Characteristic features of the French theater of the absurd. Historical prerequisites for the emergence of the drama of the absurd

This new phenomenon in theatrical art made itself known in the early 1950s. plays The Bald Singer (1950) and Waiting for Godot (1952). The strange works of Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett caused a heated discussion among critics and audiences. The "absurdists" were accused of extreme pessimism and the destruction of all the canons of the theater. However, already in the late 1960s. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Waiting for Godot, and Ionesco's Thirst for Hunger was at the Comédie Francaise. Why has the attitude of society changed in the theater of the absurd?

It must be said that in the second half of the XX century. in their tragically pessimistic vision of the world, the representatives of the theater of the absurd were not alone. In the philosophical works of Sartre, in the literary experiments of Faulkner, Kafka, Camus, the idea sounded with intense expression that modern man, having lost faith in God, in the omnipotence of science or in progress, “lost” the meaning of life, lives in anticipation of death. In Faulkner's words, "life is not a movement, but a monotonous repetition of the same movements." Such a “discovery” makes people feel confused and alienated, aware of the “absurdity” of their existence.

Thus, the ideas of the representatives of the new theatrical direction fully corresponded to the “spirit of the times”. At first, critics and viewers were “confused” by the deliberate combination of obvious tragedy with equally frank irony, which permeated the dramas of Beckett, Ionesco, Gennet, Pinter, Arrabal. In addition, it seemed that the plays of the “absurdists” could not be staged: they lacked the usual “full-fledged” images, there was neither an intelligible plot, nor an intelligible conflict, and the words lined up in almost meaningless chains of phrases. These works were not at all suitable for realistic theater. But when they were taken up by experimental directors, it became clear that the dramaturgy of the absurd provides the richest opportunities for original stage solutions. Theatrical conventionality revealed in the plays of the “absurdists” a plurality of semantic layers, from the most tragic to quite life-affirming, because in life despair and hope are always there.

And onesco

Eugene Ionesco

French playwright of Romanian origin, one of the founders of the aesthetic trend of absurdism, a recognized classic of the theatrical avant-garde of the 20th century. Member of the French Academy.

Ionesco himself (b. 1912) has repeatedly emphasized that he expresses an extremely tragic worldview. His plays “predict” the transformation of a whole community of people into rhinos (“Rhinoceros” - 1960), tell about the killers roaming among us (“The Disinterested Killer” - 1957), depict unsafe aliens from anti-worlds (“Aerial Pedestrian” - 1963).

The playwright seeks to expose the danger of a conformist consciousness that absolutely depersonalizes a person. In order to achieve his artistic goal, Ionesco decisively destroys the seemingly harmonious logic of our thinking, parodying it. In the comedy The Bald Singer, he reproduces the “automation”, “cliché” of the worldview of his characters, creates a phantasmagoria performance, exposing the absurdity of trivial phrases and banal judgments.

The famous director Peter Brook was one of the first to appreciate the stage possibilities of the dramaturgy of the absurd.

In "Victims of Duty" (1953) we are talking about people who consider themselves obliged to fulfill any requirements of the state, to be by all means loyal citizens. The play is based on the method of transforming images, changing the masks of characters. This method of external transformation of a person, which, however, does not change his essence, but only exposes his inner emptiness, is one of Ionesco's favorite in the work. He also uses it in one of his most famous plays, Chairs (1952). The heroine of the play, Semiramide, appears either as the old man's wife, or as his mother, while at the same time the old man himself is either a man, or a soldier, or “the marshal of this house,” or an orphan. The people portrayed by Ionesco are victims of the utilitarian ends of life; they cannot go beyond the narrow circle of routine, blind from birth, crippled by clichés. The lack of spiritual aspirations makes them prisoners who do not want to be released.

Beckett

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

“To Beckett we owe perhaps the most impressive and most original dramaturgical works of our time.” Peter Brook

Irish writer, poet and playwright. Representative of modernism in literature. One of the founders of the theater of the absurd. He gained worldwide fame as the author of the play "Waiting for Godot", one of the most significant works of world drama of the 20th century. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. Having an Irish passport, he lived most of his life in Paris, writing in English and French.

Beckett, unlike Ionesco, is interested in a different range of issues. The main theme of his work is loneliness. Beckett's heroes need communication, kindred spirits, but due to their own structure (or the structure of the world?), they are deprived of these necessary things. All their lives they peer into their inner world, trying to correlate it with the surrounding reality, but their conclusions are inconsolable, and their existence is futile.

This is how Vladimir and Estragon appear before us - the characters of the tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot”. It was not by chance that they found themselves on a deserted road, the only sign of which is a withered tree. This is a symbol of the alienation of heroes from life. They try to remember the past, but the memories are vague and inconsistent, they try to understand what led them to complete loneliness, but they are not able to do this. The dialogue and accompanying actions are built like a sad clowning. Vladimir and Estragon are surrounded by endless space, a huge world, but it seems to be closed for the heroes.

Beckett also uses the symbol of isolation in such plays as "The Game" (1954), "Happy Days" (1961), "Krapp's Last Tape" (1957), thus revealing the incompatibility of his characters with the environment. “No one comes, nothing happens” - this phrase from “Waiting for Godot” becomes the leitmotif of Beckett's dramaturgy, which tells about a man who has lost his life orientation, turned almost into a phantom. The playwright's characters are themselves not entirely sure that they still exist. Noteworthy is the order of Vladimir and Estragon, which they give to the boy sent by Godot: "Tell him that you saw us."

Unlike Ionesco or Becket, Mrozek prefers an almost realistic manner of constructing dramatic action.

An important feature of Beckett's artistic method is the combination of poetry with banality. The playwright either elevates the viewer to the heights of the struggle of the human spirit, or plunges him into the abyss of the base, and sometimes even grossly physiological.

Beckett's plays are always mysterious: they require sophisticated stage interpretations, so the playwright embodied some of his works on stage personally. So, the mini-tragedy “The Sound of Footsteps” was staged by the author in West Berlin. A special place in Beckett's work is occupied by the miniature "Decoupling" (1982), written specifically for the famous actor J.-L. Barro. In it, an assistant director prepares a performer for a role in one of Beckett's plays. He never utters a word.

