Differences between modernism and postmodernism

By the early 1980s the postmodern movement in art and architecture began to establish its position through various conceptual and intermedia formats. Postmodernism in music and literature began to take hold earlier. In music postmodernism is described in one reference work, as a "term introduced in the 1970s".[49] while in British literature, The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature sees modernism "ceding its predominance to postmodernism" as early as 1939.[50] However dates are highly debatable, especially as according to Andreas Huyssen: "one critic's postmodernism is another critic's modernism".[51] This includes those who are critical of the division between the two and see them as two aspects of the same movement, and believe that late modernism continues.[52]

Modernism is an encompassing label for a wide variety of cultural movements. Postmodernism is essentially a centralized movement that named itself, based on socio-political theory, although the term is now used in a wider sense to refer to activities from the 20th century onwards which exhibit awareness of and reinterpret the modern.[53][54][55]

Postmodern theory asserts that the attempt to canonise modernism "after the fact" is doomed to undisambiguable contradictions.[56]

In a narrower sense, what was modernist was not necessarily also postmodern. Those elements of modernism which accentuated the benefits of rationality and socio-technological progress were only modernist.[57]

Goals of the movement

Rejection and detournement of tradition

Many modernists believed that by rejecting tradition they could discover radically new ways of making art.[citation needed] Arguably the most paradigmatic motive of modernism is the rejection of the obsolescence of tradition and its reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms.[5][6]

T. S. Eliot's emphasis on the relation of the artist to tradition. Eliot wrote the following:

"[W]e shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of [a poet's] work, may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously."[58]

Literary scholar Peter Childs sums up the complexity:

"There were paradoxical if not opposed trends towards revolutionary and reactionary positions, fear of the new and delight at the disappearance of the old, nihilism and fanatical enthusiasm, creativity and despair."[7]

These oppositions are inherent to modernism: it is in its broadest cultural sense the assessment of the past as different to the modern age, the recognition that the world was becoming more complex, and that the old "final authorities" (God, government, science, and reason) were subject to intense critical scrutiny.

Challenge to false harmony and coherence

A paradigmatic modernist exhortation was articulated by philosopher and composer Theodor Adorno, which in the 1940s, invited to challenge conventional surface coherence and appearance of harmony:[10]

"Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category. Just as it cannot be reduced to abstract form, with equal necessity it must turn its back on conventional surface coherence, the appearance of harmony, the order corroborated merely by replication."[10]

Adorno would have us understand modernity as the rejection of the false rationality, harmony, and coherence of Enlightenment thinking, art, and music.[citation needed] Arnold Schoenberg rejected traditional tonal harmony, the hierarchical system of organizing works of music that had guided music making for at least a century and a half. He believed he had discovered a wholly new way of organizing sound, based in the use of twelve-note rows.

Abstract artists, taking as their examples the impressionists, as well as Paul Cézanne and Edvard Munch, began with the assumption that color and shape, not the depiction of the natural world, formed the essential characteristics of art. Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich all believed in redefining art as the arrangement of pure color. The use of photography, which had rendered much of the representational function of visual art obsolete, strongly affected this aspect of modernism. However, these artists also believed that by rejecting the depiction of material objects they helped art move from a materialist to a spiritualist phase of development.

Counter consumerism and mass culture

In literature and visual art some modernists sought to defy expectations mainly in order to make their art more vivid, or to force the audience to take the trouble to question their own preconceptions. This aspect of modernism has often seemed a reaction to consumer culture, which developed in Europe and North America in the late 19th century. Whereas most manufacturers try to make products that will be marketable by appealing to preferences and prejudices, high modernists rejected such consumerist attitudes in order to undermine conventional thinking. The art critic Clement Greenberg expounded this theory of modernism in his essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch.[59] Greenberg labelled the products of consumer culture "kitsch", because their design aimed simply to have maximum appeal, with any difficult features removed. For Greenberg, modernism thus formed a reaction against the development of such examples of modern consumer culture as commercial popular music, Hollywood, and advertising. Greenberg associated this with the revolutionary rejection of capitalism.

