Faceless Composition by Lara Jade
A little explanation
So, for those who read and don’t understand where I’m coming from with my understanding of the Theatre of the Absurd, I’ve decided to add a tidbit from my thesis The Truth Behind Reality: Exploring Tom Stoppard and the Theatre of the Absurd. It sounds all super smartypantsy, but mostly it’s just me being crazy. Nonetheless, the piece I’m presenting here in this blog kind of goes into what I believe the Theatre of the Absurd truly is versus what it’s not (Realism). I may post a few other tidbits, but mostly I’m lazy and haven’t decided what my next silly tangent is going to be yet. Without further ado, here’s my tidbit:
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The Theatre of the Absurd has a way of combining everything that doesn’t make sense and using the nonsense to reveal truths unseen in the Realist movement. Although the outside world is “real,” the thoughts that plague and inspire us are what make it true. These plays are based on the thoughts that linger inside of us. That’s what makes them real. As the Father states in Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author:
A character, sir, may always ask a man who he is. Because a character has really a life of his own, marked with his especial characteristics; for which reason he is always “somebody.” But a man—I’m not speaking of you now—may very well be “nobody”(Pirandello 60).
This not only refers to how much Pirandello felt his characters to be true versus the “real” people in the “real” world, but also how the absurdity of the play speaks to reality even more than Realist plays do because they speak to the soul rather than the day to day banalities. Instead of showing the audience what mirrors our lives, Absurdism shows the audience what every member of society has felt is true at one point in their lives. Whether they have felt like they were waiting for some omnipresent being, or searching for their identities, or even felt like a “nobody” in their lives, the plays of the Absurdists address it in an inspiring and artistic way.
The movement in the theatrical world began in Paris, France with Adamov, Genet, Beckett, Ionesco, and many others. It was coined as the Theatre of the “Absurd” by Martin Esslin in 1961 in his original essay, of the same name, that inspired his book the Theatre of the Absurd. Esslin credits Albert Camus, author and journalist, with the Absurdist movement. While many people considered him Existentialist, Camus, himself, considered what he wrote as “Absurd.” The difference being that, although Existentialists write about Absurd things, Absurdist plays consist of these said “Absurd things.” Most of his writings in the Absurdist movement were written during the Second World War, mimicking the visual artists’ Dada movement post World War I through literature. Within the next couple of years, Absurdist plays emerged and, although not critically acclaimed at first, were incredibly well received by society.
This Absurdity appeals to the general public. It is proven by the premier of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at San Quentin in 1957. A play that essentially never resolves itself proved to appeal to the inmates at the prison and makes them think. They all have a “Godot” in their lives that they are waiting for that they know will eventually end in disappointment. Whether it be God, the outside world, society, etc. there is relationship that exists between every person and the thing they are waiting for. Despite the absurd “mask” that most people would toss aside as something unrelated to real life, society can relate to absurdist theatre, even to those with no educational or theatrical background. It reaches out to literally everyone. As Esslin states in his introduction to The Theatre of the Absurd,
The reception of Waiting for Godot at San Quentin, and the wide acclaim given to plays by Ionesco, Adamov, Pinter, and others, testify that these plays, which are so often superciliously dismissed as nonsense or mystification, have something to say and can be understood (Esslin 21).
The definition of a “good” play is compromised by this, at the time, “new” way of thinking because there is no essential plot or storyline. In these plays, there is no real motivation in the characters. There is no true beginning or end. Although most Absurdist plays aren’t as pure in this as Waiting for Godot is, they all contain most of these qualities and is the reason why most people can relate to them. The human population doesn’t have a set story that they are a part of and most people don’t know where they’re going to end up. Happy endings are rare if they are ever found and often come with “baggage.” This is the reality of life and also of absurdist drama. Victor L. Cahn explains in his book Beyond Absurdity: The Plays of Tom Stoppard, “first, an absurd play almost always consists of a series of free-floating images. Life does not have an beginning, middle, and end; neither does an absurd play” (Cahn 21).
In order to make the distinction, absurdist drama is not realism and it is not post-modern, or even Brechtian theatre. Realist drama was a huge movement when it was introduced, most prominently by Henrik Ibsen. Instead of “faded, flowery drapes, the stale floats, and the baroque perspective drawings of the romantics” (Lewis 40-41), they traded in for more realistic sets, stories, and acting styles. These plays have a distinct beginning, middle, and end, while, as we have learned, Absurdist plays do not. Lewis, in his The Contemporary Theatre, explains:
The transition to the theatre, pioneered by Ibsen, was strengthened by Hauptmann, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Bernard Shaw, making the 1890’s one of the most illustrious decades in the history of theatre.