Women

Genet: “I never reproduced life, but life itself involuntarily gave birth in me or highlighted, if they already existed in my soul, images that I then tried to convey through characters or events.”

Jean Genet (1910-1986). French writer, poet and playwright, whose work is controversial. The main characters of his works were thieves, murderers, prostitutes, pimps, smugglers and other inhabitants of the social bottom.

The most extravagant of the representatives of the theater of the absurd is Jean Genet. As a ten-year-old boy, he was convicted of theft and ended up in a penal colony, where, in his own words, he enthusiastically joined the world of vice and crime. Later he served in the Foreign Legion and wandered around the ports of Europe. In 1942 he went to prison, where he wrote the book “Our Lady of the Flowers”; in 1948 he was sentenced to life exile in a colony. However, many cultural figures interceded for the writer, already well-known by that time, and he was pardoned.

Genet's main task is to challenge bourgeois society, which he fully managed to achieve with talented, but scandalously outrageous plays, which include The Maids (1947), Balcony (1956), Negroes (1958) and Screens ” (1961).

J.-P. Sartre supported the "absurdists", wrote reviews of their plays, he owns a book about the life and work of Genet.

The Maids is one of Genet's most famous dramatic works. It tells how the sisters Solange and Claire, rescued by their mistress, decide to take possession of her property by poisoning the mistress. To this end, they slander her friend, trying to get him to jail. But Monsieur is unexpectedly released, and the treacherous sisters are exposed. Although the plot "suggests" a melodramatic development of the action, "The Maids" are built in a completely different, grotesque way. In the absence of Madame, the sisters take turns portraying her, so transforming into their mistress that they forget about themselves, temporarily freeing themselves from the unenviable role that they play in reality. This is a play about life, in which dream and reality collide in an ugly form. Genet's dramaturgy, as a rule, presents completely fictitious, incredible events in which the real world familiar to us is bizarrely modified, distorted, which allows the author to express his attitude towards it.

A rrabal and Pinter

Fernando Arrabal

Spanish screenwriter, playwright, film director, actor, novelist and poet. Lives in France since 1955.

The Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal (b. 1932) was fond of Calderón and Brecht in his youth and was greatly influenced by these authors. His first play "Picnic" was staged in 1959 in Paris. The characters of the play Sapo and Sepo are soldiers of two warring armies. Sapo takes Sepo prisoner. It turns out that the soldiers have a lot in common.

Both do not want to kill anyone, both are ignorant in military affairs, and participation in battles has not separated them from the habits of peaceful life: one knits a sweater between skirmishes, and the other makes rag flowers. In the end, the heroes come to the conclusion that all other soldiers also do not want to fight, and they must say this out loud and go home. Inspired, they dance to cheerful music, but at that moment the machine-gun fire knocks them down, making it impossible to fulfill their plan. The absurdity of the play's situation is deepened by the fact that Sapo's parents also act in it, suddenly arriving at the front to visit their son.

Arrabal's work is characterized by the opposition of the deliberate childishness of his heroes to the cruelty of the circumstances in which they have to exist. Among the most famous works of the playwright are The Two Executioners (1956), The First Communion (1966), The Garden of Delight (1969), The Inquisition (1982).

Harold Pinter

English playwright, poet, director, actor, public figure. One of the most influential British playwrights of his time. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2005.

The artistic method of Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008), author of the plays "Birthday" (1957), "The Dumb Waiter" (1957), "The Watchman" (1960), "Landscape" (1969), is close to expressionism. His dark tragicomedies are populated by enigmatic characters whose conversations parody ordinary forms of human communication. The plot, the construction of the plays is in conflict with their apparent plausibility. Looking at the bourgeois world as if through a magnifying glass, Pinter describes in a peculiar way the suffering of people who find themselves on the sidelines of life.

Source - Great illustrated ENCYCLOPEDIA

Theater of the Absurd - Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, Arrabal and Pinter updated: August 31, 2017 by: website

32. Features of the theater of the absurd: origins, representatives, features of the dramatic structure.

Works in the list related to the theater of the absurd:

Beckett: "Waiting for Godot"

Ionesco: Rhinos

Given the pointlessness of the plot retelling of these plays, they are indeed easier to read. Below is a retelling of the plot, but this may not help.

Other representatives:

Kafka: In every introductory article about Kafka, the word "absurd" occurs at least once, but Moskvina, for example, separates Kafka's work and absurdity because of the emphasized logic of events taking place in Kafka's worlds. Camus also shares Kafka and the absurd due to the fact that his work still contains some glimmers of hope, which is unacceptable for absurdity in the understanding of Camus.

Stoppard: "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" is a prime example of absurdist tragicomedy.

Vvedensky and Kharms: domestic representatives. I do not think that they should be cited as an example just like that, given that we have a course in foreign literature, but if asked, mention them so as not to lose face.

Temporary structure:

1843 - Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling was written

1914-1918 - World War I

1916 - emergence of Dadaism

1917 - in the manifesto "New Spirits" Guillaume Apollinaire introduces the term "surrealism"

1939-1945 - World War II

1942 - publication of the essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Camus

1951 - production of "The Bald Singer" by Ionesco

1952 - production of "Chairs" by Ionesco

1953 - production of "Victims of Duty" by Ionesco

1953 - production of "Waiting for Godot" Beckett

1960 - production of Rhinos by Ionesco

1962 - publication of the book "The Theater of the Absurd" by theater critic Martin Esslin

The term "absurd":

Camus: "A world that lends itself to explanation, even the worst one, is familiar to us. But if the universe is suddenly deprived of both illusions and knowledge, a person becomes an outsider in it. A person is banished forever, for he is deprived of the memory of the lost fatherland, and hopes for the promised land. Actually, the feeling of absurdity is this discord between a person and his life, actor and scenery.

"Man is faced with the irrationality of the world. He feels that he desires happiness and rationality. Absurdity is born in this clash between the vocation of man and the unreasonable silence of the world."

