Describe the theatre of Samuel Beckett and absurdist drama. What distinguishes it from previous art forms?
What will be an ideal response?
ANSWER:The
movement developed around 1950 in Europe. Unlike earlier modernist movements,
absurdism was a designation created by a critic rather than by artists consciously working
toward a common goal.
These absurdist playwrights believed that making rational and meaningful choices was
impossible in an irrational universe.
They created theatre whose structure abandoned cause-and-effect relationships for
associational patterns, reflecting chaos and lack of order, logic, or certainty.
Beckett's plays embrace themes of loneliness, alienation, codependency, the inadequacy
of language, and the absence of objective meaning.
Beckett's plays increasingly reduced the scope of action and means of expression to those
absolutely essential for projecting his vision. This limited scope of action intensifies the
importance of the gestures, stage business, pauses, and language he has scripted in his
plays.
The form, structure, and mood of Beckett's plays cannot be separated from their
meaning. They explore a state of being rather than develop an action.
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