Realism in content demanded realism in acting. The old declamatory system with the performer winding up for his big scene was ill-suited to psychological interaction, consciousness of group relations, and projection of the inner struggle. The voice and body virtuoso could not portray the meaning of Ibsen, for there were no grand-action heroics, no poetic asides, no inflated oratory ‘to split the ears of the groundlings’ (Lewis 40).
Although Absurdist drama appeals to the real life feelings of society, Realist drama appeals to the actions of society. There is nothing that “doesn’t make sense” in Realist drama. Absurdist drama uses the nonsense approach to reach the people where Realist approach people more directly with playing their lives out scene by scene on stage.
Many associate Brechtian theatre with Absurdist drama, however, Brechtian trends take a step further and fully reject its physical surroundings. It is also known as “Epic” Theatre or “Dialectical” Theatre. Brecht looked to discard the aspects of melodrama and spectacle, just as Realism did. However, Brecht was focused on not slipping into “escapism” where the audience loses touch with reality and becomes involved in the play. He wanted his audience to always be aware that they were watching a play. Where an Absurdist play can take place in a defined space, a Brechtian space is non-existent and cannot be conceived as any other space other than the theatre. Although there may be scenic elements, they are intentionally “theatrical” in order to keep the audience “out” of the World of the Play. As for acting, most styles in Brechtian theatre include making sure the actor is aware, onstage, that he is playing a “role.” The same goes for the audience. If the actor is truly Brechtian, the audience member will know he is an actor versus the role he is playing. A lot of the times in Brechtian theatre, somewhat similarly to Absurdist theatre, the Fourth Wall is broken down. The difference is that in Brechtian theatre it is the actor speaking to the audience and in Absurdist theatre, it is the character speaking to the audience.
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So there’s a little tidbit, friends. Do what you will, agree/disagree. Below I’ve put the books i’ve referenced for this particular tidbit if anyone’s interested. They’re all interesting (Though I think Cahn makes more of a case for my own thesis than his, but nonetheless an interesting read if you’re into that sort of thing).
Another hundred people just got off of the train…
Absurdism in Musicals
I know what you’re thinking. Whaaa? How can campy, Broadway musicals be compared to the brilliant Absurdist movement and to plays such as Waiting for Godot or Six Characters in Search of an Author or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead? Well, here’s a news-flash intellectualists of the theatre world: Broadway Musicals aren’t happy-go-lucky anymore. They explore real-life situations through surrealism, just like those straight plays in the Absurdist movement. The movement truly made its mark with Sondheim in the seventies in his brilliant musical Company. What is Company about? Think of How I Met Your Mother plotline without the inevitable happy ending. The musical centers itself on a young, single man, Bobby, who is about to turn 30 who hasn’t found “love” yet. Throughout the musical there are vignettes with him and his friends and sometimes lovers. The scenes are broken down and are in no particular order (think Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or The Invention of Love). Most of the songs are campy-sounding musically, but the lyrics are rather dark and, rather than full of emotion, are indifferent. This is what makes Sondheim’s work so smart. He created something intelligent, intuitive, and ground-breaking in the musical theatre world that no one had (successfully) done before. He brought the musical theatre concept on level with the “intellectual” play concept. At the end of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the two characters are still left waiting and rather indifferent. The play doesn’t seem to end or tie up nicely. It just is. In that same tradition, Company leaves its audience with the same anti-climactic feeling when the ending mimics the beginning. We know Bobby hasn’t shown up to his Surprise Party, however, the audience is left without explanation as to what is happening and what will happen to Bobby. We know everything we did at the beginning of the musical, also at the end of the musical. Nothing new is learned. There is no happy ending.
Similarly, there are more recent accounts of Absurdism in Broadway and Off-Broadway musical theatre. Composers like Jason Robert Brown who take on the challenge of an Absurdist musical. Most notably, Brown’s The Last Five Years can be construed this way. The musical is essentially the same story from two different sides of a marriage. However, the twist is that the wife, Cathy, starts from the end of the relationship and plays through to the beginning of it while the husband, Jamie, starts at the beginning and goes through the end. The only time the two stories collide is in the middle during their wedding song (“The Next Ten Minutes”). Here, the element of Absurdism is obvious considering the audience knows from the beginning that the relationship is doomed. However, one finds one’s self still rooting that the relationship will work itself out. The songs are jazzy and catchy. The lyrics are both funny and sad, poignant and ridiculous. Each scene is its own individual vignette, like in Company, and there’s no particular link from one scene to the next. The only thing the audience knows is that these are moments in time important to the relationship.
These trends can be found also in musicals such as Next To Normal by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, as well as Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. While this movement in musical theatre refers to these musicals as “Concept Musicals” rather than Absurdist, one can truly find the Absurdist trends that inspired them.