"If I accuse an innocent person of a terrible crime, if I declare to a respectable person that he lusts for his own sister, then they will answer me that this is absurd. [...] A respectable person points out the antinomy between the act that I attribute to him and the principles his entire life. "This is absurd" means "this is impossible", and besides, "this is contradictory". If a man armed with a knife attacks a group of machine gunners, I consider his action absurd. But it is so only because of the disproportion between intention and reality , because of the contradiction between the real forces and the goal set [...] Therefore, I have every reason to say that the feeling of absurdity is not born from a simple examination of a fact or impression, but breaks in along with a comparison of the actual state of affairs with some kind of reality , by comparing action with the world lying outside this action. In essence, absurdity is a split. It does not exist in any of the compared elements. It is born in their collision. "

Ionesco: "I still do not really know what the word" absurd " means, except in those cases when it asks about the absurd; and I repeat that those who are not surprised that there are, who do not ask themselves questions about being, those who believe that everything is normal, naturally, while the world touches the supernatural, these people are flawed […] But the ability to be surprised will return, the question of the absurdity of this world cannot but arise, even if there is no answer to it.[... ] Let's try to ascend, at least mentally, to that which is not subject to decay, to the real, that is, to the sacred, and to the ritual, this sacred expressing - and which can be found without artistic creativity.

"Absurdity is something devoid of purpose... A person cut off from his religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots has perished; all his actions are meaningless, absurd, useless."

Esslin: "A good play has a skillfully constructed plot; plot and plot are absent in absurd plays; a good play is valued for its characters and motivations; in absurd plays, characters cannot be recognized; In the end, absurd plays often have no beginning or end; a good play is a mirror of nature and represents its era in subtle sketches; absurd plays reflect dreams and nightmares; good plays are distinguished by accurate dialogue and witty retorts; absurd plays are often incoherent babble. "

In defining the term "absurd" specifically, Esslin cites Camus ("discord between actor and set") and Ionesco ("something devoid of purpose").

Moskvina: judging by the lecture on Proust and Kafka, he perceives absurdity primarily as something illogical and irrational.

General provisions

The theater of the absurd is a type of modern drama based on the concept of a person's total alienation from the physical and social environment. These kinds of plays first appeared in the early 1950s in France and then spread throughout Western Europe and the United States.

The idea of ​​the absurdity of the human lot in a hostile or indifferent world was first developed by A. Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus), who was strongly influenced by S. Kierkegaard, F. Kafka and F. M. Dostoevsky. The roots of the theater of the absurd can be identified in the theoretical and practical activities of representatives of such aesthetic movements of the early 20th century as Dadaism and Surrealism, and in clowning, music hall, comedies by Ch. Chaplin.

On the emergence of a new drama started talking after the Paris premiere of "Bald singer" (The Bald Soprano, 1950) Ionesco and "Waiting for Godot" (Waiting for Godot, 1953) Beckett. Characteristically, in "The Bald Singer" the singer herself does not appear, but two married couples are on stage, whose incoherent, clichéd speech reflects the absurdity of a world in which language makes communication more difficult than it facilitates. In Beckett's play, two tramps are waiting on the road for a certain Godot, who never shows up. In a tragicomic atmosphere of loss and alienation, these two anti-heroes recall incoherent fragments from a past life, experiencing an unconscious sense of danger.

The art of the absurd is a modernist trend that seeks to create an absurd world as a reflection of the real world; for this, naturalistic copies of real life lined up randomly without any connection.

The basis of dramaturgy was the destruction of dramatic material. There is no local and historical concreteness in the plays. The action of a significant part of the plays of the theater of the absurd takes place in small premises, rooms, apartments, completely isolated from the outside world. The temporal sequence of events is destroyed. So, in Ionesco's play "The Bald Singer" (1949), 4 years after death, the corpse turns out to be warm, and they bury it six months after death. Two acts of the play "Waiting for Godot" (1952) are separated by a night, and "perhaps - 50 years." The characters themselves do not know this.

The lack of historical concreteness and temporary chaos are complemented by a violation of the logic in the dialogues. The dialogue is reduced, outside the partner. The characters don't hear each other.

The very name of the plays "The Bald Singer" is also absurd: in this "anti-drama" the bald singer not only does not appear, but is not even mentioned.

They shared with existentialism the idea of ​​the world as chaos, any collision of a person with the world gives rise to a conflict, distrust of communication.

They bring the principle to artistic expression - they show the absurd by means of the absurd.

The absurdists borrowed nonsense and a combination of the incompatible from the surrealists and transferred these techniques to the stage. With scrupulous accuracy, S. Dali wrote Venus de Milo on one of his paintings. With less care, he depicts the boxes located on her torso. Each of the details is similar and intelligible. The combination of the torso of Venus with drawers deprives the picture of any logic.

Part of the proposals are in an absurd combination.

The theater of the absurd wanted to show the real world.

A person in the theater of the absurd is incapable of action. The heroes of works of art of the absurd cannot complete a single action, are unable to carry out a single idea.

Personalities in the plays are leveled, devoid of individuality, similar to mechanisms. Often the heroes of the plays have the same names, according to the figures of the theater of the absurd, people are indistinguishable from each other.

Ridiculous characters act as a hero, they do not know anything about the world and about themselves, declassed elements, or philistines, there are no heroes who have ideals and see the meaning of life. People are doomed to exist in an incomprehensible and unchanging world of chaos and absurdity.

In an effort to emphasize the atmosphere of ugliness, pathology that surrounds a person, Beckett depicts anti-aestheticism, the insanity of life in his plays. In order to disgust readers and viewers to the heroes of the play "Waiting for Gordo", Beckett insistently repeats that one of them "stinks at the mouth" and the other "stinks feet".

Numerous plays of the theater of the absurd in the first decade (1949-1958) are determined not by the plot of the works, but by the general atmosphere of idealism and chaos recreated on the stage.

The term "Theatre of the Absurd" is introduced by Esslin in the essay of the same name: it was he who saw the similarity between the absurdist philosophy of Camus expressed in The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebellious Man and the plays of Ionesco, Beckett, Adamov and Genet.