Some modernists did see themselves as part of a revolutionary culture—one that included political revolution. Others rejected conventional politics as well as artistic conventions, believing that a revolution of political consciousness had greater importance than a change in political structures. Many modernists saw themselves as apolitical. Others, such as T. S. Eliot, rejected mass popular culture from a conservative position. Some[59] even argue that modernism in literature and art functioned to sustain an elite culture which excluded the majority of the population.

[edit]

Criticism and hostility

Franz Marc, The fate of the animals, 1913, oil on canvas. The work was displayed at the exhibition of "Entartete Kunst" in Munich, Nazi Germany, 1937.

The most controversial aspect of the modern movement was, and remains, its rejection of tradition.[citation needed] Modernism's stress on freedom of expression, experimentation, radicalism, and primitivism disregards conventional expectations. In many art forms this often meant startling and alienating audiences with bizarre and unpredictable effects, as in the strange and disturbing combinations of motifs in surrealism or the use of extreme dissonance and atonality in modernist music. In literature this often involved the rejection of intelligible plots or characterization in novels, or the creation of poetry that defied clear interpretation.

After the rise of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Communist government rejected modernism on the grounds of alleged elitism, although it had previously endorsed futurism and constructivism. The Nazi government of Germany deemed modernism narcissistic and nonsensical, as well as "Jewish" and "Negro" (see Anti-semitism). The Nazis exhibited modernist paintings alongside works by the mentally ill in an exhibition entitled Degenerate Art. Accusations of "formalism" could lead to the

end of a career, or worse. For this reason many modernists of the post-war generation felt that they were the most important bulwark against totalitarianism, the "canary in the coal mine", whose repression by a government or other group with supposed authority represented a warning that individual liberties were being threatened. Louis A. Sass compared madness, specifically schizophrenia, and modernism in a less fascist manner by noting their shared disjunctive narratives, surreal images, and incoherence.[60]

In fact, modernism flourished mainly in consumer/capitalist societies, despite the fact that its proponents often rejected consumerism itself. However, high modernism began to merge with consumer culture after World War II, especially during the 1960s. In Britain, a youth sub-culture emerged calling itself "modernist" (usually shortened to Mod), following such representative music groups as The Who and The Kinks. The likes of Bob Dylan, Serge Gainsbourg and The Rolling Stones combined popular musical traditions with modernist verse, adopting literary devices derived from James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, James Thurber, T. S. Eliot, Guillaume Apollinaire, Allen Ginsberg, and others. The Beatles developed along similar lines, creating various modernist musical effects on several albums, while musicians such as Frank Zappa, Syd Barrett and Captain Beefheart proved even more experimental. Modernist devices also started to appear in popular cinema, and later on in music videos. Modernist design also began to enter the mainstream of popular culture, as simplified and stylized forms became popular, often associated with dreams of a space age high-tech future.

This merging of consumer and high versions of modernist culture led to a radical transformation of the meaning of "modernism". First, it implied that a movement based on the rejection of tradition had become a tradition of its own. Second, it demonstrated that the distinction between elite modernist and mass consumerist culture had lost its precision. Some writers[who?] declared that modernism had become so institutionalized that it was now "post avant-garde", indicating that it had lost its power as a revolutionary movement. Many have interpreted this transformation as the beginning of the phase that became known as postmodernism. For others, such as art critic Robert Hughes, postmodernism represents an extension of modernism.

"Anti-modern" or "counter-modern" movements seek to emphasize holism, connection and spirituality as remedies or antidotes to modernism. Such movements see modernism as reductionist, and therefore subject to an inability to see systemic and emergent effects. Many modernists came to this viewpoint, for example Paul Hindemith in his late turn towards mysticism. Writers such as Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, in The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World (2000), Fredrick Turner in A Culture of Hope and Lester Brown in Plan B, have articulated a critique of the basic idea of modernism itself – that individual creative expression should conform to the realities of technology. Instead, they argue, individual creativity should make everyday life more emotionally acceptable.

Some traditionalist artists like Alexander Stoddart reject modernism generally as the product of "an epoch of false money allied with false culture".[61]

In some fields the effects of modernism have remained stronger and more persistent than in others. Visual art has made the most complete break with its past. Most major capital cities have museums devoted to Modern Art as distinct from post-Renaissance art (circa 1400 to circa 1900). Examples include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. These galleries make no distinction between modernist and postmodernist phases, seeing both as developments within Modern Art.

