Samuel

Beckett
Little is Left to Tell

of the
Absurd
Characteristics

of the movement include illogical situations, unconventional

dialogue, and minimal plots in an attempt to reflect the absurdity of human
existence.
Theatre of the Absurd was not the name of the movement to which playwrights
such as Beckett and Pinter claimed to be part of, but instead a name given to their
work by others. To be part of the anti-theatre movement was found more
acceptable, as they attacked traditional artforms as no longer being valid in this
pointless existence.
The absurd in this sense refers not to the ridiculous, but to being out of harmony.
While the theatre was shocking to audiences, viewing it as absurd, Camus argues
that it is the world that is absurd.
Eugene Ionesco claimed that the Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose

The

WW2

First World War was supposed to be

the war to end all wars, so the outbreak of
World War Two in 1939, along with the
atrocities it brought, destroyed all the basic
assumptions people had about life.

Faced

with the horrors of the holocaust

and the atomic bomb, people began to lose
their faith in God.

The

attitude of the Theatre of the Absurd

is perhaps best summarised by Becketts
character, Clov, who questions You and I
mean something?

Origins of
the Absurd
Friedrich Nietzsche God is Dead
In 1883 a revolutionary thesis was published by
the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It
was called Thus spoke Zarathustra and it
declared that God is dead.
Nietzsche wrote of religion, morality, philosophy
and contemporary culture, he has been a great
influence in many fields including Existentialism
and Post Modernism as he radically questioned
the value of truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Harold

Harold
Pinter

Pinter was born in 1930 and

frequently comments on the irrelevancy
of everyday speech.
- Mountain Language

Despite

having been criticised for not

having fully rounded characters, Pinter
defends this as being more realistic.

He

is critical of communication but

suggests that people permanently try to
avoid it, rather than simply being bad at
it.
Famous for The Pinter Pause

Harold
Pinter
Pinter seems to be obsessed with the most basic of theatrical techniques,
particularly the traditional idea of suspense.
- The Room
- The Dumb Waiter
Pinters

first full-length play, The Birthday Party

can be seen to comment on conformity, death,
and the individuals pathetic search for security.

Like

Beckett before him, in 2005 Pinter won the

Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Birthday Party

Eugne
Ionesco
Born

in Romania 18 years before Pinter, Eugne

Ionesco also felt a need to break down language,
believing it had developed into nothing but clichs.

- To renew the language is to renew the

vision of the world

Ionesco claims to have felt embarrassed by the crude strings of theatre,

and so was almost reluctant to begin writing plays. His first, La Cantratrice
Chauve (The Bald Prima Donna), was intended to be a very serious piece
about the tragedy of language, but it was perhaps taking this concept too
far that led to initial audiences viewing it to be a comedy.

Eugne
Ionesco
Ionesco

criticises our willingness to accept the ideas forced upon us by the media,
and our lack of individuality as a result.

He

agrees that the audience must be confronted to think for themselves, but claims
that Brecht doesnt go far enough with his concept of alienation, which aims to put
emotions aside to allow an audience to intellectualise what they see onstage.

Comedy

is employed in some of his plays to shock the audience. In La Jeune Fille

Marier, a young girl who has just finished her studies is described by her mother.
When the girl eventually appears she is a man, about thirty years old, robust and
virile, with a bushy black moustache, wearing a grey suit.

Ionesco

protests that the breaking down of a play into parts is rather artificial.

AntiTheatre
The

term Theatre of the Absurd was first coined by Martin Esslin in his 1961 book.
The playwrights included in this prefer to use the term anti-theatre, which was
founded in the 1950s.
In 1953, Ionesco used the subtitle anti-play for his piece Bald Prima Donna, which
made the term accessible for critics and the media.
Anti-Theatre combines futurism and surrealism, and illustrates a rejection of the
traditional psychological play.
It can be characterised by a critical and ironic attitude towards the traditions of
society and art.
It claims that the stage is no longer able to give an accurate account of the modern
world, and embraces illogical action and a rejection of all values.
In literary theatre, the emphasis is usually on the language itself, while the language
is often contradictory to the action onstage in anti-literary theatre.

Impact
The

Theatre of the Absurd can be seen as a statement of hopelessness, but for

this entire movement to have been born out of something as universally depressing
as a world war perhaps casts some hope. Theatre of the Absurd forces us to face
the awful situations we have brought upon ourselves, and so society can choose to
do something about it.