Ionesco on the theater of the absurd

“It seems to me that half of the theatrical works created before us are absurd to the extent that, for example, it is comic; after all, comedy is absurd. And it seems to me that the progenitor of this theater, its great ancestor, could be Shakespeare, who makes his hero to say: "The world is a story told by an idiot, full of noise and fury, devoid of any meaning and meaning. "It can probably be said that the theater of the absurd dates back to even more distant times and that Oedipus was also an absurd character, since what happened to him was absurd, but with one difference: Oedipus broke laws unconsciously and was punished for breaking them. But laws and norms existed. Even if they were broken. In our theater, the characters seem to what they do not cling to, and if I may quote myself, then the old people in my play "Chairs" in a world without laws and norms, without rules and transcendental concepts. I wanted to show the same thing in a more cheerful spirit in a play like " Bald singer", for example.

It seems to me that the word "absurd" is too strong: it is impossible to call anything absurd if there is no clear idea of ​​what is not absurd, if you do not know the meaning of what is not absurd. But I can say that the characters in "Chairs" were looking for a meaning that they did not find, they were looking for the law, they were looking for the highest form of behavior, they were looking for something that cannot be called otherwise than divinity.

The theater of the absurd was also a theater of struggle - and that is exactly what it was for me - against the bourgeois theater, which he sometimes parodied, and against the realist theater. I have maintained and continue to maintain that reality is not realistic, and I have criticized and fought against the realistic, social realist, Brechtian theater. I have already said that realism is not reality, that realism is a theatrical school that treats reality in a certain way, just like romanticism or surrealism. In the bourgeois theater, I did not like that it was engaged in trifles: business, economics, politics, adultery, entertainment in the Pascalian sense of the word. It can probably be said that the theater of adultery in the 19th and early 20th centuries originates from Racine, with the only huge difference that in Racine people died from adultery, he killed. And for post-Rasinov authors, this is nothing more than a trifle. Another drawback of the realistic theater is that it is ideological, that is, to some extent a deceitful, dishonest theater. Not only because it is not known what reality is, not only because not a single person of science is able to say what “real” means, but also because the realistic author sets himself the task of proving something, recruiting people, spectators , readers on behalf of an ideology in which the author wants to convince us, but which does not become any more true from this. Every realistic theater is a fraudulent theater, even and especially if the author is sincere. Genuine sincerity comes from the farthest, from the depths of the irrational, the unconscious. Talking about oneself is much more convincing and truthful than talking about others, than drawing people into always controversial political associations. When I talk about myself, I'm talking about everyone. A real poet does not lie, does not dissemble, does not want to recruit anyone, because a genuine poet does not deceive, but invents, and this is completely different.

Characters without metaphysical roots, perhaps in search of a forgotten center, a point of support that lies outside them. Beckett wrote about the same thing, more coldly, perhaps more clairvoyantly. We wanted to bring to the stage and show the audience the very existential existence of a person in its fullness, integrity, in its deep tragedy, its fate, that is, awareness of the absurdity of the world. The same story "told by an idiot"

Esslin on the theater of the absurd

"It is worth emphasizing that the playwrights whose plays are considered under the general title of "the theater of the absurd" do not represent any self-proclaimed or self-sufficient school. On the contrary, each of these writers is a person who considers himself lonely, outsider, circumcised and isolated from the world, existing in his own sphere. Each of them has his own idea of ​​form and content; their roots, origins, experience. If they are also understandable and, despite everything, have in common with others, this is due to the fact that their work is a true mirror reflecting anxieties, feelings and thoughts of an important hypostasis of the life of the modern West.

A distinctive feature of this trend is that, rejected by past centuries, considered unnecessary and discredited, our century has swept aside as cheap and childish illusions. The decline of religion was masked until the end of World War II by a surrogate belief in progress, nationalism and other totalitarian delusions. All of this was shattered by the war. In 1942, Albert Camus coolly asked why, if life has lost its meaning, a person no longer sees a way out in suicide.

The feeling of metaphysical suffering and the absurdity of the human lot in general terms is the theme of the plays by Beckett, Adamov, Ionesco, Genet [...]. But this is not the only theme of the theater of the absurd. Such a perception of the meaninglessness of life, rejection of the devaluation of ideals, purity, purposefulness is the theme of the plays by Giraudou, Anouilh, Salacre, Sartre and, of course, Camus. But these playwrights essentially differ from the playwrights of the absurd in their sense of the irrationalism of the human condition in a very clear and logically reasoned form. The theater of the absurd seeks to express the meaninglessness of life and the impossibility of a rational approach to it by an open rejection of the rational schemes of discursive ideas. While Sartre or Camus put new content into old forms, the theater of the absurd takes a step forward in an effort to achieve a unity of basic ideas and forms of expression. In a sense, in the theater of Sartre and Camus, artistic expression is not adequate to their philosophy, different from the way the theater of the absurd resorts.

The theater of the absurd strives for a radical devaluation of language: poetry must be born from the concrete material images of the stage itself. In this concept, the element of language plays an important but subordinate role, but what happens on and off the stage often contradicts the words that the characters say. [...]

The theater of the absurd is part of the "anti-literary" movement of our time, expressed in abstract painting, which abandoned the "literary" elements in the paintings; in the "new French novel" based on the subject image and refusing empathy and anthropomorphism.

Esslin on Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"

"Beckett's plays require a careful approach in order to avoid the pitfalls that simplify their meaning. This does not mean that we cannot undertake a thorough study, isolating the series of images and themes, trying to understand their structural basis. Results will be easier to achieve by following the author's idea, knowing what can be obtained, if not answers to his questions, then at least understand the questions he asks.

"Waiting for Godot" has no plot; a static situation is being investigated. "Nothing happens, no one comes, no one leaves, it's scary."

On a country road, near a tree, two old tramps Vladimir and Estragon are waiting. At the beginning of the first act - an open situation. At the end of the first act, they are informed that Monsieur Godot, whom they believe they are to meet, cannot come, but he will definitely come tomorrow. The second act repeats this situation. The same boy comes and reports the same thing.

There is an element of crude, grassroots humor in the play, characteristic of the music hall or circus tradition: Estragon loses his trousers; a gag with three hats stretched out for a whole episode, which the tramps put on, then take off, then pass to each other, creating an endless confusion, and the abundance of this confusion causes laughter. The author of a talented dissertation on Beckett, Niklaus Gessner, lists about forty-five remarks indicating that one of the characters is losing the vertical position that symbolizes human dignity.