Theatre of the Absurd

The Theatre of the Absurd (French: Théâtre de l'Absurde) is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work expressed the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.[1]

Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay "Theatre of the Absurd." He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd, similar to the way Albert Camus uses the term in his 1942 essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus".[2] The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man’s reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad comedy, often similar to Vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the "well-made play".

Playwrights commonly associated with the Theatre of the Absurd include Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal and Edward Albee.Contents [hide]

1 Origin

2 Significant precursors

2.1 Elizabethan - Tragicomedy

2.2 Formal experimentation

2.3 Pataphysics, Surrealism, and Dadaism

2.4 Relationship with Existentialism

3 History

3.1 Major productions

3.2 Legacy

4 Theatrical features

4.1 Characters

4.2 Language

4.3 Plot

5 See also

6 Notes

7 Works cited

8 Further reading

9 External links

[edit]

Origin

The term was coined by the critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of a book on the subject first published in 1961 and in two later revised editions; the third and final edition appeared in 2004 (in paperback with a new foreword by the author). In the first edition of The Theatre of the Absurd, Esslin saw the work of these playwrights as giving artistic meaning to Albert Camus's philosophy that life is inherently without meaning, as illustrated in his work The Myth of Sisyphus. In the first (1961) edition, Esslin presented the four defining playwrights of the movement as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet, and in subsequent editions he added a fifth playwright, Harold Pinter–although each of these writers has unique preoccupations and characteristics that go beyond the term "absurd."[3][4] Other writers associated with this group by Esslin and other critics include Tom Stoppard,[5] Friedrich Dürrenmatt,[6] Fernando Arrabal,[7] Edward Albee,[8] Boris Vian,[9] and Jean Tardieu.[3][4][7]

[edit]

Significant precursors

Though the label "Theatre of the Absurd" covers a wide variety of playwrights with differing styles, they do have some common stylistic precursors (Esslin [1961]).

[edit]

Elizabethan - Tragicomedy

The mode of most "absurdist" plays is tragicomedy.[10][11] As Nell says in Endgame, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness ... it's the most comical thing in the world".[12] Esslin cites William Shakespeare as an influence on this aspect of the "Absurd drama."[13] Shakespeare's influence is acknowledged directly in the titles of Ionesco's Macbeth and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Friedrich Dürrenmatt says in his essay "Problems of the Theatre", "Comedy alone is suitable for us ... But the tragic is still possible even if pure tragedy is not. We can achieve the tragic out of comedy. We can bring it forth as a frightening moment, as an abyss that opens suddenly; indeed, many of Shakespeare's tragedies are already really comedies out of which the tragic arises."[14]

Though layered with a significant amount of tragedy, the Theatre of the Absurd echoes other great forms of comedic performance, according to Esslin, from Commedia dell'arte to Vaudeville.[10][15] Similarly, Esslin cites early film comedians and music hall artists such as Charlie Chaplin, The Keystone Cops and Buster Keaton as direct influences (Keaton even starred in Beckett's Film in 1965).[16]

[edit]

Formal experimentation

As an experimental form of theatre, many Theatre of the Absurd playwrights employ techniques borrowed from earlier innovators. Writers and techniques frequently mentioned in relation to the Theatre of the Absurd include the 19th-century nonsense poets, such as Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear;[17] Polish playwright Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz;[18] the Russians Daniil Kharms,[19] Nikolai Erdman,[20] and others; Bertolt Brecht's distancing techniques in his "Epic theatre";[21] and the "dream plays" of August Strindberg.[3][22]

One commonly cited precursor is Luigi Pirandello, especially Six Characters in Search of an Author.[22][23] Pirandello was a highly regarded theatrical experimentalist who wanted to bring down the

fourth wall presupposed by the realism of playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen. According to W. B. Worthen, Six Characters and other Pirandello plays use "Metatheatre—roleplaying, plays-within-plays, and a flexible sense of the limits of stage and illusion—to examine a highly-theatricalized vision of identity".[24]

Another influential playwright was Guillaume Apollinaire whose The Breasts of Tiresias was the first work to be called "surreal".[25][26][27]

