Stanislavski and The Theatre of The Absurd

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper is based on a lecture/workshop I gave at the S-Word Symposium, held at the University of Malta in April 2019. The original lecture comprised of a PowerPoint presentation, outlining some of the most common problems faced by my BA Hons Acting and Actor Musician students at Rose Bruford College at the beginning of their second year of training. During this initial block of work in semester one they find themselves grappling with a variety of texts written by those playwrights, grouped together by Martin Esslin in his seminal study of 1961, as the key representatives of what he famously termed The Theatre of The Absurd. 1 Opening with an introductory summation of my developing practice at RBC, followed by an outline of some of the theory involved – and some contextual framing relating to the philosophical underpinning that runs through Esslin’s interpretation of these plays 2 – I worked with a trio of Theatre Studies students from the University of Malta, in an attempt to demonstrate some of the key ideas I have been exploring in practice over the past few years. My premise is that, while an attempt to apply certain foundational aspects of Stanislavski’s “system” to these Absurdist texts is clearly problematic – particularly any attempt to create a psychologically coherent through-line-of-action, rooted in a detailed backstory or character biography – other Stanislavskian concepts, such as the magic if for example, when utilized discretely, can still prove useful. Key terminology is written in italics.