Many ingenious attempts have been made to establish the etymology of the name Godot, to find out whether Beckett's intention was conscious or unconscious to make him the object of Vladimir and Estragon's search. It can be assumed that Godot is a weakened form of God, a diminutive name similar to Pierre - Pierrot, Charles - Charlot plus an association with the image of Charlie Chaplin, his little man, who is called Charlot in France; his bowler hat is worn by all four characters in the play.

Whether Godot means the intervention of supernatural forces, or whether he symbolizes the mythical basis of being, and his arrival is expected to change the situation, or whether he combines both, in any case, his role is secondary. The theme of the play is not Godot, but the act of waiting as a characteristic aspect of the human condition. Throughout life, we are waiting for something, and Godot is the object of our expectation, whether it be an event or a thing, or a person, or death. Moreover, in the act of waiting, the flow of time is felt in its purest, most visual form. If we are active, then we tend to forget about the passage of time, not paying attention to it, but if we are passive, then we are faced with the action of time. As Beckett writes in a study of Proust: "This is not an escape from hours and days. Not from tomorrow, not from yesterday, because yesterday we were deformed or deformed by us. ... Yesterday is not a milestone that we have passed, but a sign on the beaten track of years, our hopeless fate, heavy and dangerous, it sits inside us ... We are not only more tired of each yesterday, we become different and by no means more desperate than we were. The run of time confronts us with the main problem of being: the nature of our "I", a constantly changing subject in time, which is in perpetual motion, and therefore is always beyond our control. "Man can perceive reality only as a retrospective hypothesis. A slow, dull, monochrome process of transfusion into a vessel containing the fluid of the past time, multicolored, driven by the phenomenon of this time, is constantly going on in him."

Expectation is the recognition by experience of the action of time, which is constantly changing. In addition, since nothing really happens, the passage of time is just an illusion. The incessant energy of time speaks against itself, it is aimless and therefore ineffective and meaningless. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And this is the terrifying immutability of the world. "The tears of the world are a constant value. If someone starts crying, it means that somewhere someone has stopped crying." One day is like another, and we die as if we were never born. Pozzo speaks about this in the last monologue-explosion: “How much can you scoff, asking questions about the damned time? .. It’s not enough for you that ... every day is like another, one fine day he was numb, and another fine day I went blind, and such a beautiful day will come when we all go deaf, and on some beautiful day we were born, and the day will come and we will die, and there will be another day, exactly the same, and after it another, the same ... They give birth right on the graves : only the day will dawn, and now it is already night again.

Soon Vladimir agrees with this: "They give birth in agony right on the graves. And below, in the pit, the gravedigger is already preparing his shovel."

When Beckett was asked what the theme of "Waiting for Godot" was, he sometimes quoted Blessed Augustine: "Augustine has a wonderful saying. I would like to quote it in Latin. It sounds better in Latin than in English: thieves was saved. Do not take into account that the other was condemned to eternal torment.” Sometimes Beckett added: "I am interested in some ideas, even if I do not believe in them ... This saying has an amazing image. It affects"

A characteristic feature of the play is the suggestion that the best way out of the vagabonds' situation - and they say this - is to prefer suicide to the expectation of Godot. "We thought about it when the world was young, in the nineties. ... Join hands and jump off the Eiffel Tower among the first. Then we were still quite respectable. 60 But now it's too late, they won't even let us in there." Committing suicide is their favorite solution, impracticable due to their incompetence and lack of tools for suicide. The fact that suicide fails every time, Vladimir and Estragon explain by expectation or feign this expectation. "I wish I knew what he would propose. Then we would know whether to do it or not." The hope of salvation may simply be a way to escape the suffering and pain that contemplation of the human condition creates. This is an amazing parallel between the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and the creative intuition of Beckett, who never consciously expressed existentialist views. If for Beckett, as for Sartre, the moral obligation of a person is to face life, realizing that the essence of being is nothing, and freedom and the need to constantly create oneself make one choice after another, then Godot, in the terminology Sartre, may well personify "bad faith": "The first act of bad faith is to evade what is impossible to evade, to evade evasion."

Despite possible parallels, we should not go far in trying to attribute Beckett to any philosophical school. The unusual and magnificence of "Waiting for Godot" is that the play involves many interpretations from the standpoint of philosophical, religious, psychological. In addition, this is a poem about time, the fragility and mystery of life, the paradox of variability and stability, necessity and absurdity"

Esslin on "Rhino" Ionesco

"The world recognition of Ionesco, as the central figure of the theater of the absurd, began with the "Rhino".

The hero of "Rhino" is Beranger.

Beranger in Rhinoceros works in the production department of a publishing house of legal literature, as Ionesco worked at one time. He is in love with his colleague Mademoiselle Desi. Her name is reminiscent of Beranger's first love, Dani. He has a friend Jean. On Sunday morning they saw, or think they saw, one or perhaps two rhinoceroses rushing along the main street of the town. Gradually, rhinos are becoming more and more. The inhabitants have contracted a mysterious disease, rhinocerosity, which not only turns them into rhinos, but gives rise to a desire to turn into these strong, aggressive and thick-skinned animals. In the finale in the entire city, only Berenger and Desi remain human. But Desi cannot resist the temptation to become like everyone else. Berenger is left alone; the last man, he courageously declares that he will not capitulate.

Rhino is known to reflect Ionesco's feelings before leaving Romania in 1938, when more and more of his acquaintances joined the fascist Iron Guard movement. He said: “As always, I indulged in my thoughts. All my life I remember how I was stunned by the possibility of manipulating opinion, its instantaneous evolution, the power of its infection, turning into an epidemic. People allow themselves to suddenly accept a new religion, doctrine, surrender to fanaticism. ... At such moments, we become witnesses of a real mental mutation.I don’t know if you noticed, if people don’t share your views, and you stop understanding them, and they stop understanding you, you get the impression of confronting monsters, for example rhinoceroses.They mix sincerity with cruelty. They will kill you with a clear conscience. Over the past quarter century, history has shown that people not only became like rhinos, but turned into them."