[edit]

Pataphysics, Surrealism, and Dadaism

One of the most significant common precursors is Alfred Jarry whose wild, irreverent, and lascivious Ubu plays scandalized Paris in the 1890s. Likewise, the concept of 'Pataphysics–"the science of imaginary solutions"–first presented in Jarry's Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien (Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician)[28] was inspirational to many later Absurdists,[26] some of whom joined the Collège de 'pataphysique, founded in honor of Jarry in 1948[25][29] (Ionesco,[30] Arrabal, and Vian[30][31] were given the title Transcendent Satrape of the Collège de 'pataphysique). The Alfred Jarry Theatre, founded by Antonin Artaud and Roger Vitrac, housed several Absurdist plays, including ones by Ionesco and Adamov.[32][33]

Artaud's "The Theatre of Cruelty" (presented in The Theatre and Its Double) was a particularly important philosophical treatise. Artaud claimed theatre's reliance on literature was inadequate and that the true power of theatre was in its visceral impact.[34][35][36] Artaud was a Surrealist, and many other members of the Surrealist group were significant influences on the Absurdists.[37][38][39]

Absurdism is also frequently compared to Surrealism's predecessor, Dadaism (for example, the Dadaist plays by Tristan Tzara performed at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich).[40] Many of the Absurdists had direct connections with the Dadaists and Surrealists. Ionesco,[41][42] Adamov,[43][44] and Arrabal[45] for example, were friends with Surrealists still living in Paris at the time including Paul Eluard and André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, and Beckett translated many Surrealist poems by Breton and others from French into English.[46][47]

[edit]

Relationship with Existentialism

The Theatre of the Absurd is commonly associated with Existentialism, and Existentialism was an influential philosophy in Paris during the rise of the Theatre of the Absurd; however, to call it

Existentialist theatre is problematic for many reasons. It gained this association partly because it was named (by Esslin) after the concept of "absurdism" advocated by Albert Camus, a philosopher commonly called Existentialist though he frequently resisted that label. Absurdism is most accurately called Existentialist in the way Franz Kafka's work is labeled Existentialist: it embodies an aspect of the philosophy though the writer may not be a committed follower.[48] As Tom Stoppard said in an interview, "I must say I didn't know what the word 'existential' meant until it was applied to Rosencrantz. And even now existentialism is not a philosophy I find either attractive or plausible. But it's certainly true that the play can be interpreted in existential terms, as well as in other terms."[49]

Many of the Absurdists were contemporaries with Jean-Paul Sartre, the philosophical spokesman for Existentialism in Paris, but few Absurdists actually committed to Sartre's own Existentialist philosophy, as expressed in Being and Nothingness, and many of the Absurdists had a complicated relationship with him. Sartre praised Genet's plays, stating that for Genet "Good is only an illusion. Evil is a Nothingness which arises upon the ruins of Good".[50]

Ionesco, however, hated Sartre bitterly.[51] Ionesco accused Sartre of supporting Communism but ignoring the atrocities committed by Communists; he wrote Rhinoceros as a criticism of blind conformity, whether it be to Nazism or Communism; at the end of the play, one man remains on Earth resisting transformation into a rhinoceros [52][53] Sartre criticized Rhinoceros by questioning: "Why is there one man who resists? At least we could learn why, but no, we learn not even that. He resists because he is there".[54][55] Sartre's criticism highlights a primary difference between the Theatre of the Absurd and Existentialism: The Theatre of the Absurd shows the failure of man without recommending a solution.[56] In a 1966 interview, Claude Bonnefoy, comparing the Absurdists to Sartre and Camus, said to Ionesco, "It seems to me that Beckett, Adamov and yourself started out less from philosophical reflections or a return to classical sources, than from first-hand experience and a desire to find a new theatrical expression that would enable you to render this experience in all its acuteness and also its immediacy. If Sartre and Camus thought out these themes, you expressed them in a far more vital contemporary fashion". Ionesco replied, "I have the feeling that these writers – who are serious and important -- were talking about absurdity and death, but that they never really lived these themes, that they did not feel them within themselves in an almost irrational, visceral way, that all this was not deeply inscribed in their language. With them it was still rhetoric, eloquence. With Adamov and Beckett it really is a very naked reality that is conveyed through the apparent dislocation of language".[57]

