of the author and his intentions. Now the author must move behind his hero, whose point of view leaves a static position and gains dynamics. The entire artistic world, the entire structure of the work is turned upside down: the center of the work becomes the idea itself, the “false,” which, as it were, takes away the author’s right to vote and builds reality independently. An idea organizes the artistic world not according to the laws of common sense, as, say, the author would do, but according to its own absurd laws. The author's point of view is blurred. In any case, it does not have a visible predominance in this particular fragment of the text, but as much as the author initially did not agree with this “impeccable” idea, he now fears it and does not believe in it. And, of course, the hero of the work meets the author where his insensitivity reaches its limit. The hero is afraid either of the consequences of his theories, or of the theory itself, which can sometimes lead very far and come into conflict not only with ethics, but also with common sense itself.

The most popular absurdist play by S. Beckett, Waiting for Godot, is one of the first examples of the Theater of the Absurd, which critics point to. Written and first performed in France in 1954, the play had an extraordinary impact on theatergoers due to its new and strange rules. Consisting of desolate settings (except for a virtually leafless tree, clown-like tramps, and highly symbolic language), Godot encourages audiences to question all old rules and try to find meaning in a world that cannot be known. The heart of the play is the theme of “endurance” and “getting through the day” so that tomorrow you will have the strength to continue. In terms of structure, Godot is essentially a cyclical two-act play. It begins with two lonely tramps on a country road waiting for the arrival of a certain man called Godot, and ends with the original situation. Many critics have concluded that the second act is simply a repetition of the first. In other words, Vladimir and Estragon can forever remain “waiting for Godot.” We will never know if they found a way out of this situation. As an audience, we can only watch them repeat the same actions, listen to them repeat the same words, and accept the fact that Godot may or may not come. Much like them, we are stuck in a world where our actions determine existence. We may be looking for answers or meaning in life, but most likely we won't find them. Thus, this play is structured in such a way as to make us believe that Godot may never come and that we must accept the uncertainty that permeates our daily lives. The two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, spend their days reliving the past, trying to find the meaning of their existence, and even considering suicide as a form of salvation. However, as characters they are absurdist archetypes who remain isolated from the public. They essentially lack personality and their vaudevillian mannerisms, especially when it comes to contemplating suicide, tend to make the audience laugh rather than perceive what is happening as tragic. (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/)

For another representative of this genre, E. Ionesco, the absurd is a tool, a way of thinking, the most important opportunity to break through the network of indifference that tightly envelops the consciousness of modern man. The absurd is a look from a completely unexpected point of view and a look that is refreshing. It can shock and surprise, but this is precisely what can break through spiritual blindness and deafness, because it is against the usual.

The situations, characters and dialogues of his plays follow the images and associations of dreams rather than everyday reality. Language, with the help of funny paradoxes, clichés, sayings and other verbal games, is freed from habitual meanings and associations. E. Ionesco's plays originate from street theater, commedia dell'arte, circus clownery. A typical technique is a pile of objects that threaten to engulf the actors; things take on life, and people turn into inanimate objects. “Ionesco’s Circus” is a term quite often applied to his early drama. Meanwhile, he recognized only an indirect connection of his art with surrealism, more readily with Dada.

Achieving maximum impact, Eugene Ionesco “attacks” the usual logic of thinking, leading the viewer into a state of ecstasy by the lack of expected development. Here, as if following the precepts of street theater, he demands improvisation not only from the actors, but also makes the viewer confusedly look for the development of what is happening on stage and off it. Problems that were once perceived as just another non-figurative experiment are beginning to acquire the quality of relevance.

Also, this description of the nature and essence of plays in the absurd genre fully applies to the works of Tom Stoppard and Daniil Kharms.

This new phenomenon in theatrical art made itself known in the early 1950s. plays “The Bald Singer” (1950) and “Waiting for Godot” (1952). The strange works of Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett caused heated debate among critics and audiences. The “absurdists” were accused of extreme pessimism and the destruction of all the canons of the theater. However, already at the end of the 1960s. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for his play “Waiting for Godot,” and Ionesco’s “Thirst for Hunger” was performed at the Comédie Française. Why did the attitude of society in the theater of the absurd change?

It must be said that in the second half of the 20th century. The representatives of the theater of the absurd were not alone in their tragically pessimistic vision of the world. In the philosophical works of Sartre, in the literary experiments of Faulkner, Kafka, Camus, the idea was expressed with intense expression that modern man, who has lost faith in God, in the omnipotence of science or in progress, has “lost” the meaning of life and lives in anticipation of death. As Faulkner put it, “life is not movement, but a monotonous repetition of the same movements.” Such a “discovery” makes people experience a feeling of confusion and alienation, and realize the “absurdity” of their existence.