It

has been suggested that the Theatre of the Absurd was only a product of a very
specific point in history and consequently since gone the way of the dinosaur.

-It could also be claimed, however, that the sense of absurdity in theatre has
only disappeared as it has become more acceptable and less shocking to
audiences.

Samuel Barclay Beckett

(possibly April 13, 1906
December 22, 1989)
was an absurdist Irish
playwright, novelist and
poet.
Although Beckett insisted he
was born on Good Friday,
April
13 1906, his birth certificate
puts the date a month later.

Education
French, Italian and English at Trinity
studied
College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927,

massive influence: James Joyce

he published his first work, a critical
1929
essay defending Joyce's work
major influence: Ren Descartes
1930, he returned to Trinity College as a
In
lecturer
after less than two years, and began to
left
travel throughout Europe
time in London, publishing his critical
spent
study of Proust there in 1931
two years of Jungian
Undergoes
psychotherapy

Career
Taught in Paris
writing career, secretarial duties for James Joyce
1929: "Assumption published
1930 he won a small literary prize with his poem
"Whoroscope
World War II, Beckett in Paris, even after it had
become
occupied by the Germans. He joined the

underground movement and fought for the

resistance until 1942 when several members of his
group were arrested and he was forced to flee with
his French-born wife to the unoccupied zone

In 1945, after it had been liberated from the

Germans,
he returned to Paris and began his most
prolific period as a writer

Beckett was the first of the absurdists to win

international
fame

works translated into over twenty languages

continued to write until his death in 1989, but the
task
grew more and more difficult with each work

until, in the end, he said that each word seemed to

him "an unnecessary stain on silence and
nothingness."

Theatrical
Style

theatre is stark, fundamentally minimalist, and

Beckett's
deeply pessimistic about human nature and the human
situation

his themes in increasingly cryptic and attenuated

explores
style

Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1969

in plays include: mirroring own search for freedom,
Themes
revolving around a young man's efforts to cut himself loose
from his family and social obligations, life means waiting,
killing time and clinging to the hope that relief may be just
around the corner

in plot, characterization, and final solution, which had

trades
hitherto been the hallmarks of drama, for a series of
concrete stage images

is useless, for he creates a mythical universe

language
peopled by lonely creatures who struggle vainly to express
the unexpressable

exist in a terrible dreamlike vacuum, overcome

characters
by an overwhelming sense of bewilderment and grief,

grotesquely attempting some form of communication, then

crawling on, endlessly

Dramatic Works
Eleutheria (1940s, first published 1995)
Waiting for Godot (first published 1952)
Endgame (published 1957)
Happy Days (published 1960)
All That Fall (radio play, 1956)
Act Without Words I (1956)
Act Without Words II (1956)
Krapp's Last Tape (1958)
Rough for Theatre I (late 1950s)
Rough for Theatre II (late 1950s)
Embers (1959)
Rough for Radio I (radio play, never broadcast, 1961, rewritten as
Cascando)
Rough for Radio II (radio play, early 1960s)
Words and Music (radio play, 1961)
Cascando (radio play, 1962)
Play (1963)
Film (film, 1963)
The Old Tune (radio play, adaptation of Robert Pinget's La Manivelle,
published 1963)
Come and Go (1965)
Eh Joe (television play, 1965)
Breath (1969)
Not I (1972)
That Time (1975)
Footfalls (1975)
Ghost Trio (television play, 1975)
... but the clouds ... (television play, 1976)
A Piece of Monologue (1980)
Rockaby (1981)
Ohio Impromptu (1981)
Quad (1982)
Catastrophe (1982)
Nacht und Trume (television play, 1982)
What Where (1983)

Failed? No
Matter. Try
again. Fail
again. Fail

act without words

1

act without words

1

Estragon: Let's
go.
Vladimir: We
can't.
Estragon: Why

Waiting For
Godot

Nell: Nothing is
funnier than
unhappiness.
Nagg: Oh?
Nell: Yes, yes, it's the
most comical thing in
the world. And we

Endgame

Something of this is
being heard, I am not
merely talking to
myself, that is in the
wilderness, a thing I
could never bear to
do for any length of
time. That is what

Happy Days

PLAy

Little is left
to tell

OHio Impromptu