In comparison to Sartre's concepts of the function of literature, Samuel Beckett's primary focus was on the failure of man to overcome "absurdity"; as James Knowlson says in Damned to Fame, Beckett's work focuses "on poverty, failure, exile and loss — as he put it, on man as a 'non-knower' and as a 'non-can-er' ."[58] Beckett's own relationship with Sartre was complicated by a mistake made in the publication of one of his stories in Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes.[59] Beckett said, though he liked Nausea, he generally found the writing style of Sartre and Heidegger to be "too philosophical" and he considered himself "not a philosopher".[60]

[edit]

History

The "Absurd" or "New Theater" movement was originally a Paris-based (and a Rive Gauche) avant-garde phenomenon tied to extremely small theaters in the Quartier Latin. Some of the Absurdists were born in France such as Jean Genet,[61] Jean Tardieu,[62] and Boris Vian.[63] Many other Absurdists were born elsewhere but lived in France, writing often in French: Samuel Beckett from Ireland;[62] Eugène Ionesco from Romania;[62] Arthur Adamov from Russia;[62] and Fernando Arrabal from Spain.[64] As the influence of the Absurdists grew, the style spread to other countries–with playwrights either directly influenced by Absurdists in Paris or playwrights labeled Absurdist by critics. In England some of whom Esslin considered practitioners of "the Theatre of the Absurd" include: Harold Pinter,[62] Tom Stoppard,[65] N. F. Simpson,[62] James Saunders,[66] and David Campton;[67] in the United States, Edward Albee,[62] Sam Shepard,[68] Jack Gelber,[69] and John Guare;[70] in Poland, Tadeusz Różewicz,[62] Sławomir Mrożek,[62] and Tadeusz Kantor;[71] in Italy, Dino Buzzati;[72] and in Germany, Peter Weiss,[73] Wolfgang Hildesheimer,[62] and Günter Grass.[62] In India, both Mohit Chattopadhyay[74] and Mahesh Elkunchwar[74] have also been labeled Absurdists. Other international Absurdist playwrights include: Tawfiq el-Hakim from Egypt;[75] Hanoch Levin from Israel;[76] Miguel Mihura from Spain;[77] José de Almada Negreiros from Portugal;[78] Mikhail Volokhov from Russia; Yordan Radichkov from Bulgaria;[79] and playwright and former Czech President Václav Havel,[62] and others from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.[citation needed]

[edit]

Major productions

Jean Genet's The Maids (Les Bonnes) premiered in 1947.[80]

Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice Chauve) was first performed on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules. Ionesco followed this with The Lesson (La Leçon) in 1951 and The Chairs (Les Chaises) in 1952.[81][82]

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot was first performed on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris.[83]

In 1957, Genet's The Balcony (Le Balcon) was produced in London at the Arts Theatre.[84]

That May, Harold Pinter's The Room was presented at The Drama Studio at the University of Bristol.[85][86] Pinter's The Birthday Party premiered in the West End in 1958.[87]

Edward Albee's The Zoo Story premiered in West Berlin at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt in 1959.[88]

On the October 28 of that year, Krapp's Last Tape by Beckett was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London.[89]

Fernando Arrabal's Picnic on the Battlefield (Pique-nique en campagne) also came out in 1958.[90][91]

Genet's The Blacks (Les Nègres) was published that year but was first performed at the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris on the 28 October 1959.[92]

1959 also saw the completion of Ionesco's Rhinoceros which premiered in Paris in January 1960 at the Odeon.[93]

Beckett's Happy Days was first performed at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on 17 September 1961.[94]

Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? also premiered in New York the following year, on October 13.[88]

Pinter's The Homecoming premiered in London in June 1965 at the Aldwych Theatre.[95][96]

Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade) was first performed in West Berlin in 1964 and in New York City a year later.[97]

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966.[98]

Arrabal's Automobile Graveyard (Le Cimetière des voitures) was also first performed in 1966.[90]

