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Unit 29: Absurd Drama

incomprehensibility is coupled with the inadequacy of language to form meaningful human Notes
connections. According to Martin Esslin, Absurdism is “the inevitable devaluation of ideals,
purity, and purpose” Absurdist drama asks its viewer to “draw his own conclusions, make his
own errors”. Though Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as nonsense, they have something to say
and can be understood”. Esslin makes a distinction between the dictionary definition of absurd
(“out of harmony” in the musical sense) and drama’s understanding of the Absurd: “Absurd is
that which is devoid of purpose.... Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental
roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, and useless”.

29.8 Characters

The characters in Absurdist drama are lost and floating in an incomprehensible universe and
they abandon rational devices and discursive thought because these approaches are inadequate.
Many characters appear as automatons stuck in routines speaking only in cliche.

Notes Characters are frequently stereotypical, archetypal, or flat character types as in
Commedia dell’arte.
The more complex characters are in crisis because the world around them is incomprehensible.
Many of Pinter’s plays, for example, feature characters trapped in an enclosed space menaced by
some force the character can’t understand. Pinter’s first play was The Room – in which the main
character, Rose, is menaced by Riley who invades her safe space though the actual source of
menace remains a mystery – and this theme of characters in a safe space menaced by an outside
force is repeated in many of his later works. In Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit the main
character, Alfred, is menaced by Claire Zachanassian; Claire, richest woman in the world with a
decaying body and multiple husbands throughout the play, has guaranteed a payout for anyone
in the town willing to kill Alfred. Characters in Absurdist drama may also face the chaos of a
world that science and logic have abandoned. Ionesco’s recurring character Berenger, for example,
faces a killer without motivation in The Killer, and Berenger’s logical arguments fail to convince
the killer that killing is wrong. In Rhinoceros, Berenger remains the only human on Earth who
hasn’t turned into a rhinoceros and must decide whether or not to conform. Characters may find
themselves trapped in a routine or, in a metafictional conceit, trapped in a story; the titular
characters in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, for example, find themselves
in a story (Hamlet) in which the outcome has already been written.
The plots of many Absurdist plays feature characters in interdependent pairs, commonly either
two males or a male and a female. Some Beckett scholars call this the “pseudocouple”. The two
characters may be roughly equal or have a begrudging interdependence; one character may be
clearly dominant and may torture the passive character; the relationship of the characters may
shift dramatically throughout the play.

29.9 Language

Despite its reputation for nonsense language, much of the dialogue in Absurdist plays is
naturalistic. The moments when characters resort to nonsense language or clichés–when words
appear to have lost their denotative function, thus creating misunderstanding among the
characters, making the Theatre of the Absurd distinctive. Language frequently gains a certain
phonetic, rhythmical, almost musical quality, opening up a widerange of often comedic
playfulness. Jean Tardieu, for example, in the series of short pieces Theatre de Chambre arranged
the language as one arranges music. Distinctively Absurdist language will range from
meaningless clichés to Vaudeville-style word play to meaningless nonsense. The Bald Soprano,
for example, was inspired by a language book in which characters would exchange empty clichés
that never ultimately amounted to true communication or true connection. Likewise, the characters
in The Bald Soprano–like many other Absurdist characters–go through routine dialogue full of
clichés without actually communicating anything substantive or making a human connection. In

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