"Anti-theatre"

What is the point of life? Where did we come from? Is there no God?

These are some of the questions that absurd theatre tries to provoke its audiences into thinking.

     The idea of absurd theatre has its roots in philosopher Albert Camus' writings of existentialism.

This style of theatre was thought of after World War Two.  The senseless killing during the war made people recognize how precarious and illogical life can be, and playwrights wanted this reflected in their work,  in order to reflect the current reality in life, but also to inspire people to evaluate every part of their lives.

     The purpose of absurd theatre

     To represent the notion that life is absurd, and meaningless or unknown, and this in turn troubles man. Therefore, since humans have no known purpose:

- Logical arguments and dialogue becomes nonsensical and cliched as well, and are often used just to create noise onstage.

- Long silences are often used to convey meaninglessness as well.

- Plot structures aren't realistic; they focus on the idea of anything logical or illogical being able to happen to a character, instead of character development (characters often have little depth, and are stereotypes of some sort).

•  An example of this illogical dialogue is in Harold Pinter's, The Homecoming (A man brings his wife home to his family for a visit after many years. His brothers and father lost his mother when they were younger, so they've been deprived of a mother figure for a long time. She proceeds to seduce each of her husband's brothers, and she begins filling their empty role of mother. The whole family decides, without asking her, that she will live with them and not with her husband, and will earn her board by selling her body. This is also my favourite play). In this scene, the wife and a brother fight over a glass of water:  http://youtu.be/nv4-XI1hD9o?t=2m4s.

• Another example in the Homecoming is when one character drops dead in front of them, the family barely acknowledges the body's presence, even though it would be logical for them to express shock and grief.

    Absurd theatre usually has a cyclical plot, where the ending ends at the same place that the play begins. This is to represent the idea that change isn't reality, but only an illusion and that life is repetitious.

    Even though absurd theatre is nonsensical, it always has a theme or point that it is trying to get across.

   Absurd theatre is my absolute favourite. It's interesting to watch, and if you watch it with friends, then absurd theatre can provide a really great theatre discussion afterwards.

   The downside is if you have to analyze the text of an absurd play without having seen it, and that can be really difficult when you're trying to understand a character while they're talking about the most random things and having the weirdest arguments.

     If you want to see some absurd theatre, one of the most well-known examples, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, is performing in the Stratford festival in Ontario this year. If you like Stratford Festival on Facebook, they regularly offer discounts to different performances.