The Theatre of the Absurd

There is no organised movement, no school of artists, who claim the label for themselves. A good many playwrights who have been classed under this label, when asked if they belong to the Theatre of the Absurd, will indigniantly reply that they belong to no such movement - and quite rightly so. For each of the playwrights concerned seeks to express no more and no less his own personal vision of the world.

When the plays of Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, and Adamov first appeared on the stage they puzzled and outraged most critics as well audiences. And no wonder. These plays flout all the standards by which drama has been judged for many centuries; they must therefore appear as a provocation to people who have come into the theatre expecting to find what they would recognize as a well-made play. A well-made play is expected to present characters that are well-observed and convincingly motivated: these plays often contain hardly any recognizable human beings and present completely unmotivated actions.

Absurd (Samuel Beckett)

Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde writer, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human culture, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.

Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd".