THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

The following article by Jerome P. Crabb was originally published on this web site on September
3, 2006.

The “Theatre of the Absurd” is a term coined by Hungarian-born critic Martin Esslin, who made
it the title of his 1962 book on the subject. The term refers to a particular type of play which
first became popular during the 1950s and 1960s and which presented on stage the
philosophy articulated by French philosopher Albert Camus in his 1942 essay, The Myth of
Sisyphus, in which he defines the human condition as basically meaningless. Camus argued
that humanity had to resign itself to recognizing that a fully satisfying rational explanation of
the universe was beyond its reach; in that sense, the world must ultimately be seen as absurd.

Esslin regarded the term “Theatre of the Absurd” merely as a "device" by which he meant to
bring attention to certain fundamental traits discernible in the works of a range of playwrights.
The playwrights loosely grouped under the label of the absurd attempt to convey their sense of
bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an inexplicable universe. According to Esslin,
the five defining playwrights of the movement are Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean
Genet, Arthur Adamov, and Harold Pinter, although these writers were not always comfortable
with the label and sometimes preferred to use terms such as "Anti-Theater" or "New Theater".
Other playwrights associated with this type of theatre include Tom Stoppard, Arthur Kopit,
Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal, Edward Albee, N.F. Simpson, Boris Vian, Peter Weiss,
Vaclav Havel, and Jean Tardieu.

Although the Theatre of the Absurd is often traced back to avant-garde experiments of the
1920s and 1930s, its roots, in actuality, date back much further. Absurd elements first made
their appearance shortly after the rise of Greek drama, in the wild humor and buffoonery of Old
Comedy and the plays of Aristophanes in particular. They were further developed in the late
classical period by Lucian, Petronius and Apuleius, in Menippean satire, a tradition of
carnivalistic literature, depicting “a world upside down.” The morality plays of the Middle Ages
may be considered a precursor to the Theatre of the Absurd, depicting everyman-type
characters dealing with allegorical and sometimes existential problems. This tradition would
carry over into the Baroque allegorical drama of Elizabethan times, when dramatists such as
John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, Jakob Biederman and Calderon would depict the world in
mythological archetypes. During the nineteenth century, absurd elements may be noted in
certain plays by Ibsen and, more obviously, Strindberg, but the acknowledged predecessor of
what would come to be called the Theatre of the Absurd is Alfred Jarry's "monstrous puppet-
play" Ubu Roi (1896) which presents a mythical, grotesque figure, set amidst a world of
archetypal images. Ubu Roi is a caricature, a terrifying image of the animal nature of man and
his cruelty. In the 1920s and 1930s, the surrealists expanded on Jarry’s experiments, basing
much of their artistic theory on the teachings of Freud and his emphasis on the role of the
subconscious mind which they acknowledged as a great, positive healing force. Their intention
was to do away with art as a mere imitation of surface reality, instead demanding that it
should be more real than reality and deal with essences rather than appearances. The Theatre
of the Absurd was also anticipated in the dream novels of James Joyce and Franz Kafka who
created archetypes by delving into their own subconscious and exploring the universal,
collective significance of their own private obsessions. Silent film and comedy, as well as the
tradition of verbal nonsense in the early sound films of Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, and the
Marx Brothers would also contribute to the development of the Theatre of the Absurd, as did
the verbal "nonsense" of François Rabelais, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and Christian
Morgernstern. But it would take a catastrophic world event to actually bring about the birth of
the new movement.

World War II was the catalyst that finally brought the Theatre of the Absurd to life. The global
nature of this conflict and the resulting trauma of living under threat of nuclear annihilation put
into stark perspective the essential precariousness of human life. Suddenly, one did not need
to be an abstract thinker in order to be able to reflect upon absurdity: the experience of
absurdity became part of the average person's daily existence. During this period, a “prophet”
of the absurd appeared. Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) rejected realism in the theatre, calling for
a return to myth and magic and to the exposure of the deepest conflicts within the human
mind. He demanded a theatre that would produce collective archetypes and create a modern
mythology. It was no longer possible, he insisted, to keep using traditional art forms and
standards that had ceased being convincing and lost their validity. Although he would not live
to see its development, The Theatre of the Absurd is precisely the new theatre that Artaud was
dreaming of. It openly rebelled against conventional theatre. It was, as Ionesco called it “anti-
theatre”. It was surreal, illogical, conflictless and plotless. The dialogue often seemed to be
complete gibberish. And, not surprisingly, the public’s first reaction to this new theatre was
incomprehension and rejection.

