Lecture 5 - Theatre of the absurd Kelly Jones PDF

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Theatre of the absurd

Kelly Jones...

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Theatre and performance studies Lecture 5 Theatre of the absurd Readings: Beckett, Samuel. 2006. The Complete Dramatic Works. London: Faber and Faber. Bennett, Michael Y. (2015) The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre and Literature of the Absurd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bennett, Michael Y. (2011) Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Palgrave. Carroll, David. (2007) ‘Rethinking the Absurd: Le Mythe de Sisyphe.’ The Cambridge Companion to Camus, edited by Edwad J. Hughes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.53-66. Esslin, Martin. (1980) The Theatre of the Absurd. Harmondsworth: Penguin. “The important thing therefore is not as yet to go to the root of thing but the world being what it is, to know how to live in it” Camus, the rebel, Waiting for Godot- Samuel Beckett, “The play where nothing happens twice” Difficulties categorising the theatre of the absurd Experimentation with language generally working against realistic language Martin Esslin (1980) -the plays of the Absurd ‘[tend] toward a radical devaluation of language, toward a poetry that is to emerge from the concrete and objectified images of the stage itself. The elements of language still plays an important, yet subordinate, part in this conception, but what happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters’. Increasing insignificance of language as to what happens on the sage “While they might devalue realistic language experimentation with language seems to me to be one of prime concerns of these writers”- language is fundamental to these plays -

Language of body, kinesics, proxemics

Beckett’s carefully constructed notes on movement take a diagram/picture form. Where spoken language is only one abstractly poetic element of Beckett’s later plays, communication borders on pure movement, almost creating a series of paintings or tableaus, communicating stories about relations between bodies and objects that cannot be comprehended by spoken language. It is the fact that language cannot communicate successfully that demonstrates the complexity of relationships (between bodies, within a body, between bodies and objects, and between objects’ Come and go Repetitions of movement as the three women sitting side by side facing the front, take a turn in leaving the stage, Choreographed movements rather than language speaks volumes to the intimacy of the relationships on stage Not I Stage directions – who is mouth

Theatre and performance studies Lecture 5 Specific stage directions Broken narrative told in third person Language exploited, foregrounded, ridiculed- audience forced to think on use of language and the expression its paired with Stage image Abstract notions of the body – PLAY – urns Final Narrative structure plot Theatre of the absurd undoes the precepts of structure- see readingAristotelian precepts -

Exposition Action Climax

Denouement- anti climax Tragicomedy is the genre

“Becketts opposing generic elements often seem to cancel each other out, cancelling out the movements of tragedy and. Or comedy, resulting in dramatic and theatrical stasis” Cartoonish grotesques or memento mori or both A vision of hell? Rejection of expected conventions Plays ogff the audiences expectation that the playwright will lead them in a direction towards a conclusion, providing the audience with finality and a point Strange and ridiculous situation Grotesque but poignant Beckett’s tragicomedy expresses both tragic and comedic insights, but – maybe even more noticeable – Beckett’s opposing generic elements often seem to cancel each other out, cancelling out the movement of tragedy and/or comedy, resulting in dramatic and theatrical stasis. Absurd Esslin: ‘The theatre of the absurd attempts to provide a framework of reference for works of the Theatre of the Absurd’

Theatre and performance studies Lecture 5 Post WWII the decline of religious faith and the rise and failure of utopian vision reached for by ideas of progress nationalism and totalitarianism Esslin: share a common theme in their sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition Bleak What is existentialism? Jean paul Sartre- Existence precedes essence Esslin- The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being – that is, in terms of concrete stage images of the absurdity of existence’…

While we leave, we have no purpose No divine path Funny by tragic- meaningless Aesthetic matches philosophy- what we watch matches existentialism These playwrights take the absurdity of the wold at a given Bennett: I suggest that meaning- making, not meaningless is integral to the plays characterised as absurd Argues against Esslin Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose…Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.’ These plays force the audience to conform his of her own worldview in order to create order out of he chaos presented in the plays- see slideEsslin has misquoted Ionesco in an important way and he provides more context for the quotation to revise the definition Meaning lost in translation Absurd is that which is devoid of a goal cut off from his religious metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless Lack of goal is less hopeless than a lack of a purposeSo, in this new context, Ionesco’s point reads: ‘when man is cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, then man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless’ (see Bennett 2011, p.10) It suggests that man must revolt against the materialism of the world to commit to his own manmade goals.

Theatre and performance studies Lecture 5 Bennett infers from Ionesco’s comment True, life might not have any inherent meaning, but this stems not from the world, but from the contradiction between our desires and what the world offers us.’ ‘…even given the absurdity of this situation, it is up to us, through our defiance, revolt, and contemplation, to make our lives meaningful.’ Our purpose is to make our lives meaningful -see slide- rock picture Optimism – the individual makes meaningHeterotopia- see slideParabolic drama- see slideFrequently though not always, experimentation with non-Aristotelian plotlines where often the plots take the structure of a parable The literary works are set in strange surreal situations There are no easy answers-

The need for audience interpretation, in some ways, echoes the philosophy of Camus. Life exists with contradictions, an without a false God-like system or other false systems for imposing meaning upon the world, we have to contemplate our situation to make our lives have meaning. Any play, in a sense, which forces meaning upon us, is, in some ways, imposing a false authority for understanding our lives. Camus, in some ways, was a moralist’...