Spotlight! E-news from Theatrefolk
Issue 12 - Absurd Drama, August 2006Welcome Back!
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Waiting For Godot is on the reading list for a number of high school curricula. Since schools are either heading back in session soon (if not already!), we thought we'd look at the Theatre of the Absurd for the August Newsletter.
In this issue:
- BUT NOTHING HAPPENS!?
How do you introduce the Theatre of the Absurd to students? - LET'S GO AND SLAP ULYSSES
Lindsay Price discusses how the absurd has affected her playwriting. - DIRECTING THE ABSURD
How do you direct an absurd play? - SCENE ANALYSIS
An inside look at a scene from Harold Pinter'sThe Birthday Party. - READING LIST
A list of playwrights and plays. - BOOK REPORT
A review of Martin Esslin's articleThe Theatre of the Absurd. - DOWNLOAD OF THE MONTH
Exercise worksheets for students. - WHAT'S NEW?
Have you been on our website lately? We're now offering downloadable versions of some of our plays. - CONFERENCE ALERT
Meet us in person. - IN THE NEXT ISSUE
What you can expect next. - STAY IN TOUCH
Contact info/Read our blog.
BUT NOTHING HAPPENS?
"We gathered to read the play for the first time in my house, after which two of the older, more experience people dropped out of the cast. They simply refused to be in it! When they read through the play, they simply didn't know what was going on, which didn't seem to be much, and much of that they didn't like. And these were quite intelligent people."Herbert Blau, inDirecting Beckett , Lois Oppenheim (ed), p. 52
The above is a description of a somewhat vivid reaction to the first readthrough of a production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, a play which is commonly heralded as the landmark play for the Theatre of the Absurd.
The play's description is pretty famous: "A play where nothing happens. Twice." It's a flippant way to describe the play and more often than not those who read it toss it to the side and declare it rubbish for that exact reason. "Nothing happens. I don't get it."
How do you get beyond that initial reaction? Waiting For Godot, as with most plays in the Theatre of the Absurd genre, get tarred with the same brush because the genre revels in an unconventional manner of writing. How do you get that across to students who are looking at you like they would rather watch paint dry?
What is the Theatre of the Absurd? It's a phrase that's often bandied about. What factors make a play fall under the "Theatre of the Absurd" genre? Here are two dictionary definitions of the term:
From Wikipedia: "The Theatre of the Absurd departs from realistic characters, situations and all of the associated theatrical conventions. Time, place and identity are ambiguous and fluid, and even basic causality frequently breaks down. Meaningless plots, repetitive or nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often used to create dream-like, or even nightmare-like moods."
And from the 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia: "The playwrights loosely grouped under the label of the absurd endeavour to convey their sense of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an inexplicable universe. They rely heavily on poetic metaphor as a means of projecting outward their innermost states of mind."
Blah, blah, blah. Even myeyes are glazing over. But each of these descriptions has key elements to understanding Theatre of the Absurd and making it accessible. The first step is making sure you have a firm grasp on those elements:
1.Plot: The plot in these plays is either non-existant, sparse, convoluted, or circular. Conventional plays aim to tell a story. They aim to set out a conflict for the main character and have it solved. The Theatre of the Absurd has no such aim. Plays do not move in a straight line from A to B. They move sideways, up, down, or perhaps stay in the exact same spot. There is not a logical line from beginning to end.
Example: In The Bald Sopranoby Ionesco, the play begins by the clock striking 17 times. Two characters introduce themselves to each other and gradually reveal that they are in fact husband and wife, live in the same house and sleep in the same bed. The last scene in the play is a repetition of the first scene, word for word.
2.Dialogue: In conventional plays is it language and dialogue that tell the story. Communication is key. In absurd plays, that logic goes out the window. Absurd plays show a world where characters communicate horribly with each other.
Example: In Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party two thugs interrogate a man with such questions as "When did you last have a bath? Who watered the wicket in Melbourne? Why did the chicken cross the road?" (Read an analysis of the interrogation scene later in this newsletter.)
3.Characters: In Absurd plays, characters are rarely three-dimensional. They are more often symbolic and representational. You don't learn about their childhoods or their emotional problems. And if you do, that same character will probably contradict that statement in the next breath.
Example: We know nothing about the two main characters in Waiting For Godotother than that they are tramps. We don't know their ages, what time period they're in, or even what country they're in.
At its most basic, the plays in the Theatre of the Absurd go against everything: Conventional storytelling, conventional structure, conventional characters - conventional theatre. Everything goes out the window. Most of the authors in this genre were writing in response to the atrocities of WWII that they had all just lived through. That's why many of the plays have a 'the world is doomed, life is meaningless' tone to them. The world wasn't in a happy stable place and people were reeling from that.