The most famous, and most controversial, absurdist play is probably Samuel Beckett’s Waiting
for Godot. The characters of the play are strange caricatures who have difficulty
communicating the simplest of concepts to one another as they bide their time awaiting the
arrival of Godot. The language they use is often ludicrous, and following the cyclical patter, the
play seems to end in precisely the same condition it began, with no real change having
occurred. In fact, it is sometimes referred to as “the play where nothing happens.” Its
detractors count this a fatal flaw and often turn red in the face fomenting on its inadequacies.
It is mere gibberish, they cry, eyes nearly bulging out of their head--a prank on the audience
disguised as a play. The plays supporters, on the other hand, describe it is an accurate parable
on the human condition in which “the more things change, the more they are the same.”
Change, they argue, is only an illusion. In 1955, the famous character actor Robert Morley
predicted that the success of Waiting for Godot meant “the end of theatre as we know it.” His
generation may have gloomily accepted this prediction, but the younger generation embraced
it. They were ready for something new—something that would move beyond the old
stereotypes and reflect their increasingly complex understanding of existence.

Whereas traditional theatre attempts to create a photographic representation of life as we see

it, the Theatre of the Absurd aims to create a ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical
vision, closely related to the world of dreams. The focal point of these dreams is often man's
fundamental bewilderment and confusion, stemming from the fact that he has no answers to
the basic existential questions: why we are alive, why we have to die, why there is injustice
and suffering. Ionesco defined the absurdist everyman as “Cut off from his religious,
metaphysical, and transcendental roots … lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd,
useless.” The Theatre of the Absurd, in a sense, attempts to reestablish man’s communion
with the universe. Dr. Jan Culik writes, “Absurd Theatre can be seen as an attempt to restore
the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of the ultimate realities of
his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish.
The Absurd Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking man out of an existence that has
become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt that there is mystical experience in
confronting the limits of human condition.”

One of the most important aspects of absurd drama is its distrust of language as a means of
communication. Language, it seems to say, has become nothing but a vehicle for
conventionalized, stereotyped, meaningless exchanges. Dr. Culik explains, “Words failed to
express the essence of human experience, not being able to penetrate beyond its surface. The
Theatre of the Absurd constituted first and foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a
very unreliable and insufficient tool of communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalised
speech, clichés, slogans and technical jargon, which it distorts, parodies and breaks down. By
ridiculing conventionalised and stereotyped speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tries to
make people aware of the possibility of going beyond everyday speech conventions and
communicating more authentically.”

Absurd drama subverts logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically impossible. According
to Sigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom we can enjoy when we are able to abandon the
straitjacket of logic. As Dr. Culik points out, “Rationalist thought, like language, only deals with
the superficial aspects of things. Nonsense, on the other hand, opens up a glimpse of the
infinite.”

What, then, has become of this wonderful new theatre—this movement that produced some of
the most exciting and original dramatic works of the twentieth century? Conventional wisdom,
perhaps, suggests that the Theatre of the Absurd was a product of a very specific point in time
and, because that time has passed, it has gone the way of the dinosaur. In a revised edition of
his seminal work, Martin Esslin disagrees: “Every artistic movement or style has at one time or
another been the prevailing fashion. It if was no more than that, it disappeared without a trace.
If it had a genuine content, if it contributed to an enlargement of human perception, if it
created new modes of human expression, if it opened up new areas of experience, however, it
was bound to be absorbed into the main stream of development. And this is what happened
with the Theatre of the Absurd which, apart from having been in fashion, undoubtedly was a
genuine contribution to the permanent vocabulary of dramatic expression…. [it] is being
absorbed into the mainstream of the tradition from which … it had never been entirely absent
… The playwrights of the post-Absurdist era have at their disposal, then, a uniquely enriched
vocabulary of dramatic technique. They can use these devices freely, separately and in infinite
variety of combinations with those bequeathed to them by other dramatic conventions of the
past.” In a New York Times piece entitled “Which Theatre is the Absurd One?”, Edward Albee
agrees with Esslin’s final analysis, writing, “For just as it is true that our response to color and
form was forever altered once the impressionist painters put their minds to canvas, it is just as
true that the playwrights of The Theatre of the Absurd have forever altered our response to the
theatre.”

