Theatre of the Absurd

Absurdism theatre includes plays from the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s as well as other works that evolved from these works. There are several characteristics of these types of plays, comedy mixed with horrific or tragic images, characters caught in hopeless situations and/or forced to do repetitive or meaningless things, dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the "well-made play" (from Wikipedia). The absurd theatre movement originated in Paris (big shock). Many of the playwrites were French, Jean Genet, Jean Tardieu, Boris Vian. Others were born somewhere else, but lived in France and wrote in French, such as Samuel Beckett and Arthur Adamov. The basic philosophy of these playwrights is giving artistic articulation to Albert Camus' philosophy that life is inherently without meaning.

These plays/productions to me seem to be very depressing. Apparently, they portray problems, human weakness, all the bad things life can bring, with no solutions. Life is simply hopeless and meaningless, and people are just basically rotten. One of the plays of this period is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" This play won many awards in 1963, including the Tony Award for Best Play. The story is about two couples who get drunk in the home of one couple and "engage in relentless, scathing verbal and sometimes physical abuse" (Wikipedia), toward each other and sometimes the other couple. According to Edward Albee, the playwrite, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf . . . who's afraid of living life without false illusions. So, let's not try to be any better than the base, natural man that everyone has inside, and just give up. Because trying to be any better is a "false illusion."