A great place to start would be to compare the state of the world then, to the state of the world today. What kind of stability do we have? Do the messages of the plays become clearer when placed in a modern context?
On the note of comparison, the one thing you don't want to do is compare these plays to anything "conventional" (anything with a logical story, normal structure and recognizable characters!) That's the main reason why people sometimes hate Waiting For Godot: they are expecting it to be like other plays.
In general, absurd plays don't tell a story, they present a picture, which is another great way to approach them. Ask "What is the picture that Waiting For Godotrepresents?" instead of "What is the story that is being told?" "What images do you get from the characters?" instead of "What are the characters trying to say?"
And in the end, how do you deal with the question, "But what does it mean???" It's flippant to think that absurd plays don't mean anything, just because the meaning isn't on the surface. You have to work at it. You must ask why. Why does the dialogue descend into gibberish? Why does this character contradict himself? Why do these characters sit on stage and do nothing? Why is it that nothing happens?
Absurd plays offer a much different view of theatre and a much different view of the world. Things can get very messy and confusing! But it's not impossible to change the cry of "nothing makes sense!" to "everything makes sense."
Let's Go and Slap Ulysses
Lindsay discusses how has the Theatre of the Absurd has affected her writing.
I was instantly attracted to plays in the genre of Theatre of the Absurd when I was in high school. No one else was that's for sure - I have this vivid image of doing a presentation of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Partyand the entire class staring at me as if I was from Mars. Eugene Ionesco's Rhinocerosis also a favourite play of mine, and of course there's the grand kauna, Waiting For Godot.
Aspects of these plays formed the groundwork for my own writing and were a huge influence. There's many an absurd concept that has found its way into my plays. I'm particularly fond of the idea of putting the illogical into logical situations. Jealousy Jane has a monster who is a manifestation of main character's jealousy. Tuna Fish Eulogy takes place in a limbo space twelve years after a character's death. In Tick Talk characters communicate through a single word or phrase throughout the entire play.
The concept of not wrapping the plot of neatly at the end of a play is something else I've fully embraced. The majority of my issue plays leave the characters and the audience hanging as to what exactly is going to happen next. A good example of that is from my play, Pressure . The last image of the play is that one of the characters has committed suicide, another character has run away from the mess with his parents, a third character is dealing with a drunk friend and that's it. End of play. The play is a snapshot, not a solution to problems. I have a play coming out in the fall called The Pregnancy Projectwhere a teenage girl becomes, unexpectedly, pregnant. It was important to me that I not solve the conflict completely for her and that the ending not tie everything up in a bow.
I'm not a complete Absurd convert - one of the things that Theatre of the Absurd plays strive to do is remove the emotional connection between the characters on stage and the audience. That emotional connection is essential to my plays. I want the audience to connect to what's going on on the stage and the people on stage. I want to write three-dimensional characters.
Lastly, although I don't use the pauses and silences nearly as much as writers in this genre do. ( The Birthday Partyhas 30 pauses and silences in the first act alone.) I love a good pause. The silences between lines are as big a part of the dialogue as the words.
Check out the Exercise download for a great Pause exercise.
Doing work for this newsletter has given me a renewed love of the Theatre of the Absurd. As a high school student I was more impressed by how different the plays were, as opposed to the statement they were trying to make. Now, I have a real appreciation for the genre. It makes me want to write something completely immersed in the form. Stay tuned!
Directing the Absurd
How do you direct something with no plot, nonsense dialogue and uninformative characters? Here are a few things to think about as you prepare:
1. What main image does the play represent to you?
Eugene Ionesco's Rhinocerosshows a time and place where all citizens turn into rhinoceros around the main character. Can he resist the compulsion to conform? When Ionesco wrote the play one of the things he was concerned about was the number of people around him who were converting to Fascism. On the other hand, it has also been suggested that the image deals with the main character resisting the conformity of old age.
It's important to direct with an image in mind. When there isn't a story to tell, there must be something on which everyone (cast and audience) can focus upon.
2. Resist the temptation to pile on a visual meaning to the play because it's not immediately available in the text.
Samuel Beckett was, and his estate is, fanatical about bizarre productions of Waiting For Godot. Many directors have, because the play is so sparse in its action, tried to force ameaning on it by putting the play in a funky location or by changing the gender of the characters and so on. It's harder to find the meaning of these plays because the characters don't tell you right out and it's easy to want to put a shell on the play so that audience can "see" the meaning of the play.
You also want to resist the urge to have actors mug to the audience. It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to pull the audience into the experience with a look of "Can you believe what I'm saying?" That creates a false connection between audience and text.