The Theatre of the Absurd will always have its detractors. But it lives on.
Theatre of the Absurd: Essential Reading List- A must-read list for anyone interested in
absurdist theatre.
A Diatribe in Favor of the Theatre of the Absurd - Just that!
Three Plays of the Absurd - In this collection of plays, Walter Wykes creates a series of modern
myths, tapping into something in the strata of the subconscious, through ritualism and rich,
poetic language. The worlds he creates are brand new and hilarious, yet each contains an
ancient horror we all know and cannot escape and have never been able to hang one definitive
word on.
Back to 20th Century Theatre

THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

THE WEST AND THE EAST

I. The West

'The Theatre of the Absurd' is a term coined by the critic Martin Esslin for the work of a number
of playwrights, mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s. The term is derived from an essay by
the French philosopher Albert Camus. In his 'Myth of Sisyphus', written in 1942, he first defined
the human situation as basically meaningless and absurd. The 'absurd' plays by Samuel
Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter and others all share the
view that man is inhabiting a universe with which he is out of key. Its meaning is
indecipherable and his place within it is without purpose. He is bewildered, troubled and
obscurely threatened.

The origins of the Theatre of the Absurd are rooted in the avant-garde experiments in art of the
1920s and 1930s. At the same time, it was undoubtedly strongly influenced by the traumatic
experience of the horrors of the Second World War, which showed the total impermanence of
any values, shook the validity of any conventions and highlighted the precariousness of human
life and its fundamental meaninglessness and arbitrariness. The trauma of living from 1945
under threat of nuclear annihilation also seems to have been an important factor in the rise of
the new theatre.

At the same time, the Theatre of the Absurd also seems to have been a reaction to the
disappearance of the religious dimension form contemporary life. The Absurd Theatre can be
seen as an attempt to restore the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by making man
aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of
cosmic wonder and primeval anguish. The Absurd Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking
man out of an existence that has become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt that there
is mystical experience in confronting the limits of human condition.
As a result, absurd plays assumed a highly unusual, innovative form, directly aiming to startle
the viewer, shaking him out of this comfortable, conventional life of everyday concerns. In the
meaningless and Godless post-Second-World-War world, it was no longer possible to keep using
such traditional art forms and standards that had ceased being convincing and lost their
validity. The Theatre of the Absurd openly rebelled against conventional theatre. Indeed, it was
anti-theatre. It was surreal, illogical, conflictless and plotless. The dialogue seemed total
gobbledygook. Not unexpectedly, the Theatre of the Absurd first met with incomprehension
and rejection.

One of the most important aspects of absurd drama was its distrust of language as a means of
communication. Language had become a vehicle of conventionalised, stereotyped,
meaningless exchanges. Words failed to express the essence of human experience, not being
able to penetrate beyond its surface. The Theatre of the Absurd constituted first and foremost
an onslaught on language, showing it as a very unreliable and insufficient tool of
communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalised speech, clichés, slogans and technical
jargon, which is distorts, parodies and breaks down. By ridiculing conventionalised and
stereotyped speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the
possibility of going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more
authentically. Conventionalised speech acts as a barrier between ourselves and what the world
is really about: in order to come into direct contact with natural reality, it is necessary to
discredit and discard the false crutches of conventionalised language. Objects are much more
important than language in absurd theatre: what happens transcends what is being said about
it. It is the hidden, implied meaning of words that assume primary importance in absurd
theatre, over an above what is being actually said. The Theatre of the Absurd strove to
communicate an undissolved totality of perception - hence it had to go beyond language.

Absurd drama subverts logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically impossible. According
to Sigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom we can enjoy when we are able to abandon the
straitjacket of logic. In trying to burst the bounds of logic and language the absurd theatre is
trying to shatter the enclosing walls of the human condition itself. Our individual identity is
defined by language, having a name is the source of our separateness - the loss of logical
language brings us towards a unity with living things. In being illogical, the absurd theatre is
anti-rationalist: it negates rationalism because it feels that rationalist thought, like language,
only deals with the superficial aspects of things. Nonsense, on the other hand, opens up a
glimpse of the infinite. It offers intoxicating freedom, brings one into contact with the essence
of life and is a source of marvellous comedy.