Beckett's Catastrophe–dedicated to then-imprisoned Czech dissident playwright Václav Havel, who became president of Czechoslovakia after the 1989 Velvet Revolution–was first performed at the Avignon Festival on July 21, 1982;[99][100] the film version (in Beckett on Film [2001]) was directed by David Mamet and performed by Harold Pinter, Sir John Gielgud, and Rebecca Pidgeon.[101]

[edit]

Legacy

Echoes of elements of "The Theatre of the Absurd" can be seen in many later playwrights, from more avant-garde or experimental playwrights like Suzan-Lori Parks–in The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World and The America Play,[102] for example–to relatively realistic playwrights like David Mamet–in Glengarry Glen Ross, which Mamet dedicated to Harold Pinter.[103][104][citation needed] Irish playwright Martin McDonagh in plays such as Pillowman[105] addresses some of the themes and uses some of the techniques of Absurdism, especially reminiscent of Beckett[106] and Pinter.[107][108]

[edit]

Theatrical features

Plays within this group are absurd in that they focus not on logical acts, realistic occurrences, or traditional character development; they, instead, focus on human beings trapped in an incomprehensible world subject to any occurrence, no matter how illogical.[109][110][111] The theme of incomprehensibility is coupled with the inadequacy of language to form meaningful human connections.[25] According to Martin Esslin, Absurdism is "the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose"[112] Absurdist drama asks its viewer to "draw his own conclusions, make his own errors".[113] Though Theatre of the Absurd may be seen as nonsense, they have something to say and can be understood".[114] Esslin makes a distinction between the dictionary definition of absurd ("out of harmony" in the musical sense) and drama's understanding of the Absurd: "Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose.... Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless".[115]

[edit]

Characters

The characters in Absurdist drama are lost and floating in an incomprehensible universe and they abandon rational devices and discursive thought because these approaches are inadequate.[116] Many characters appear as automatons stuck in routines speaking only in cliché (Ionesco called the Old Man and Old Woman in The Chairs "uber-marrionettes").[117][118] Characters are frequently stereotypical, archetypal, or flat character types as in Commedia dell'arte.[119][120][121]

The more complex characters are in crisis because the world around them is incomprehensible.[121] Many of Pinter's plays, for example, feature characters trapped in an enclosed space menaced by some force the character can't understand. Pinter's first play was The Room – in which the main character, Rose, is menaced by Riley who invades her safe space though the actual source of menace remains a mystery [122] – and this theme of characters in a safe space menaced by an outside force is repeated in many of his later works (perhaps most famously in The Birthday Party). In Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit the main character, Alfred, is menaced by Claire Zachanassian; Claire, richest woman in the world with a decaying body and multiple husbands throughout the play, has guaranteed a payout for anyone in the town willing to kill Alfred.[123] Characters in Absurdist drama may also face the chaos of a world that science and logic have abandoned. Ionesco's recurring character Berenger, for example, faces a killer without motivation in The Killer, and Berenger's logical arguments fail to convince the killer that killing is wrong.[124] In Rhinocéros, Berenger remains the only human on Earth who hasn’t turned into a rhinoceros and must decide whether or not to conform.[125][126] Characters may find themselves trapped in a routine or, in a metafictional conceit, trapped in a story; the titular characters in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, for example, find themselves in a story (Hamlet) in which the outcome has already been written.[127][128]

The plots of many Absurdist plays feature characters in interdependent pairs, commonly either two males or a male and a female. Some Beckett scholars call this the "pseudocouple".[129][130] The

two characters may be roughly equal or have a begrudging interdependence (like Vladamir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot[127] or the two main characters in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead); one character may be clearly dominant and may torture the passive character (like Pozzo and Lucky in Waiting for Godot or Hamm and Clov in Endgame); the relationship of the characters may shift dramatically throughout the play (as in Ionesco's The Lesson[131] or in many of Albee's plays, The Zoo Story[132][133] for example).