Theatre of the Absurd plays require a lot more work from the actors, the director and the audience. Just because meaning isn't on the surface doesn't mean it's not there. For example, on the surface it seems there is little meaning to Waiting For Godotbecause nothing apparent happens. But how many people live lives where "nothing" happens? It's a pretty common phenomenon. How does that reflect the action of the play? And further, what if you look at the play from the perspective of two people who are "torn between the pointless of their lives and the seemingly inexhaustible instinct to keep going?" ( p. 47, David Pickering (ed), Dictionary of Theatre, 1988, Sphere Reference) How many modern day businessmen and women does this apply to today?
3. Communicate with your actors.
Don't let them flounder about on their own with this. Ensure that everyone is on the same page with the image you have in your mind for the play. Decide as a group on the backgrounds for the characters, decide on what is going on in the relationships: just because the information isn't in the text doesn't mean the actors should forget this part of the process. In The Bald Sopranoby Eugene Ionesco characters descend into complete gibberish. If the actors let the words just blather out of their mouths without a sense of background it will be meaningless. And everything has meaning in an Absurd play (even if it is that life has no meaning!)
If you're working with actors who have never performed in this genre, have a look at the Exercise download sheet for a couple of introductory exercises to Theatre of the Absurd.
As stated above, these plays include an extra layer of work. It's not just a little blocking and a little character development. But with that work comes the potential of giving an audience an experience they will never forget.
Scene Analysis - The Birthday Party
Act Two. The Interrogation.
The Birthday Partyby Harold Pinter was originally produced in 1958 and was Pinter's first full length play. It was brutally savaged by critics and closed after 6 performances. It's one of the first Theatre of the Absurd plays I read as a teenager.
The story takes place at a boarding house, run by a couple in their sixties: Peter and Meg. There is only one boarder, Stanley, who at one time may have been a concert pianist, but now does nothing but sit around all day. Two strangers come, (McCann and Goldberg) apparently to rent a room, but really to have a serious and clearly ominous "chat" with Stanley. We never learn exactly why the strangers are after Stanley, but they have a profound effect.
The play has a dazzling interrogation scene in Act II. It nicely highlights the main concepts of the Theatre of the Absurd: the destruction of communication, the confusion and menace of the world around us, and the great sense of nightmare. The mood moves from humour to discomfort in the space of a line and back again.
GOLDBERG: Webber, what were doing yesterday?
STANLEY: Yesterday?
GOLDBERG: And the day before. What did you do the day before that?
The scene starts off in familiar territory as far as interrogations go. Goldberg and McCann seem like familiar interrogators. These are expected questions and the duo's technique is also expected. At the beginning, Stanley is rarely allowed to finish a sentence before the next question is hurled at him. The questions seem to make sense as they contain specific references to Stanley's past: "Why did you leave the organization? Why did you betray the organization?"
It is then that everything starts to slide. Questions become less rational: "Is the number 846 possible or necessary? Do you recognize an external force? Why did the chicken cross the road?" McCann and Goldberg ask these nonsensical questions with the same intensity and expect complete logic from Stanley. It is confusing for Stanley, as it is for the audience: in this moment, the audience is Stanley. We feel as confused and under siege as Stanley does. We don't know what is truth and what is lies.
Stanley is accused of killing his wife, but then the interrogators want to know why he never married. Stanley says that he can see without his glasses but when they are taken away he stumbles about. We are put in the position of interrogation victim as the play's dialogue rains down on us.
MCCANN: Who are you, Webber?
GOLDBERG: What makes you think you exist?
MCCANN: You're dead.
GOLDBERG: You're dead. You can't live, you can't think, you can't love. You're dead. You're a plague gone bad. There's no juice in you. You're nothing but an odour!
By the end of the scene Stanley is only able to communicate in grunts. He has lost all means of language. He does not say another complete word for the rest of the play.
Who are McCann and Goldberg? Are they from "the organization?" Are they government? Are they doctors? Are they real? The reality doesn't matter (to an actor perhaps, but not to an audience member) It's not what the characters say, it's what they represent. What McCann and Goldberg represent is power. And not only that, they represent the removal of power. It doesn't matter where they are from, what matters is that they are there to take away Stanley's power.
Up to this point in the play Stanley's power is in his speech and the way he communicates: what he chooses to say or not say. Right before the interrogation begins, Stanley whistles confidently as he "strolls casually to the chair at the table." He lauds his power over the boarding house owner Meg at the beginning of Act One:
STANLEY: You're a bad wife.
MEG: I'm not. Who said I am?
STANLEY: Not to make your husband a cup of tea. Terrible.
MEG: He knows I'm not a bad wife.
STANELY: Giving him sour milk instead.
MEG: It wasn't sour.
STANLEY: Disgraceful.
The interrogation scene leaves Stanley powerless and speechless. At the end of the play he leaves with McCann and Goldberg without resistance. Without a word.
The scene is familiar, bewildering, funny and horrific all at the same time.