There is no dramatic conflict in the absurd plays. Dramatic conflicts, clashes of personalities
and powers belong to a world where a rigid, accepted hierarchy of values forms a permanent
establishment. Such conflicts, however, lose their meaning in a situation where the
establishment and outward reality have become meaningless. However frantically characters
perform, this only underlines the fact that nothing happens to change their existence. Absurd
dramas are lyrical statements, very much like music: they communicate an atmosphere, an
experience of archetypal human situations. The Absurd Theatre is a theatre of situation, as
against the more conventional theatre of sequential events. It presents a pattern of poetic
images. In doing this, it uses visual elements, movement, light. Unlike conventional theatre,
where language rules supreme, in the Absurd Theatre language is only one of many
components of its multidimensional poetic imagery.

The Theatre of the Absurd is totally lyrical theatre which uses abstract scenic effects, many of
which have been taken over and modified from the popular theatre arts: mime, ballet,
acrobatics, conjuring, music-hall clowning. Much of its inspiration comes from silent film and
comedy, as well as the tradition of verbal nonsense in early sound film (Laurel and Hardy, W C
Fields, the Marx Brothers). It emphasises the importance of objects and visual experience: the
role of language is relatively secondary. It owes a debt to European pre-war surrealism: its
literary influences include the work of Franz Kafka. The Theatre of the Absurd is aiming to
create a ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of
dreams.

Some of the predecessors of absurd drama:

In the realm of verbal nonsense: François Rabelais, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Many
serious poets occasionally wrote nonsense poetry (Johnson, Charles Lamb, Keats, Hugo, Byron,
Thomas Hood). One of the greatest masters of nonsense poetry was the German poet Christian
Morgernstern (1871-1914). Ionesco found the work of S J Perelman (i.e. the dialogues of the
Marx Brothers' films) a great inspiration for his work.
The world of allegory, myth and dream: The tradition of the world as a stage and life as a
dream goes back to Elizabethan times. Baroque allegorical drama shows the world in terms of
mythological archetypes: John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, Calderon, Jakob Biederman. With the
decline of allegory, the element of fantasy prevails (Swift, Hugh Walpole).
In some 18th and 19th Century works of literature we find sudden transformation of characters
and nightmarish shifts of time and place (E T A Hoffman, Nerval, Aurevilly). Dreams are
featured in many theatrical pieces, but it had to wait for Strindberg to produce the masterly
transcriptions of dreams and obsessions that have become a direct source of the Absurd
Theatre. Strindberg, Dostoyevsky, Joyce and Kafka created archetypes: by delving into their
own subconscious, they discovered the universal, collective significance of their own private
obsessions. In the view of Mircea Eliade, myth has never completely disappeared on the level
of individual experience. The Absurd Theatre sought to express the individual's longing for a
single myth of general validity. The above-mentioned authors anticipated this.

Alfred Jarry is an important predecessor of the Absurd Theatre. His UBU ROI (1896) is a
mythical figure, set amidst a world of grotesque archetypal images. Ubu Roi is a caricature, a
terrifying image of the animal nature of man and his cruelty. (Ubu Roi makes himself King of
Poland and kills and tortures all and sundry. The work is a puppet play and its décor of childish
naivety underlines the horror.) Jarry expressed man's psychological states by objectifying them
on the stage. Similarly, Franz Kafka's short stories and novels are meticulously exact
descriptions of archetypal nightmares and obsessions in a world of convention and routine.
20th Century European avant-garde: For the French avant-garde, myth and dream was of
utmost importance: the surrealists based much of their artistic theory on the teachings of
Freud and his emphasis on the role of the subconscious. The aim of the avant-garde was to do
away with art as a mere imitation of appearances. Apollinaire demanded that art should be
more real than reality and deal with essences rather than appearances. One of the more
extreme manifestations of the avant-garde was the Dadaist movement, which took the desire
to do away with obsolete artistic conventions to the extreme. Some Dadaist plays were written,
but these were mostly nonsense poems in dialogue form, the aim of which was primarily to
'shock the bourgeois audience'. After the First World War, German Expressionism attempted to
project inner realities and to objectify thought and feeling. Some of Brecht's plays are close to
Absurd Drama, both in their clowning and their music-hall humour and the preoccupation with
the problem of identity of the self and its fluidity. French surrealism acknowledged the
subconscious mind as a great, positive healing force. However, its contribution to the sphere of
drama was meagre: indeed it can be said that the Absurd Theatre of the 1950s and 1960s was
a Belated practical realisation of the principles formulated by the Surrealists as early as the
1930s. In this connection, of particular importance were the theoretical writings of Antonin
Artaud. Artaud fully rejected realism in the theatre, cherishing a vision of a stage of magical
beauty and mythical power. He called for a return to myth and magic and to the exposure of
the deepest conflicts within the human mind. He demanded a theatre that would produce
collective archetypes, thus creating a new mythology. In his view, theatre should pursue the
aspects of the internal world. Man should be considered metaphorically in a wordless language
of shapes, light, movement and gesture. Theatre should aim at expressing what language is
incapable of putting into words. Artaud forms a bridge between the inter-war avant-garde and
the post-Second-World-War Theatre of the Absurd.

THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

THE WEST AND THE EAST

II. THE EAST

At the time when the first absurd plays were being written and staged in Western Europe in the
late 1940s and early 1950s, people in the East European countries suddenly found themselves
thrown into a world where absurdity was a integral part of everyday living. Suddenly, you did
not need to be an abstract thinker in order to be able to reflect upon absurdity: the experience
of absurdity became part and parcel of everybody's existence.

Hitler's attempt to conquer Russia during the Second World War gave Russia a unique
opportunity to extend its sphere of influence and at the same time to 'further the cause of [the
Soviet brand of] socialism'. In the final years of the war, Stalin turned the war of the defeat of
Nazism into the war of conquest of Central Europe and the war of the division of Europe. In
pursuing Hitler's retreating troops, the Russian Army managed to enter the territory of the
Central European countries and to remain there, with very few exceptions, until now. The might
of the Russian Army made it possible for Stalin to establish rigidly ideological pro-Soviet
regimes, hermetically sealed from the rest of Europe. The Central European countries, whose
pre-war political systems ranged from feudal monarchies (Rumania), semi-authoritarian states
(Poland) through to a parliamentary Western-type democracy (Czechoslovakia) were now
subjected to a militant Sovietisation. The countries were forced to undergo a major traumatic
political and economic transformation.

The Western Theatre of the Absurd highlighted man's fundamental bewilderment and
confusion, stemming from the fact that man has no answers to the basic existential questions:
why we are alive, why we have to die, why there is injustice and suffering. East European
Soviet-type socialism proudly proclaimed that it had answers to all these questions and,
moreover, that it was capable of eliminating suffering and setting all injustices right. To doubt
this was subversive. Officially, it was sufficient to implement a grossly simplified formula of
Marxism to all spheres of life and Paradise on Earth would ensue. It became clear very soon
that this simplified formula offered even fewer real answers than various esoteric and complex
Western philosophical systems and that its implementation by force brought enormous
suffering.

From the beginning it was clear that the simplified idea was absurd: yet it was made to
dominate all spheres of life. People were expected to shape their lives according to its dictates
and to enjoy it. It was, and still is, an offence to be sceptical about Soviet-type socialism if you
are a citizen of an East-European country. The sheer fact that the arbitrary formula of
simplified Marxism was made to dominate the lives of millions of people, forcing them to
behave against their own nature, brought the absurdity of the formula into sharp focus for
these millions. Thus the Soviet-type system managed to bring the experience of what was
initially a matter of concern for only a small number of sensitive individuals in the West to
whole nations in the East.

This is not to say that the absurdity of life as experienced in the East differs in any way from
the absurdity of life as it is experienced in the West. In both parts of the world it stems from
the ambiguity of man's position in the universe, from his fear of death and from his instinctive
yearning for the Absolute. It is just that official East-European practices, based on a contempt
for the fundamental existential questions and on a primitive and arrogant faith in the power of
a simplified idea, have created a reality which makes absurdity a primary and deeply-felt,
intrinsic experience for anybody who comes in contact with that reality.

To put it another way: the western Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as the expression of
frustration and anger of a handful of intellectuals over the fact that people seem to lead
uninspired, second-rate and stereotyped existences, either by deliberate choice or because
they do not know any better and have no idea how or ability by which to help themselves.
Although such anger may sound smug and condescending, it is really mixed with despair. And
when we look at Eastern Europe, we realise that these intellectuals are justified in condemning
lives of mediocrity, even though many people in the West seem to lead such lives quite happily
and without any awareness of the absurdity. In Eastern Europe, second-rateness has been
elevated to a single, sacred, governing principle. There, mediocrity rules with a rod of iron.
Thus it can be seen clearly what it can achieve. As a result, unlike in the West, may people in
the East seem to have discovered that it is very uncomfortable to live under the command of
second-rateness.

