Theatre of the Absurd strays from the realism of playwrights like Henrik Ibsen and throws us into a world where people can turn into rhinoceroses by choice and one man is left to stand alone against a legion of horned animals. Ionesco and Beckett and others didn’t give themselves the name of absurdists, and many of the writers who fall into that category never liked to call their style of theatre, “Theatre of the Absurd.” Point taken.īut hey, history has deemed them as such, and Rhinoceros fits the criteria. Pause! A brief public service announcement regarding labels: most writers do not like being labeled as one particular thing or another. Many of the playwrights who are categorized as absurdists (e.g., Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet) draw directly from their experiences of war, fascism, and mass destruction that took place in Europe before and during World War II. (Well sure, in fairness, not all absurdists are from France, but it seems to be a major hub for that sort of thing).Īs ridiculous as it might sound, the Theatre of the Absurd has its roots in pretty serious events.

The term refers to a particular type of play which first became popular during the 1950s and 1960s and which presented on stage the philosophy articulated by French philosopher Albert Camus in his 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he defines the human condition as basically meaningless.”Īh, yes, the French and their ability to write about the meaninglessness of life. “The ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ is a term coined by Hungarian-born critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of his 1962 book on the subject. What’s that again? Let’s start us off with a Theatre Database quote:

Rhinoceros beckett