An Approach to Absurd Theatre in the Twentieth Century

Book excerpt: The present study contributes to the corpus of later 20th-century drama and theatre, examining how absurdist theatre works to show the playwrights’ deep insights into humanity’s angst through a confrontation of the deeply subconscious self and the manifest socio-moral façade around us. The book, as a consolidated study, will allow students to form a comprehensive understanding of 20th-century experimental theatre, replete with theories and discernible techniques from as early as the 1950s. It highlights the decisive turn taken by Western playwrights and the dramatic revolution that took place around the mid-20th century through the plays of Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco, Genet, Adamov, Albee, and others. The book strives to familiarize the learners systematically through scaling, surveying and scanning the multifarious literary movements and metamorphoses that created this theatrical scenario.