(The fact that mediocrity is harmful to life comes across so clearly in Eastern Europe either
because East-European second-rateness is much harsher than the mild, West-European,
consumerist mediocrity, or simply because it is a single, totalitarian second-rateness,
obligatory for all. A single version of a simple creed cannot suit all, its insufficiencies
immediately show. This is not the case if everybody is allowed to choose their own simplified
models and prejudices which suit their individual needs, the way it is in the West - thus their
insufficiencies are not immediately noticeable.)

The rise of the Theatre of the Absurd in the East is connected with the period of relative
relaxation of the East European regimes after Stalin's death. In the first decade after the
communist take-over of power, it would have been impossible for anyone to write anything
even distantly based on his experiences of life after the take-over without endangering his
personal safety. The arts, as indeed all other spheres of life, were subject to rigid political
control and reduced to serving blatant ideological and propagandistic aims. This was the
period when feature films were made about happy workers in a steelworks, or about a village
tractor driver who after falling in love with his tractor becomes a member of the communist
party, etc. All the arts assumed rigidly conservative, 19th-Century realist forms, to which a
strong political bias was added. 20th -Century developments, in particular the inter-war
experiments with structure and form in painting and poetry were outlawed as bourgeois
decadence.

In the years after Stalin's death in 1953, the situation slowly improved. The year 1956 saw two
major attempts at liberalisation within the Soviet Bloc: the Hungarian revolution was defeated,
while the Polish autumn managed to introduce a measure of normalcy into the country which
lasted for several years. Czechoslovakia did not see the first thaw until towards the end of the
1950s: genuine liberalisation did not start gaining momentum until 1962-63. Hence it was only
in the 1960s that the first absurdist plays could be written and staged in Eastern Europe. Even
so, the Theatre of the Absurd remained limited to only two East European countries, those that
were the most liberal at the time: Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The East European Absurd Theatre was undoubtedly inspired by Western absurd drama, yet it
differed from it considerably in form, meaning and impact. Although East European authors
and theatre producers were quite well acquainted with many West-European absurd plays from
the mid to late 1950s onwards, nevertheless (with very few exceptions) these plays were not
performed or even translated in Eastern Europe until the mid-1960s. The reasons for this were
several. First, West-European absurd drama was regarded by East-European officialdom as the
epitome of West-European bourgeois capitalist decadence and, as a result, East European
theatrical producers would be wary of trying to stage a condemned play - such an act would
blight their career once and for all, ensuring that they would never work in theatre again. The
western absurdist plays were regarded a nihilistic and anti-realistic, especially after Kenneth
Tynan had attacked Ionesco as the apostle of anti-realism: this attach was frequently used by
the East European officialdom for condemning Western absurd plays.

Secondly, after a decade or more of staple conservative realistic bias, there were fears among
theatrical producers that the West European absurd plays might be regarded as far too
avantgarde and esoteric by the general public. Thirdly, there was an atmosphere of relative
optimism in Eastern Europe in the late 1950s and the 1960s. It was felt that although life under
Stalin's domination had been terrible, the bad times were now past after the dictator's death
and full liberalisation was only a matter of time. The injustices and deficiencies of the East
European systems were seen as due to human frailty rather than being a perennial
metaphysical condition: it was felt that sincere and concerted human effort was in the long run
going to be able to put all wrongs right. In a way, this was a continuation of the simplistic
Stalinist faith in man's total power over his predicament. From this point of view, it was felt
that most Western absurdist plays were too pessimistic, negative and destructive. It was
argued (perhaps partially for official consumption) that the East European absurdist plays,
unlike their Western counterparts, constituted constructive criticism.

The line of argument of reformist, pro-liberalisation Marxists in Czechoslovakia in the early

1960s ran as follows: The Western Theatre of the Absurd recorded the absurdity of human
existence as an immutable condition. It was a by-product of the continuing disintegration of
capitalism. Western absurd plays were irrelevant in Eastern Europe, since socialist society had
already found all answers concerning man's conduct and the meaning of life in general. Unlike
its Western counterpart, East European absurd drama was communicating constructive
criticism of the deformation of Marxism by the Stalinists. All that the East-European absurdist
plays were trying to do was to remove minor blemishes on the face of the Marxist model - and
that was easily done.