Thus, the ideas of the representatives of the new theatrical movement were fully consistent with the “spirit of the times.” At first, critics and viewers were “confused” by the deliberate combination of obvious tragedy with equally frank irony, which permeated the dramas of Beckett, Ionesco, Gennet, Pinter, and Arrabal. In addition, it seemed that the plays of the “absurdists” were impossible to stage on stage: they lacked the usual “full-fledged” images, there was no intelligible plot, no intelligible conflict, and the words were arranged in almost meaningless chains of phrases. These works were not at all suitable for realistic theater. But when experimental directors took on them, it turned out that the dramaturgy of the absurd provides rich opportunities for original stage solutions. Theatrical convention revealed a multiplicity of semantic layers in the plays of the “absurdists,” from the most tragic to the completely life-affirming, because in life, despair and hope are always nearby.

And onesco

Eugene Ionesco

French playwright of Romanian origin, one of the founders of the aesthetic movement of absurdism, a recognized classic of the theatrical avant-garde of the 20th century. Member of the French Academy.

Ionesco himself (born 1912) has repeatedly emphasized that he expresses an extremely tragic worldview. His plays “predict” the transformation of an entire community of people into rhinoceroses (“Rhinoceros” - 1960), tell about killers roaming among us (“The Disinterested Killer” - 1957), and depict unsafe aliens from anti-worlds (“Aerial Pedestrian” - 1963).

The playwright seeks to expose the danger of conformist consciousness, which absolutely depersonalizes a person. To achieve his artistic goal, Ionesco decisively destroys the seemingly harmonious logic of our thinking, parodying it. In the comedy “The Bald Singer” he reproduces the “automated”, “clichéd” worldview of his heroes, creates a phantasmagoric performance, exposing the absurdity of trivial phrases and banal judgments.

The famous director Peter Brook was one of the first to appreciate the stage possibilities of absurdist drama.

In “Victims of Duty” (1953) we are talking about people who consider themselves obligated to fulfill any demands of the state, to be certainly loyal citizens. The play is based on the technique of transforming images, changing character masks. This technique of external transformation of a person, which, however, does not change his essence, but only reveals his inner emptiness, is one of Ionesco’s favorites. He also uses it in one of his most famous plays, “Chairs” (1952). The heroine of the play, Semiramis, appears either as the old man’s wife or as his mother, while at the same time the old man himself is either a man, or a soldier, or “the marshal of this house,” or an orphan. The people Ionesco portrays are victims of life's utilitarian goals; they cannot go beyond the narrow circle of routine, they are blind from birth, crippled by cliches. The lack of spiritual aspirations makes them prisoners who do not want to be released.

B eckett

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

“To Beckett we owe perhaps the most impressive and most original dramatic works of our time.” Peter Brook

Irish writer, poet and playwright. Representative of modernism in literature. One of the founders of the theater of the absurd. He gained worldwide fame as the author of the play Waiting for Godot, one of the most significant works of world drama of the 20th century. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1969. Having an Irish passport, he lived most of his life in Paris, writing in English and French.

Beckett, unlike Ionesco, is interested in a different range of issues. The main theme of his work is loneliness. Beckett's heroes need communication, kindred spirits, but due to their own structure (or the structure of the world?) they are deprived of these necessary things. All their lives they peer into their inner world, trying to correlate it with the surrounding reality, but their conclusions are inconsolable, and their existence is hopeless.

This is how Vladimir and Estragon appear before us, the characters in the tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot.” It was no coincidence that they found themselves on a deserted road, the only sign of which was a dried tree. This is a symbol of the heroes’ alienation from life. They try to remember the past, but the memories are vague and confused, they try to understand what led them to complete loneliness, but they are unable to do this. The dialogue and the accompanying actions are structured like a sad clownery. Vladimir and Estragon are surrounded by endless space, a huge world, but it seems closed to the heroes.

Beckett also uses the symbol of isolation in such plays as “The Game” (1954), “Happy Days” (1961), “Krapp’s Last Tape” (1957), thus revealing the incompatibility of his characters with the environment. “Nobody comes, nothing happens” - this phrase from “Waiting for Godot” becomes the leitmotif of Beckett’s dramaturgy, which tells about a man who has lost his life guidelines and turned almost into a phantom. The playwright's characters themselves are not entirely sure that they still exist. Noteworthy is the order Vladimir and Estragon give to the boy sent by Godot: “Tell him that you saw us.”

Unlike Ionesco or Beckett, Mrozek prefers an almost realistic manner of constructing dramatic action.