At the premiere in Düsseldorf at the theater Schauspielhaus the German public immediately recognized the arguments of the characters, who felt that they should follow the general trend: the audience heard or used such arguments themselves at a time when the German people could not resist the temptations of Hitler. Some characters in the play wished to become thick-skinned: they admired the brutal strength and simplicity that arose when too weak human feelings were suppressed. Others did so because it would be possible to turn rhinos back into humans if one could learn to understand their way of thinking. She also a group, especially Desi, just couldn't afford to be different from the majority. Rhinocerosity is not only a disease called totalitarianism, characteristic of the right and left, but also the desire for conformity. "Rhinoceros" is a witty play. It is full of brilliant effects; it differs from most of Ionesco's plays in that it gives the impression of being understandable. London Times posted a review titled "Ionesco's play is clear to everyone."

But is it really that easy to understand? Bernard Francuel in CahiersduCollé gedePataphysique noticed in a witty article that Beranger's final confession and his previous reflections on the superiority of humans over rhinoceroses are strangely reminiscent of cries of "Long live the white race!" in the plays "The Future in Eggs" and "Victims of Duty". If we examine the logical train of thought of Beranger in a conversation with a friend Dudar, we will see that he defends his desire to remain a man with the same outbursts instinctive feelings that he condemns in rhinos, and when he notices his mistake, he only corrects himself, replacing "instinct" with intuition. Moreover, at the very end, Berenger bitterly regrets that it seems to him that he cannot turn into a rhinoceros! His latest bold declaration of faith in humanism is nothing more than a fox's contempt for grapes that are too green. Berenger's farcical and tragicomic challenge is far from genuine heroism, and the final meaning of the play is not as clear as some critics have thought. The play shows the absurdity of the challenge to the same extent as the absurdity of conformism, the tragedy of an individualist who cannot merge with a happy mass of people who are not as sensitive as he is, the feeling of an artist who feels like a pariah. These are the themes of Kafka and Thomas Mann. To a certain extent, Beranger's final situation is reminiscent of the victim of another metamorphosis - Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Metamorphosis. Samza turns into a huge insect, the rest do not change; Beranger's last man finds himself in the same situation as Samsa, for now it is normal to turn into a rhinoceros, to remain a man is monstrous. In the final monologue, Berenger regrets that he has white soft skin and dreams of rough, dark green, shell-like skin. "Only I am one monster, only me!" he screams until he finally decides to remain human.

Rhinoceros is a pamphlet against conformism and insensitivity (the latter is definitely present in the play), a mockery of the individualist, who only makes a sacrifice of necessity, emphasizing the superiority of his finely organized artistic nature. Where the play goes beyond propagandistic simplification, it turns into proof of the fatal complexity and absurdity of human life. And only a performance that reveals the duality of Beranger's position in the finale can give a complete picture of the play."

Looking through the performances of some playwrights, for example, Eugene Ionesco, one can come across such a phenomenon in the art world as the theater of the absurd. To understand what contributed to the emergence of this direction, you need to turn to the history of the 50s of the last century.

What is the theater of the absurd (drama of the absurd)

In the 1950s, productions appeared for the first time, the plot of which seemed absolutely meaningless to the audience. The main play was the alienation of man from the social and physical environment. In addition, during the action on stage, the actors managed to combine incompatible concepts.

New plays destroyed all the laws of drama and did not recognize any authorities. Thus, all cultural traditions were challenged. This new theatrical phenomenon, which to some extent denied the existing political and social system, was the theater of the absurd. was first used by theater critic Martin Esslin only in 1962. But some playwrights disagreed with this term. For example, Eugene Ionesco proposed to call the new phenomenon "the theater of mockery."

History and sources

Several French and one Irish authors stood at the origins of the new direction. Eugene Ionesco was able to win the greatest popularity from the audience and Arthur Adamov also made his contribution to the development of the genre.

The idea of ​​the theater of the absurd first came to E. Ionesco. The playwright tried to learn English using a self-study textbook. It was then that he drew attention to the fact that many of the dialogues and lines in the textbook are completely incoherent. He saw that in ordinary words there is a lot of absurdity, which often turns even smart ones into completely meaningless ones.

However, to say that only a few French playwrights were involved in the emergence of a new direction would not be entirely honest. After all, the existentialists spoke about the absurdity of human existence. For the first time, this theme was fully developed by A. Camus, whose work was also significantly influenced by F. Dostoevsky. However, it was E. Ionesco and S. Beckett who designated and brought to the stage the theater of the absurd.

Features of the new theater

As already mentioned, the new direction in theatrical art denied classical dramaturgy. Its common characteristics are:

Fantastic elements that coexist with reality in the play;

The emergence of mixed genres: tragicomedy, comic melodrama, tragic farce - which began to displace the "pure" ones;

Use in productions of elements that are typical for other types of art (choir, pantomime, musical);

In contrast to the traditional dynamic action on the stage, as it was previously in classical productions, static prevails in the new direction;

One of the main changes that characterizes the theater of the absurd is the speech of the characters of the new productions: it seems that they communicate with themselves, because the partners do not listen and do not respond to each other's remarks, but simply utter their monologues into the void.

Types of absurdity

The fact that the new direction in the theater had several founders at once explains the division of absurdity into types:

1. Nihilistic absurdity. These are the works of the already well-known E. Ionescu and Hildesheimer. Their plays are distinguished by the fact that the audience fails to understand the subtext of the game throughout the entire performance.

2. The second kind of absurdity reflects the universal chaos and, as one of its main parts, man. In this vein, the works of S. Beckett and A. Adamov were created, which sought to emphasize the lack of harmony in human life.

3. Satirical absurdity. As it becomes clear from the name itself, the representatives of this trend Dürrenmatt, Grass, Frisch and Havel tried to ridicule the absurdity of their contemporary social order and human aspirations.

Key works of the theater of the absurd

What is the theater of the absurd, the audience learned after the premiere of "The Bald Singer" by E. Ionesco and "Waiting for Godot" by S. Beckett took place in Paris.

A characteristic feature of the production of "The Bald Singer" is that the one who should have been the main character does not appear on the stage. There are only two married couples on stage, whose actions are absolutely static. Their speech is inconsistent and full of cliches, which further reflects the picture of the absurdity of the world around them. Such incoherent, but absolutely typical remarks are repeated by the characters over and over again. Language, which by its very nature is designed to make communication easy, in the play only gets in the way.

In Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, two completely inactive characters are constantly waiting for a certain Godot. Not only does this character never appear throughout the entire action, besides, no one knows him. It is noteworthy that the name of this unknown hero is associated with the English word God, i.e. "God". The heroes remember incoherent fragments from their lives, besides, they are not left with a feeling of fear and uncertainty, because there is simply no way of action that could protect a person.

Thus, the theater of the absurd proves that the meaning of human existence can only be found in realizing that it has no meaning.

Ticket number 24.

Features of the theater of the absurd: origins, representatives, features of the dramatic structure (S. Beckett, E. Ionesco).

theater of the absurd- a direction in Western European dramaturgy and theater that arose in the middle of the 20th century. In absurdist plays, the world is presented as a meaningless, illogical conglomeration of facts, deeds, words, and destinies. The principles of absurdism were most fully embodied in the dramas The Bald Singer (1950) by playwright Eugene Ionesco and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

It is believed that the theater of the absurd is rooted in the philosophy of Dadaism, poetry from non-existent words and avant-garde art of the 1910s and 20s. Despite sharp criticism, the genre gained popularity after the Second World War, which pointed to the significant uncertainty of human life. The introduced term was also criticized, there were attempts to redefine it as "anti-theater" and "new theater". The "theater of the absurd" (or "new theatre") movement apparently originated in Paris as an avant-garde phenomenon associated with small theaters in the Latin Quarter, and after some time gained worldwide recognition.

In practice, the theater of the absurd denies realistic characters, situations, and all other relevant theatrical devices. Time and place are uncertain and changeable, even the simplest causal relationships are destroyed. Senseless intrigues, repetitive dialogues and aimless chatter, dramatic inconsistency of actions - everything is subordinated to one goal: to create a fabulous, and maybe even terrible, mood.

Surrealistic theatricality influenced the formation of the drama of the absurd: the use of bizarre costumes and masks, meaningless rhymes, provocative appeals to the audience, etc. The plot of the play, the behavior of the characters are incomprehensible, similar and sometimes designed to shock the audience. Reflecting the absurdity of mutual understanding, communication, dialogue, the play in every possible way emphasizes the lack of meaning in the language, and in the form of a kind of game without rules, it becomes the main carrier of chaos.

For the absurdists, the dominant quality of being was not contraction, but disintegration. The second significant difference from the previous drama is in relation to the person. Man in the absurd world is the personification of passivity and helplessness. He can't comprehend anything but his helplessness. He is deprived of freedom of choice. The absurdists developed their own concept of drama - anti-drama. The drama of the absurd is not a discussion about the absurd, but a demonstration of the absurd.

Eugene Ionesco- pioneer of absurdism in French drama.

The situations, characters and dialogues of his plays follow the images and associations of a dream rather than everyday reality. The language, with the help of amusing paradoxes, clichés, sayings and other word games, is freed from the usual meanings and associations. The surrealism of Ionesco's plays originates from circus clowning, films by Ch. Chaplin, B. Keaton, the Marx brothers, ancient and medieval farce. A typical technique is the heaping of objects that threaten to engulf the actors; things come to life, and people turn into inanimate objects. There is no catharsis in the absurdist plays, E. Ionesco rejects any ideology, but the plays were brought to life by a deep concern for the fate of the language and its speakers.

Premiere of "Bald Singer" took place in Paris. The success of The Bald Singer was scandalous, no one understood anything, but it gradually became good form to watch performances of absurdist plays.

There is no bald singer in the anti-play (such is the genre designation). But there is an English couple of Smiths and their neighbor by the name of Martin, as well as the maid Mary and the captain of the fire brigade, who accidentally dropped in on the Smiths for a minute. He is afraid of being late for the fire, which will start at so many hours and so many minutes. There are also clocks that strike as they please, which, apparently, means that time is not lost, it simply does not exist, everyone is in their own time dimension and, accordingly, is talking nonsense.

The playwright has several methods of inflating the absurd. Here is the confusion in the sequence of events, and the piling up of the same names and surnames, and the spouses not recognizing each other, and the castling of hosts-guests, guests-hosts, countless repetitions of the same epithet, a stream of oxymorons, an obviously simplified construction of phrases, as in the English textbook for beginners. In a word, the dialogues are really funny.

The situations, characters and dialogues of his plays follow the images and associations of a dream rather than everyday reality. The language, with the help of amusing paradoxes, clichés, sayings and other word games, is freed from the usual meanings and associations. The surrealism of Ionesco's plays originates from circus clowning, films by Ch. Chaplin, B. Keaton, the Marx brothers, ancient and medieval farce. A typical technique is the heaping of objects that threaten to engulf the actors; things come to life, and people turn into inanimate objects.

When asked about the meaning of his dramaturgy, Ionesco replied that he wanted to “explain all the absurdity of existence, the separation of man from his transcendental roots”, to show that “when talking, people no longer know what they wanted to say, and that they are talking so that nothing to say that language, instead of bringing them closer, only separates them even more”, to reveal “the unusual and strange nature of our existence” and “to parade the theater, that is, the world”.

The task of his dramaturgy is to create a ferocious, unrestrained theatre, he proposes to return to the theatrical origins, namely to the old puppet shows, which use caricatured implausible images that emphasize the rudeness of reality itself. Ionesco proclaimed a sharp disagreement with the existing theater, of all playwrights, he recognized only Shakespeare. Modern theater, in his opinion, is not able to express the existential state of a person. The theater must go as far as possible from realism, which only obscures the essence of human life.

BECKETT.

Beckett was Joyce's secretary and learned to write from him. “Waiting for Godot” is one of the basic texts of absurdism. Entropy is presented in a state of expectation, and this expectation is a process, the beginning and end of which we do not know, i.e. it makes no sense. The state of expectation is the dominant in which the heroes exist, without thinking whether it is necessary to wait for Godot. They are in a passive state.

The heroes (Volodya and Estragon) are not completely sure that they are waiting for Godot in the very place where they need to be. When the next day after night they come to the same place to the withered tree, Estragon doubts that this is the same place. The set of items is the same, only the tree blossomed overnight. Estragon's shoes, which he left on the road yesterday, are in the same place, but he claims that they are larger and of a different color.