It was only later that some critics were able to point out that West European absurd dram was
not in fact nihilistic and destructive and that it played the same constructive roles as East
European drama attempted to play. At this stage, it was realised that the liberal Marxist
analysis of East European absurd drama was incorrect: just as with its Western counterpart, the
East European absurdist theatre could be seen as a comment on the human condition in
general - hence its relevance also for the West.

On the few occasions that Western absurdist plays were actually staged in Eastern Europe, the
East European audiences found the plays highly relevant. A production of Waiting for Godot in
Poland in 1956 and in Slovakia in 1969, for instance, both became something nearing a
political demonstration. Both the Polish and Slovak audiences stressed that for them, this was
a play about hope - hope against hope.

The tremendous impact of these productions in Eastern Europe can be perhaps compared with
the impact of Waiting for Godot on the inmates of a Californian penitentiary, when it was
staged there in 1957. Like the inmates of a gaol, people in Eastern Europe are possibly also
freer of the numbing concerns of everyday living than the average Western man in the street.
Since they live under pressure, this somehow brings them closer to the bare essentials of life
and they are therefore more receptive to the works that deal with archetypal existential
situations than is the case with an ordinary Wes-European citizen.

On the whole, East European absurd drama has been far less abstract and esoteric than its
West European counterpart. Moreover, while the West European drama is usually considered as
having spent itself by the end of the 1960s, several East European authors have been writing
highly original plays in the absurdisy mould, well into the 1970s.

The main difference between the West European and the East European plays is that while the
West European plays deal with a predicament of an individual or a group of individuals in a
situation stripped to the bare, and often fairly abstract and metaphysical essentials, the East
European plays mostly show and individual trapped within the cogwheels of a social system.
The social context of the West European absurd plays is usually subdued and theoretical: in the
East European plays it is concrete, menacing and fairly realistic: it is usually covered by very
transparent metaphors. The social context is shown as a kind of Catch-22 system - it is a set of
circumstances whose joint impact crushes the individual. The absurdity of the social system is
highlighted and frequently shown as the result of the actions of stupid, misguided or evil
people - this condemnation is of course merely implicit. Although the fundamental absurdity of
the life feature in these plays is not intended to be metaphysically conditioned - these are
primarily pieces of social satire - on reflection, the viewer will realise that there is
fundamentally no difference between the 'messages' of the West European and the East
European plays - except that the East European plays may be able to communicate these ideas
more pressingly and more vividly to their audiences, because of their first-hand everyday
experience of the absurdity that surrounds them.

At the end of the 1960s, the situation in Eastern Europe changed for the worse. After the
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, it became apparent that Russia would not tolerate a fuller
liberalisation of the East European countries. Czechoslovakia was thrown into a harsh, neo-
Stalinist mould, entering the time capsule of stagnating immobility, in which it has remained
ever since. Since it had been primarily artists and intellectuals that were spearheading the
liberalising reforms of the 1960s, the arts were now subjected to a vicious purge. Many well-
known artists and intellectuals were turned into non-persons practically overnight: some left or
were later forced to lea the country.

All the Czechoslovak absurdist playwrights fell into the non-person category. It is perhaps quite
convincing evidence of the social relevance of their plays that the establishment feared them
so much it felt the need to outlaw them. Several of the banned authors have continued writing,
regardless of the fact that their plays cannot be staged in Czechoslovakia at present. They
have been published and produced in the West.
As in the 1960s, these authors are still deeply socially conscious: for instance, Václav Havel, in
the words of Martin Esslin, 'one of the most promising European playwrights of today', is a
courageous defender of basic human values and one of the most important (and most
thoughtful) spokespersons of the non-establishment groupings in Czechoslovakia.

By contrast, the Polish absurdist playwrights have been able to continue working in Poland
undisturbed since the early 1960s, their plays having been normally published and produced
within the country even throughout he 1970s.

It is perhaps quite interesting that even the Western absurd dramatists have gradually
developed a need to defend basic human values. They have been showing solidarity with their
East European colleagues. Ionesco was always deeply distrustful of politics and the clichéd
language of the political establishment. Harold Pinter, who took part in a radio production of
one of Václav Havel's plays from the 1970s several years ago, has frequently spoken in support
of the East European writers and playwrights. Samuel Beckett has written a short play
dedicated to Havel, which was staged in France in 1984 during a ceremony at the University of
Toulouse, which awarded Havel an honorary doctorate.