Page 48 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes 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 wide range 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 other cases, the dialogue is purposefully
elliptical; the language of Absurdist Theater becomes secondary to the poetry of the concrete and
objectified images of the stage. Many of Beckett’s plays devalue language for the sake of the striking
tableau. Harold Pinter—famous for his “Pinter pause”—presents more subtly elliptical dialogue;
often the primary things characters should address is replaced by ellipsis or dashes. Much of the
dialogue in Absurdist drama reflects this kind of evasiveness and inability to make a connection.
When language that is apparently nonsensical appears, it also demonstrates this disconnection.

Plot

Plots can consist of the absurd repetition of cliché and routine, as in Godot or The Bald Soprano. Often
there is a menacing outside force that remains a mystery.

Example: In The Birthday Party, Goldberg and McCann confront Stanley, torture him with
absurd questions, and drag him off at the end, but it is never revealed why. In later Pinter plays,
such as The Caretaker and The Homecoming, the menace is no longer entering from the outside but
exists within the confined space.

Traditional plot structures are rarely a consideration in the theatre of the absurd.

Absence, emptiness, nothingness, and unresolved mysteries are central features in many Absurdist
plots: for example, in The Chairs an old couple welcomes a large number of guests to their home, but
these guests are invisible so all we see is empty chairs, a representation of their absence. Likewise,
the action of Godot is centered around the absence of a man named Godot, for whom the characters
perpetually wait. In many of Beckett’s later plays, most features are stripped away and what’s left
is a minimalistic tableau: a woman walking slowly back and forth in Footfalls, for example, or in
Breath only a junk heap on stage and the sounds of breathing.
The plot may also revolve around an unexplained metamorphosis, a supernatural change, or a shift
in the laws of natural science. For example, in Ionesco’s Amedee, or How to Get Rid of It, a couple
must deal with a corpse that is steadily growing larger and larger; Ionesco never fully reveals the
identity of the corpse, how this person died, or why it’s continually growing, but the corpse
ultimately—and, again, without explanation—floats away. In Jean Tardieu’s “The Keyhole” a lover
watches a woman through a keyhole as she removes her clothes and then her flesh.
Plots are frequently cyclical: for example, Endgame begins where the play ended—at the beginning
of the play, Clov says, “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished”—and
themes of cycle, routine, and repetition are explored throughout.

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