Theater of the absurd

PlayBeckett's in 2008.

Homenaje a Pinter, 2006.

The theater of the absurd encompasses a group of works written by certain American and European playwrights during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and, in general, the one that arose from the work of those. It is characterized by plots that seem meaningless, repetitive dialogue, and a lack of dramatic sequence that often create a dreamlike atmosphere. The theater of the absurd has strong existentialist traits and questions society and the human being. Through humor and myth they hid a very demanding attitude towards their art. Incoherence, nonsense and the illogical are also very representative features of these works in common.

Many see the Theater of the Absurd as a work without logical explanation and meaningless. The inconsistency between thought and facts is highlighted, as is music, as well as the inconsistency between ideologies and acts. The characters have a great obstacle to express themselves and communicate with each other constantly. In the works, the decoration and the scenery (as well as the objects and accessories used) definitely play a very important role as a contrast with their content, because they imaginarily present the reality of the messages they are intended to convey. Everything is presented in a framework of an empty world and with very heavy objects that end up dominating the characters. It touches on very important issues, related, for example, to how susceptible civilization was after a great war like World War II. The disorganization that existed even in the way of communicating with each other is perceived through its characters, where many times there was not a point of agreement between all the parties, but there was an abuse of power, where the rich and powerful ran over the others. weakest and least likely to survive in the face of so much chaos and confusion. The interesting thing about the theater of the absurd is that it does not give the answers we expect, or the ones we think we are going to expect, but rather leaves the interpretation and analysis of each one of its works to us. The term "absurd" comes from the use of the same word by existentialist thinkers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Precedents

Its roots can be found in the "allegorical morality" plays of the Middle Ages and in the autos sacramentales (allegorical religious dramas) of Baroque Spain, in the literature of "non-sense" from authors like Lewis Carroll, in the dream works of Strindberg and the novels of James Joyce and Franz Kafka, in the grotesque drama of Alfred Jarry; and in the fratic farces of Georges Feydeau; works that had the Dada movement and surrealism of the 1920s and 1930s as direct followers. One of the most powerful theoretical sources of the theater of the absurd was El teatro y su doble, a work originally published in 1938 by Antonin Artaud, creator of the theater of cruelty style.

Origin

The term was coined by Martin Esslin when he wrote The Theater of the Absurd (1961). The book was called "the most influential text on theater in the 1960s." In the first edition of his book, Esslin introduced the four writers who defined the movement: Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. In future issues, he added Harold Pinter. Esslin based himself on the philosophical essays of Albert Camus to describe the characteristics of the theater of the absurd.

Emerged in the 20th century. The authors began to come together under the label of the absurd as a way of agreeing against anxiety, wildness and doubt in the midst of an inexplicable universe and they fell back on the poetic metaphor as a means of projecting their most intimate states. It is for this reason that the images of the absurd theater tend to assume the quality of fantasy, dreams and nightmares, without being interested so much in the appearance of objective reality as in the author's emotional perception of inner reality.

Thus, for example, Beckett's play Happy Days (1961) expresses a generalized anxiety of man about the approach of death, through the concrete image of a woman sunk waist-deep to the ground in the first act and up to the neck in the second, while Ionesco's The Rhinoceros (1960) shows anxious concern about the spread of inhuman totalitarian tendencies by showing the population of a city transforming into savage pachyderms.

Among the main playwrights of the theater of the absurd are René Marques, Fritz Hochwälder, Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud, Virgilio Piñera, Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Georges Schehadé, Jean Genet, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Adamov, Harold Pinter, Slawomir Mrozek, Mikhail Volojov, Miguel Mihura, Fernando Arrabal and Arístides Vargas. Some representative works are: Waiting for Godot, by Beckett and The Rhinoceros, by Ionesco, or by the latter also The Bald Singer. Outside the theater: some of Luis Buñuel's films could be classified as absurdist, although the classification is debatable.

The essay by Martín Esslin published in 1961, where the expression theater of the absurd became famous, defines this type of dramaturgy analyzing it in the light of the writings of Albert Camus, and particularly the Myth of Sisyphus, which refer to the absurdity of being For Esslin, the main playwrights of the movement are Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet and Arthur Adamov, even if each of these authors has very personal concerns and styles that go beyond the term absurd.

Geographically, the origin of the theater of the absurd is located in avant-garde Paris, in the pocket theaters of the left bank of the Seine and precisely in the Latin Quarter. However, among the representatives of this movement who live in France, few are French.

Playwright of the absurd

The literature of the absurd shows the philosophy of the playwright of which Beckett is one of the highest representatives. Although Beckett is more related to the Theater of the Absurd where tragedy and comedy collide in a sad illustration of the human condition and the absurdity of existence. The playwright of the absurd becomes a researcher for whom order, freedom, justice, "psychology" and language are nothing more than a series of successive approximations to an ambiguous, elusive and disappointing reality. The playwright of the absurd will dismantle the old Cartesian universe and its stage manifestation. A contemporary author exponent of the absurd is José Sanchís Sinisterra (Spain).

General characteristics

The theater of the absurd seeks to break with Aristotelian categories, so one of the most important changes occurs in the action through four different elements: the sudden transformation of the character, the progressive intensification of the initial situation, the inversion of the principle of causality (causes produce effects contrary to those that would be expected) and rhythmic or emotional emphasis to create an impression of outcome.

Another innovative contribution of the theater of the absurd is repetition as a form of progression: its function changes each time a phrase or sound is repeated ("How curious, how strange, and what a coincidence!" repeated by the Mártins in The bald singer). As for the characters, they are no longer characters: they lose their individuality and present themselves as a whole. The theater of the absurd is anti-psychologist, so the complexity and psychological richness of the previous theater is not maintained. The characters in this type of theater do not seem to have an apparent function, although, in the end, the reader can observe an evolution of the character.