Theatre of the Absurd

Abstract

Coined and first theorized by BBC Radio drama critic Martin Esslin in a 1960 article and a 1961 book of the same name, the “Theatre of the Absurd” is a literary and theatrical term used to describe a disparate group of avant-garde plays by a number of mostly European or American avant-garde playwrights whose theatrical careers, generally, began in the 1950s and 1960s. Of the playwrights and writers (whether or not accurately) associated with this movement that has not been self-proclaimed, four were awarded Nobel Prizes in Literature: Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre (who refused the award). Other major playwrights associated with the absurd are Edward Albee, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet (among other important and minor playwrights). Often misconstrued as existentialist or nihilistic plays, they signaled the end of theatrical “modernism.” As such, some of these plays are considered among the most important and influential plays of the 20th century in their own right. As a group of plays, the Theatre of the Absurd, or known more casually as “absurd theater” or “absurd drama,” is widely considered, if not the most, certainly one of the most important theatrical movements of the second half of the 20th century. Besides leaving a treasure trove of important avant-garde plays, absurd drama and dramatists have left as possibly their greatest legacy, namely, that the tragicomic worldview of these plays has been subsumed by mainstream plays. Indeed, tragicomedy has become the default theatrical genre over the past five or so decades.