"Waiting for Godot"

Identification with Christ, the redeemer of human sins, with God the Father. "There is nothing more real than nothing." This is the symbol of Nothing. Nothing for existentialists is a plus sign. The central characters are Vladimir and Estragon, tramps. They are tired of waiting, and they can not wait. A boy appears and informs him that Godot's arrival has been delayed again. Lucky and Potso are figures, realists, pragmatists, personify the vanity of life. Vl. and E. are forced to eat pasture, they have no home, they spend the night in the open. Lucky and Potso are surrounded by objects of civilization. But all the characters find only diseases in the process of existence.

Vladimir and Estragon are distinguished by their emasculated consciousness, they lack education, and Potso and Lucky even think on command. Vladimir and Estragon are friends, but they ask themselves whether it would be better for them to live apart. Potso and Lucky also need each other. Different types of human and human development.

None of the options justifies itself. Often the characters, if they are looking for something else, are on the other side of the border. Vladimir and Estragon like to peer into their own things. They hope to find something there, but they find nothing. They don't try to create something themselves. To see in Nothing not only an expression of weakness, but also an expression of strength.

Beckett - the decline of human nature. Ionesco - the decline of the human spirit.

It's hard to argue with the statement that this "mad, crazy, crazy" world has gone a little crazy. And if someone else doubts this, it is worth watching at least one of the wonderful films that are collected in this "top ten". However, it is not surprising if someone wants to see or review all the films. You definitely won't regret it!

1. The film "Love and Death"

directed by Woody Allen
Undoubtedly a cult comedy from the master of this genre, Woody Allen. Just a fountain of sparkling and at the same time intellectual humor on a very interesting topic. The topic is next. A certain Russian landowner from a district town is trying in every possible way to evade the call to fight Napoleon. Because all he has in his arsenal is a long and sharp tongue. Peerless self-irony, philosophy for dummies, politics and again politics - made this film forever beloved, especially in our country. Whether the hero managed to avoid the army or not, see for yourself.

2. The film "Log"

directed by Jan Švankmajer
A similar level of surrealism can only be found in Lynch. Jan Švankmajer translated a Czech fairy tale into screen language and it looks funny. A young childless couple, out of hopelessness, had the idea to have a stump of a tree instead of a child ... Which grows quickly and eats a lot, and it eats everything. Even a man for a sweet soul. And if the newly-made parents take care of their log in every possible way, then their wonderful neighbors, on the contrary, do not pay any attention to their "living" daughter. As they say, there is a contrast.

3. The film "Dress"

directed by Alex Van Warmerdam
How admirable is sometimes the imagination of the creators, how far their visualization comes! An ordinary dress, even in bright colors, but what a hype around it! People just go crazy, tear it apart and still it pushes everyone to madness. It excites some, leads to the death of others, but at first glance it is just a rag. What will happen next with him?

4. The film "City Zero"

directed by Karen Shakhnazarov
The plot of the film seems to have been written off from some novel by the Strugatsky brothers, where the hero finds himself in an unknown city, in which everything is topsy-turvy, different concepts and a completely different morality. As in a biblical parable, he is presented with a head on a platter, only the head is not someone else's, but his own ... And there is only one way out, you need to urgently get used to it, so as not to just go crazy. However, there is also wisdom in the film. Which in the end will be pulled apart by all and sundry.

5. The film "The investigation into the case of a citizen beyond all suspicion"

directed by Elio Petri
The film that won an Oscar. Comedy! Not a drama about Jews or a hard war. That alone says that he's worth something. And there really is something to see. Just imagine - the hero kills his woman, leaves evidence and goes to surrender to the police. In any other case, he would have already been condemned, but it was not there. The fact is that he himself is the chief of police and no one wants to even assume that it was him. Who said he wants to go to jail? No, he has other plans...

6. The film "Ball of firefighters"

directed by Milos Forman
The last film of the famous Czechoslovak director filmed in his homeland. And knowing this, it is already possible to assume that they could catch fire. That all this red absurdity, this serious circus is like a mirror of the communist regime in which the country then lived. Brave guys, excellent firefighters really set out to hold their own beauty contest at the holiday!

7. The film "Black cat, white cat"

directed by Emir Kusturica
Sparkling, unrestrained, crazy comedy from the genius of Kusturica! Gypsy fun will raise the dead from the grave, and what does it do with the living ... Here they shoot and sing at the same time, they love and steal brides, and they will do everything for the sake of money. Two old mafiosi are fast asleep while their children fight furiously. But for the sake of the happiness of the young, they will, of course, wake up.

8. The film "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Atomic Bomb"

directed by Stanley Kubrick
An intellectual, but no less absurd comedy from the cult director Stanley Kubrick. Imagine a very real situation: the country is allegedly in danger and a military general sends nuclear bombers to his enemy. But the danger is imaginary, and the planes are already in the air approaching the enemy's borders. And here it also turns out that the enemy has an automatic response - and the country that sent the bombers may be wiped from the Earth to hell ... Have you imagined the seriousness of the situation? It's a tragedy! But not in this case.

9. The film "Castle"

director Alexei Balabanov
The film is, of course, based on the famous novel by Franz Kafka. Arriving at his destination, the hero discovers that no one is waiting for him and no one needs him here. Metaphorically speaking, a castle under a castle. However, curiosity seizes him, he decides to stop here and try to find out what's wrong. He stays so long that he even manages to get married. But it won't make any sense. Or is he just not paying attention? Balabanov's phantasmagoria, ghostly plot and clumsy heroes, motley texture of the surrounding world, it would seem that everything is there. But where is the answer then?

10 Tootsie Movie

directed by Sydney Pollack
Everything is very simple. The guy fails to gain a foothold in the film business, he is not taken anywhere. Then he dresses up as a woman and gets the desired role. But in order to play, he needs to stop being himself. But he has a girlfriend, and she, of course, has a father. How then to be? In addition, dad suddenly began to like him in a new image ... An awkward situation, isn't it. And nobody knows what will happen when the truth comes out. A crazy comedy starring Dustin Hoffman and charming Jessica Lange.

For those who want something more serious, we have collected.