Reading List
Here are a list of plays and playwrights to explore.
Theatre of the AbsurdEugene Ionesco
- The Bald Sopranos
- The Chairs
- Rhinoceros
Samuel Beckett
- Waiting for Godot
- Endgame
Harold Pinter
- The Birthday Party
- The Homecoming
Jean Genet
- The Maids
Edward Albee
- The American Dream
- The Zoo Story
Vaclav Havel
- The Garden Party
- The Increased Difficulty of Concentration
Dario Fo
- Accidental Death of an Anarchist
Eric Overmyer
- Native Speech
Caryl Churchill
- Top Girls
- Heart's Desire
- Blue Kettle
Sarah Kane
- Blasted
Maria Irene Fornes
- Mud
Monty Python
- Almost all Monty Python's Flying Circussketches.
Book Review
The Theatre of the Absurd
Martin Esslin
Article appeared in Theatre in the Twentieth Century
( ed. Robert W. Corrigan, Grove Press Inc, New York, 1963)
Doing research for this newsletter almost put me into a coma. I was initially excited about writing about Theatre of the Absurd. It's a genre that I am certainly influenced by and I have read many of the plays. I love the plays. But it turns out I've read very little of the critical material about the Theatre of the Absurd as I came face to face with a mountain of books. There's a lot of material. And it's pretty much all a snooze fest. Lots of thick heavy books with dense type. Very analytical. Very serious. Very boring.
Martin Esslin is the name that everyone credits with coining the term "Theatre of the Absurd" and he is the man everyone quotes in every book. So much so that initially I avoided reading him like the plague because I just couldn't stand another dense book that was going to make me hit my head on my keyboard a bunch of times.
Luckily, I picked up the book Theatre in the Twentieth Century. The book has a chapter on Theatre of the Absurd which I happened to start reading without looking at the author. And as I was reading, the clouds parted, there was a chorus singing and a bright light appeared in the middle of my book. This was an article people could understand! This was an examination of "Theatre of the Absurd" which Icould understand! That's when I looked at the author. Martin Esslin. I should have known and I should have gone to the source right away.
"The Theatre of the Absurd shows the world as an incomprehensible place. The spectators see the happenings on stage entirely from the outside, without ever understanding the full meaning of these strange patterns of events, as newly arrived visitors might watch life in a country of which they have not yet mastered the language."Martin Esslin, Theatre in the Twentieth Century, p. 232
Sure there are some odd word choices - "spectator" instead of "audience" - but for me, the notion of watching a play like a visitor from a foreign country is a great way to describe the experience of watching Theatre of the Absurd. It's a specific image to grab on to, and I think that's what people need when dealing with this genre.
Esslin also talks about how the Theatre of the Absurd takes away the emotional connection between audience and the action on stage. That was another great point for me. A Theatre of the Absurd author doesn't want to you to "connect" to the play. They want to assault you with the play. Make you wake up. Concentrate. "Emotional identification with the characters is replaced by a puzzled, critical attention." (p. 232) Once you comprehend that, it forces you to look at the plays differently.
And in the end, that the most important aspect when dealing with the absurd: an audience member (or reader) has to learn there is a different approach to these works. When that happens it's amazing how much easier it is to understand the plays, and in fact, how much closer to real life they can be:
For while the happenings on the stage are absurd, they yet remain recognizable as somehow related to real life with its absurdity, so that eventually the spectators are brought face to face with the irrational side of their existence.Martin Esslin, Theatre in the Twentieth Century, p. 232
Theatre in the Twentieth Century is quite an old book, but Martin Esslin can be found very easily. ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400075238 ) And a number of his articles are also available online.
I heartily suggest using examples from Mr. Esslin's work to describe the Theatre of the Absurd to students. Go straight to the source.
Download of the Month
This month we're offering four exercise sheets that can be used in any classroom (Drama, Playwriting, English) to give students a practical demonstration of how the Theatre of the Absurd works. Instead of just reading about it, they can experience it for themselves.
Get them here:
http://www.theatrefolk.com/spotlight/download/17
What's New?
Been on our website lately? We're now offering downloadable versions of some of our plays. This is a trial phase, but we're very happy with the outcome so far. Offering downloads has allowed us to easily get scripts to India, France, Australia, New Zealand and of course, all over North America.
Visit: www.theatrefolk.com
Conference Alert
Here's our upcoming conference schedule. If you're attending, please drop by and say hi!
In the Next Issue
We'll be looking at The Audition. How do you get the most out of your audition process? Is it better to do monologues or scenework? What should you be looking for? How do you find a great ensemble? Read some audition success/horror stories.
Stay in Touch
Future issues will be guided by your suggestions. Email stories, tips, suggestions, and questions to us by visiting: http://www.theatrefolk.com/contact . This newsletter belongs to you!
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