[edit]

Language

Despite its reputation for nonsense language, much of the dialogue in Absurdist plays is naturalistic. The moments when characters resort to nonsense language or clichés–when words appear to have lost their denotative function, thus creating misunderstanding among the characters, making the Theatre of the Absurd distinctive.[25][134] Language frequently gains a certain phonetic, rhythmical, almost musical quality, opening up a wide range of often comedic playfulness.[135] Jean Tardieu, for example, in the series of short pieces Theatre de Chambre arranged the language as one arranges music.[136] Distinctively Absurdist language will range from meaningless clichés to Vaudeville-style word play to meaningless nonsense.[131][137] The Bald Soprano, for example, was inspired by a language book in which characters would exchange empty clichés that never ultimately amounted to true communication or true connection.[138][139] Likewise, the characters in The Bald Soprano–like many other Absurdist characters–go through routine dialogue full of clichés without actually communicating anything substantive or making a human connection.[140][141] In other cases, the dialogue is purposefully elliptical; the language of Absurdist Theater becomes secondary to the poetry of the concrete and objectified images of the stage.[142] Many of Beckett's plays devalue language for the sake of the striking tableau.[143] Harold Pinter–famous for his "Pinter pause"–presents more subtly elliptical dialogue; often the primary things characters should address is replaced by ellipsis or dashes. The following exchange between Aston and Davies in The Caretaker is typical of Pinter:

ASTON. More or less exactly what you...

DAVIES. That's it ... that's what I'm getting at is ... I mean, what sort of jobs ... (Pause.)

ASTON. Well, there's things like the stairs ... and the ... the bells ...

DAVIES. But it'd be a matter ... wouldn't it ... it'd be a matter of a broom ... isn't it?[144]

Much of the dialogue in Absurdist drama (especially in Beckett's and Albee's plays, for example) reflects this kind of evasiveness and inability to make a connection.[132] When language that is apparently nonsensical appears, it also demonstrates this disconnection. It can be used for comic effect, as in Lucky's long speech in Godot when Pozzo says Lucky is demonstrating a talent for "thinking" as other characters comically attempt to stop him:

LUCKY. Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment...[145]

Nonsense may also be used abusively, as in Pinter's The Birthday Party when Goldberg and McCann torture Stanley with apparently nonsensical questions and non-sequiturs:

GOLDBERG. What do you use for pajamas?

STANLEY. Nothing.

GOLDBERG. You verminate the sheet of your birth.

MCCANN. What about the Albigensenist heresy?

GOLDBERG. Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?

MCCANN. What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?

GOLDBERG. Speak up Webber. Why did the chicken cross the road?[146]

As in the above examples, nonsense in Absurdist theatre may be also used to demonstrate the limits of language while questioning or parodying the determinism of science and the knowability of truth.[147][148][149][citation needed] In Ionesco's The Lesson, a professor tries to force a pupil to understand his nonsensical philology lesson:

PROFESSOR. ... In Spanish: the roses of my grandmother are as yellow as my grandfather who is Asiatic; in Latin: the roses of my grandmother are as yellow as my grandfather who is Asiatic. Do you detect the difference? Translate this into ... Romanian

PUPIL. The ... how do you say "roses" in Romanian?

PROFESSOR. But "roses", what else? ... "roses" is a translation in Oriental of the French word "roses", in Spanish "roses", do you get it? In Sardanapali, "roses"...[150]

[edit]

Plot

Traditional plot structures are rarely a consideration in The Theatre of the Absurd.[151] Plots can consist of the absurd repetition of cliché and routine, as in Godot or The Bald Soprano.[152] Often there is a menacing outside force that remains a mystery; in The Birthday Party, for example, Goldberg and McCann confront Stanley, torture him with absurd questions, and drag him off at the

end, but it is never revealed why.[153] In later Pinter plays, such as The Caretaker[154] and The Homecoming,[155] the menace is no longer entering from the outside but exists within the confined space. Other Absurdists use this kind of plot, as in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance: Harry and Edna take refuge at the home of their friends Agnes and Tobias because they suddenly become frightened.[156] They have difficulty explaining what has frightened them:L

HARRY: There was nothing ... but we were very scared.

EDNA: We ... were ... terrified.

HARRY: We were scared. It was like being lost: very young again, with the dark, and lost. There was no ... thing ... to be ... frightened of, but ...

