THEATRE SAMIRA HADID MEEERX CREAT ION VOL .1
MEERA ALVINA (86611) NUR SYAMIMI (86842) IZAVEL ALESANDRA (86504) ROSALINDA (86954) AZMAZLYNA (86321) DANNABELLE (86386) GROUP MEMBERS
HISTORY OF ORIGIN CHAPTER 1
There is little dramatic action as conventionally understood; however frantically the characters perform, their busyness serves to underscore the fact that nothing happens to change their existence. Theatre of the Absurd is a dramatic work of certain European and American dramatists of the 1950s and early ’60s. Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’s had stated in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942), that the human situation is essentially absurd, devoid of purpose. Dramatis such as Samuel Beckett, , Arthur Adamov, Harold Pinter, and a few others shared a pessimistic vision of humanity struggling vainly to find a purpose and to control its fate. WHAT IS ABSURB THEATRE? DISCOVERING THE WAY OF ABSURBISM.
FIGURES OF ABSURB CHAPTER 2
ALBERT CAMUS (1913-1960) Albert Camus was a French-Algerian journalist, playwright and novelist. He nevertheless made important, forceful contributions to a wide range of issues in moral philosophy in his novels. He began his literary career as a political journalist and as an actor, director, and playwright in his native Algeria. Later, while living in France during WWII, he became active in the Resistance and from (1944-1947) he served as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Combat. By mid-century, based on the strength of his three novels (The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall) and two book-length philosophical essays (The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel), he had achieved an international reputation and readership. It was in these works that he introduced and developed the twin philosophical ideas the concept of the Absurd and the notion of Revolt that made him famous. These are the ideas that people immediately think of when they hear the name Albert Camus spoken today. Camus considered the Absurd to be a fundamental and even defining characteristic of the modern human condition. The notion of Revolt refers to both a path of resolved action and a state of mind. It can take extreme forms such as terrorism or a reckless and unrestrained egoism (both of which are rejected by Camus), but basically, and in simple terms, it consists of an attitude of heroic defiance or resistance to whatever oppresses human beings. In awarding Camus its prize for literature in 1957, the Nobel Prize committee cited his persistent efforts to “illuminate the problem of the human conscience in our time.”
SAMUEL BECKETT (1906-1989) Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906, where as a young man he studied French, Italian and English at Trinity College. He went to Paris for the first time in 1928 – he would spend most of his adult life there – to teach English. During World War Two, his Irish citizenship allowed him to remain in Paris and he worked as a courier for the French resistance. Beckett settled in Paris and began a prolific period as a writer. His most famous play, Waiting for Godot – the play in which, as one critic put it, nothing happens, twice was first performed in 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone on the Left Bank in Paris. In the 1950s Beckett also published three novels, including Molloy (1951). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. He revisited Waiting for Godot in 1975, directing his own production at the Schiller Theatre in Berlin. This is often regarded as the definitive version of the play. Samuel Beckett continued to write throughout the 1970s and 80s mostly in a small house outside Paris. There he could give total dedication to his art evading publicity. In 1969, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, though he declined accepting it personally to avoid making a speech at the ceremonies.
ARTHUR ADAMOV (1908-1970) Arthur Adamov, (born Aug. 23, 1908, Kislovodsk, Russia—died March 16, 1970, Paris, Fr.), avant-garde writer, a founder and major playwright of the Theatre of the Absurd. He was subsequently educated in Geneva, Mainz, and Paris, where, having mastered French, he settled in 1924, associating with Surrealist groups. He edited a periodical, Discontinuité, and wrote poetry. In 1938 he suffered a nervous breakdown, later writing L’Aveu (1938–43; “The Confession”), an autobiography that revealed his tortured conscience, delving into a terrifying sense of alienation and preparing his personal, neurotic stage for some of the most powerful of all Absurdist dramas. In his best known play, Le Ping-pong (performed 1955), the powerful central image is that of a pinball machine to which the characters surrender themselves in a never-ending, aimless game of chance, perfectly illustrating man’s adherence to false objectives and the futility of his busy endeavours. Finally admitting that life was not absurd but merely difficult, he committed suicide. In a preface to Théâtre II (1955), his second volume of plays, Adamov describes his attitudes toward his work and comments on his career.
THE RISE OF ABSURB THEATRE CHAPTER 3
HOW IT ALL STARTED The Theatre of the Absurd is a movement made up of many diverse plays, most of which were written between 1940 and 1960. When first performed, these plays shocked their audiences as they were startlingly different than anything that had been previously staged. In fact, many of them were labelled as “anti-plays.” In an attempt to clarify and define this radical movement, Martin Esslin coined the term “The Theatre of the Absurd” in his 1960 book of the same name. He defined it as such, because all of the plays emphasized the absurdity of the human condition. Whereas we tend to use the word “absurd” synonymously with “ridiculous,” Absurdist Theatre was heavily influenced by Existential philosophy. It aligned best with the philosophy in Albert Camus' essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). In this essay, Camus attempts to present a reasonable answer as to why man should not commit suicide in face of a meaningless, absurd existence. Therefore, Camus's attempt to prove that absurbism on theatre is a new form of theatre proves that this was the peak era for Theatre of Absurb THE PEAK OF ABSURDISM STEP 2
CHARACTERISTICS AND PERFORMANCE STRUCTURE CHAPTER 4
WHAT ARE ABSURB THEATRE CHARACTERISTICS ? It consists of repetition of clichés and routine as in Waiting for Godot. There is always a menacing outside force that remains a mystery throughout the play. Absence, emptiness, nothingness, and unresolved mysteries are central features of many Absurdist plots.
PERFORMANCE STRUCTURE Absurdist playwrights, therefore, did away with most of the logical structures of traditional theatre. There is little dramatic action as conventionally understood; however frantically the characters perform, their busyness serves to underscore the fact that nothing happens to change their existence. The structure of the plays is typically a round shape, with the finishing point the same as the starting point. Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and to the ultimate conclusion—silence.
LANGUAGE USED IN ABSURBISM Language in an Absurdist play is often dislocated, full of cliches, puns, repetitions, and non sequiturs. The characters in Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950) sit and talk, repeating the obvious until it sounds like nonsense, thus revealing the inadequacies of verbal communication.
ABSURB GALLERY AND COSTUMES CHAPTER 5
GALLERY
COSTUMES The costumes were just what they would have worn at the time of the play (early 1950's) just a bit aged, tattered and distressed. Scenic, Costume and Lighting