An important feature of Beckett's artistic method is the combination of poetry with banality. The playwright either lifts the viewer to the heights of the struggle of the human spirit, or plunges into the abyss of the base, and sometimes crudely physiological.

Beckett's plays are always mysterious: they require sophisticated stage interpretations, so the playwright embodied some of his works on stage personally. Thus, the mini-tragedy “The Sound of Steps” was staged by the author in West Berlin. A special place in Beckett’s work is occupied by the miniature “Dénouement” (1982), written especially for the famous actor J.-L. Barro. In it, the director's assistant prepares a performer for a role in one of Beckett's plays. He still won't say a word.

woman

To his wife: “I never reproduced life, but life itself involuntarily gave birth to me or highlighted, if they already existed in my soul, images that I then tried to convey through characters or events.”

Jean Genet (1910-1986). French writer, poet and playwright whose work is controversial. The main characters of his works were thieves, murderers, prostitutes, pimps, smugglers and other inhabitants of the social bottom.

The most extravagant of the representatives of the theater of the absurd is Jean Genet. As a ten-year-old boy, he was convicted of theft and ended up in a correctional colony, where, in his own words, he enthusiastically joined the world of vice and crime. Later he served in the Foreign Legion and wandered around the ports of Europe. In 1942 he went to prison, where he wrote the book “Our Lady of Flowers”; in 1948 he was sentenced to lifelong exile in a colony. However, many cultural figures stood up for the writer, already well-known by that time, and he was pardoned.

Genet’s main task was to challenge bourgeois society, which he fully succeeded in achieving with talented but scandalously shocking plays, which included “The Maids” (1947), “The Balcony” (1956), “The Negroes” (1958) and “Screens.” ” (1961).

J.-P. Sartre supported the “absurdists”, wrote reviews of their plays, and he owns a book about the life and work of Genet.

“The Maids” is one of Genet’s most famous dramatic works. It tells how the sisters Solange and Claire, rescued by their mistress, decide to take possession of her property by poisoning the mistress. To this end, they slander her friend, ensuring that he goes to prison. But Monsieur is unexpectedly released, and the treacherous sisters are exposed. Although the plot “suggests” a melodramatic development of the action, “The Maids” is built in a completely different, grotesque key. In the absence of Madame, the sisters take turns portraying her, transforming themselves so much into their mistress that they forget about themselves, temporarily freeing themselves from the unenviable role they play in reality. This is a play about life in which dream and reality collide in an ugly way. In Genet’s drama, as a rule, completely fictitious, incredible events appear in which the real world familiar to us is bizarrely modified and distorted, which allows the author to express his attitude towards it.

A rrabal and Pinter

Fernando Arrabal

Spanish screenwriter, playwright, film director, actor, novelist and poet. Lives in France since 1955.

Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal (b. 1932) was fascinated by Calderon and Brecht in his youth, and was significantly influenced by these authors. His first play, “Picnic,” was staged in 1959 in Paris. The heroes of the play, Sapo and Sepo, are soldiers of two armies at war with each other. Sapo takes Sepo prisoner. It turns out that the soldiers have a lot in common.

Both do not want to kill anyone, both are ignorant of military affairs, and participation in battles has not separated them from the habits of peaceful life: one knits a sweater in between firefights, and the other makes rag flowers. Ultimately, the heroes come to the conclusion that all the other soldiers also do not want to fight, and they must say this out loud and go home. Inspired, they dance to cheerful music, but at that moment a machine-gun burst cuts them down, depriving them of the opportunity to carry out their plan. The absurdity of the play's situation is deepened by the fact that it also involves Sapo's parents, who suddenly arrived at the front to visit their son.

Arrabal's work is characterized by the contrast between the deliberate childishness of his heroes and the cruelty of the circumstances in which they have to exist. Some of the playwright’s most famous works include “The Two Executioners” (1956), “First Communion” (1966), “The Garden of Pleasure” (1969, “The Inquisition” (1982).

Harold Pinter

English playwright, poet, director, actor, public figure. One of the most influential British playwrights of his time. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2005.

The artistic method of Harold Pinter (1930 – 2008), author of the plays “The Birthday Party” (1957), “The Dumb Waiter” (1957), “The Watchman” (1960), “Landscape” (1969), is close to expressionism. His dark tragicomedies are populated by mysterious characters whose conversations parody ordinary forms of human communication. The plot and construction of the plays are in conflict with their apparent plausibility. Looking at the bourgeois world as if through a magnifying glass, Pinter uniquely depicts the suffering of people who find themselves on the margins of life.

Source – Large Illustrated ENCYCLOPEDIA

Theater of the Absurd – Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, Arrabal and Pinter updated: August 31, 2017 by: website