Quick questions on Theatre of the Absurd: HSC Drama elective

The phrase Theatre of the Absurd was coined by Hungarian-born British critic Martin Esslin in his 1961 book of the same name. Esslin grouped a set of European playwrights (Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamov, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee) whose work appeared from the late 1940s through the 1950s and seemed to share a set of formal and philosophical features.

Albert Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) sets out the philosophical position the theatre would later dramatise. Camus argues that human life is "absurd" because consciousness seeks meaning in a universe that gives no rational answer. The proper response is not despair, not religious faith, and not philosophical certainty; it is to live with the absurdity. Sisyphus, condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, is Camus's image of the absurd hero.

Circular and static structure. Plots that go nowhere or return to where they started. Two acts of Waiting for Godot are nearly identical; Endgame happens in a single static room.

Samuel Beckett (1906 to 1989). Irish, lived in Paris. Wrote in French and English. Waiting for Godot (Theatre de Babylone, Paris, 5 January 1953, in French; English premiere 1955) is the founding play of the movement. Endgame (1957), Krapp's Last Tape (1958), Happy Days (1961).

Waiting for Godot (Beckett, 1953). Two acts. Two men, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), wait by a tree on a country road for Godot. Two strangers, Pozzo and Lucky, pass through in both acts. A boy comes at the end of each act to say Godot will not come today.

Section II essays on Theatre of the Absurd usually ask candidates to discuss the movement's central conventions and to analyse one or two plays in detail. Strong essays move between philosophical context, named conventions, and detailed scenes from specific plays.

Plots that go nowhere or return to where they started. Two acts of Waiting for Godot are nearly identical; Endgame happens in a single static room.

Characters speak in non sequiturs, platitudes, broken academic jargon, or repetition. The classic example: the conversation between the Smith and Martin families in The Bald Soprano, built largely from English-language primer phrases.

Figures without psychological depth, consistent history, or social specificity. The convention of the realist character is refused.

Bare stage with a single tree; a single room with no exit; a bourgeois drawing room flattened into geometry. The set becomes metaphysical.

Many Absurdist plays are funny on the page. The despair lands precisely because the form is comic. Beckett's clowns (Vladimir and Estragon) come out of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as much as out of existentialism.

No conflict, no rising tension, no climax, no resolution. The audience's narrative expectations are deliberately denied.

Irish, lived in Paris. Wrote in French and English. Waiting for Godot (Theatre de Babylone, Paris, 5 January 1953, in French; English premiere 1955) is the founding play of the movement.

Romanian-French. The Bald Soprano (1950), The Lesson (1951), The Chairs (1952), Rhinoceros (1959). Ionesco's plays are typically funnier and more openly satirical than Beckett's.

English. The Birthday Party (1958), The Caretaker (1960), The Homecoming (1965). Pinter is sometimes treated as a separate "comedy of menace" school, but Esslin grouped him with the Absurdists.