Theatre of the Absurd (see Chp. 26-Read The Lesson? )

1. Theatre of the Absurd(see Chp. 26-Read The Lesson?) • Lacks plot • Disconnected • Incoherent dialogue • Dimensionless characters • Bizarre sets • Disorienting the audience • Surrealism and Existentialism

2. Existentialism • Humans determine their future by freely choosing- subjectivity • “existence precedes essence” • There is no objective rational basis for decisions and science and reason don’t help • With our choices come risk and responsibility

3. Existentialism-(see lyrics) • Risk and responsibility cause anxiety and dread • Even to refuse to choose is a choice-boat on ocean alone. • Kierkegaard- this dread is God’s way of calling us to make a choice to commit to a personally valid way of life-Leap of Faith • Pascal- believing in God is pride

4. Existentialism • Nietzsche- “God is dead.” • Heideggar- Humans can never understand why they are here so each must find a goal and follow it with passionate conviction, aware of the certainty of death and the ultimate meaninglessness of one’s life • Bumper stickers?

5. Existentialism • Jean Paul Sartre- To attempt to find a rational basis for life is a “futile passion.” • Dostoyevsky- Only Christian love can save humanity from itself, but such love cannot be understood philosophically. Aloysha in The Brothers Karamazov says “we must love life more than the meaning of it.”

6. Existentialism • Kafka- Themes of anxiety, guilt, and solitude reflect the influence of Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche. • Camus- Themes of apparent absurdity and futility of life, the indifference of the universe, and the necessity of engagement in a just cause.

7. Existentialism in a nutshell • Existence is always particular and individual- no soul, spirit, reason • Existence is primarily the problem of existence- negative struggles • continually faced with diverse possibilities from among which man must make a choice • Existence is always being in the world

8. Existentialism-quotes • “I’m sorry, your guide could not be here, you will have to go through on your own.” • “When I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light,...without knowing what put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything…then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.” -Pascal

9. Existential Characters • They have freedom with little stimulus for choices • moved by forces they cannot resist and don’t understand • suffering is a product of loneliness, alienation and incomprehension • dying is a disappearance; an absorption into space; loss of substance.

10. Existential Characters • Heroism is acceptance of fate after protesting, questioning, whining, criticizing, philosophizing, etc. • Hero says “So be it…” • Reflects that all humans are clowns and the world is an empty stage or empty circus-no audience, no one is watching which is sad/tragic • What’s it all about?

11. Life is meaningless and disconnected and asks the audience to feel this-FORM=CONTENT • Alienation • Divorced from any previous history, religion or philosophy • Lack of communication • Post WW2-shattered beliefs, senseless acts of violence • Sartre, Beckett, Adamov

12. Characters lack depth who seem to be pure action • Use of humor, often dark, farcical or scatological • Use of violence, often random or illogical, frequently juxtaposed with comedy-PULP FICTION • Repetitious or meaningless activity • Abrupt shifts in direction and tone

13. “A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. His is a irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.” -Camus

14. “Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.”-Ionesco

15. “An Absurdist Play does not reflect despair or a return to dark, irrational forces, but expresses modern man’s endeavor to come to terms with the world in which he lives. The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness.” -Martin Esslin

16. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead • Dark Comedy/Tragic Comedy-about death, grim, dark, tragic side of life-Hamlet and Gravedigger’s scene, Willy Loman? • Between parody and tragedy • Search for meaning and purpose

17. The World of R and G • Suspension of Probability-metaphor for their frustration existing in a world with no prior memory, where illusion and reality are indiscernible, and where a supernatural force of some kind seems to be controlling their destiny without regard to their individual will.(no science or rules to guide you-unreliability, anxiety)

18. The World of R and G • Illusion vs. Reality • Are we responsible for our actions? • Are we merely manipulated stage characters predestined by a script? • Was Hamlet controlled as well? • “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said--no. But somehow we missed it.”

19. The World of R and G • No “single clear statement” represents our own unenviable situation • “Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.” • No reliable meaning because of an absence of anything that might help us to understand which makes us like clowns in a featureless desert. • Heroes without dignity, energy, purpose and courage-can’t figure it out.

20. The World of R and G • Must wait for something to happen but it never arrives-Why? Anxiety? • They play games because they need to pass the time-Verbal Wit! • Like The Diary of Anne Frank-shut out from the world, forced to create a new way to cope • Like “ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by Eliot- READ IT=HW

21. Truth- “a permanent blur in the corner of your eye and something nudges it into outline. It is like being ambushed by the grotesque.” • “the smallest action sets off another somewhere else, as is set off by it.” • “You don’t understand the humiliation of it-to be tricked out of the single assumption that makes our existence viable-that somebody is watching.”

22. “We’ve traveled too far, momentum has taken over. We move idly toward eternity without possibility of reprieve or hope or explanation.” • “We are entitled to some direction…I would have thought.” • “Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one-that is the meaning of order.”

23. G remembers a time… “when there were no questions.” • R says “There were always questions.” • “Death is the ultimate negative. Not being. You can’t not-be on a boat.” • SHARE YOUR QUOTES FOR EACH CATEGORY ON THE SHEET!