“Introduction” to The Theatre of the Absurd BY Martin Esslin (1918-2002)

“Introduction” to The Theatre of the Absurd BY Martin Esslin

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1.What do you know about the theatre of Absurd? Bring out the main characteristics of this school of drama.

Or

“The thin line between truth and lies is perhaps the devining characteristics of the theatre of Absurd”    – Justify the statement regarding  Absurd Drama.

Answer:-

Martin Esslin, a theatre critic coined the term “The Absurd” to describe a number of works being produced in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s that rejected all traditional forms of drama. In 1961 Esslin published his best known and most influential book “The Theatre of the Absurd” in which he tried to establish a new movement in contemporary dramatic theory. The famous playwrights associated with this movement include Samuel Backett, Arthur Adamov, Jean Genet and Harold Printer. The term ‘Absurd’ was originally used by Albert Camus in his essay “Myth of Sisyphus’ where he described the human condition as meaningless and absurd. The key element to an absurdist play is that the main characters and their situations are out of the synchronize with the world around them. There is no discernable reasoning behind their strangeness, though a threatening sense of change shakes their existence to the core.

As Martin Esslin defines the theatre of the Absurd was not a cohesive artistic movement. But was instead a similar style that was shared between individual writers around the same time period and not directly influenced by the each other’s works. Each dramatist of the Absurd projects themselves as an outsider from the mainstream of both society and the artistic world. The idea projected by these writers were that the basic assumption of the former ages such as religious faith, morality and traditional values which no longer have meaning in this modern world. Each writer attempted to express a ‘metaphysical anguish’ of the disconnection of individual from any higher purpose or meaning in life which they termed as “Absurdity of the human condition.”

The Absurdist playwrights belief that our existence is Absurd because we are born without asking to be born, we die without seeking to die, we live between birth and death, trapped within our body and our social reason and law. We are also unable to conceive of a time in which we were not or a time in which we will be not. The absurdist dramatist shows that our existence is create nothing and our life is purposeless. In absurdist drama all the logical construction, all the rational arguments of ideas and all the intellectual ideas are not presented, instead the irrationality experience is transformed on to the stage. The main ideas exposed in an absurd drama are-

1.Life is essentially meaningless so it is miserable.

2.There is no hope because of the inevitable futility of human existence.

3. Reality is unbearable unless relieved by dreams and illusions, which are not real and in that sense life is meaningless.

4.There is no action or plot in our life. Very little meaningful happens in our life according to our own wish. So a human life cannot produce anything meaningful.

5.The final situation of our existence is absurd or comic because life is tale fold by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

6. Absurd drama is not purposeful or specific as it’s solves no problem. It is like an abstract painting which is supposed not to convey a definite meaning.

7. The audience can imagine different meanings at different levels of the drama.

In fact the play writers of the theatre of absurd present their plays to speak for themselves. Harnold Printer explain this absurdist concept in his speech, “Writing for the theatre” which was presented at the national drama festival in Bristle, there he said, “I suggest there can be no hard distinction between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true or what is false, the thin line between truth and lies is perhaps the defining characteristic of the theatre of Absurd.”