EDNA: WE WERE FRIGHTENED ... AND THERE WAS NOTHING.[157]

Absence, emptiness, nothingness, and unresolved mysteries are central features in many Absurdist plots[158]: for example, in The Chairs an old couple welcomes a large number of guests to their home, but these guests are invisible so all we see is empty chairs, a representation of their absence.[159] Likewise, the action of Godot is centered around the absence of a man named Godot, for whom the characters perpetually wait. In many of Beckett's later plays, most features are stripped away and what's left is a minimalistic tableau: a woman walking slowly back and forth in Footfalls,[160] for example, or in Breath only a junk heap on stage and the sounds of breathing.[161][162]

The plot may also revolve around an unexplained metamorphosis, a supernatural change, or a shift in the laws of physics. For example, in Ionesco's Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It, a couple must deal with a corpse that is steadily growing larger and larger; Ionesco never fully reveals the identity of the corpse, how this person died, or why it's continually growing, but the corpse ultimately – and, again, without explanation – floats away.[163][164] In Jean Tardieu's "The Keyhole" a lover watches a woman through a keyhole as she removes her clothes and then her flesh.[165]

Like Pirandello, many Absurdists use meta-theatrical techniques to explore role fulfillment, fate, and the theatricality of theatre. This is true for many of Genet's plays: for example, in The Maids, two maids pretend to be their masters; in The Balcony brothel patrons take on elevated positions in role-playing games, but the line between theatre and reality starts to blur. Another complex example of this is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: it's a play about two minor characters in Hamlet; these characters, in turn, have various encounters with the players who perform The Mousetrap, the play-with-in-the-play in Hamlet.[127][166] In Stoppard's Travesties, James Joyce and Tristan Tzara slip in and out of the plot of The Importance of Being Earnest.[167]

Plots are frequently cyclical[131]: for example, Endgame begins where the play ended[168] – at the beginning of the play, Clov says, "Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished"[169] – and themes of cycle, routine, and repetition are explored throughout

The Bald Soprano

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search The Bald Soprano

Written by Eugène Ionesco

Date premiered May 11, 1950

Place premiered Théâtre des Noctambules

Paris, France

Original language French

Genre theatre of the absurd

La Cantatrice Chauve — translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna — is the first play written by Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. Nicolas Bataille directed the premiere on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, Paris. Since 1957 it has been in permanent showing at the Théâtre de la Huchette, which received a Molière d'honneur for its performances. With a record number of interpretations, it has become one of the most performed plays in France.[1]Contents [hide]

1 Origin

2 Plot summary

3 Meaning

4 See also

5 References

[edit]

Origin

The idea of the play came to Ionesco while he was trying to learn English with the Assimil method. He was impressed by the contents of the dialogues, often very sober and strange, so he decided to write an absurd play named L'anglais sans peine ("English without toil"). He originally wrote the play in his native language Romanian, then wrote it again in his adopted language French. The current title was set only after a verbal slip-up made by one of the actors during the rehearsals.[2]

[edit]

Plot summary

The Smiths are a traditional couple from London who have invited another couple, the Martins, over for a visit. They are joined later by the Smiths' maid, Mary, and the local fire chief, who is also Mary's lover. The two families engage in meaningless banter, telling stories and relating nonsensical poems. At one point, Mrs. Martin converses with her husband as if he were a stranger she just met. As the fire chief turns to leave, he mentions "the bald soprano" in passing, which has a very unsettling effect on the others. Mrs. Smith replies that "she always wears her hair in the same style." After the Fire Chief's exit, the play devolves into a series of complete non-sequiturs, with no resemblance to normal conversation. It ends with the two couples shouting in unison "It's not that way. It's over here!," right before a blackout occurs. When the lights come back on, the scene starts from the beginning with the Martins reciting the Smiths' lines from the beginning of the play for a while before the curtain closes.

[edit]

Meaning

Like many plays in the theatre of the absurd genre, the underlying theme of The Bald Soprano is not immediately apparent. Many suggest that it expresses the futility of meaningful communication in modern society. The script is charged with non sequiturs that give the impression that the characters are not even listening to each other in their frantic efforts to make their own voices heard. There was speculation around the time of its first performance, categorising it as a parody. Ionesco states in an essay written to his critics, that he had no intention of parody, but if he were parodying anything, it would be everything.

The Bald Soprano appears to have been written as a continuous loop. The final scene contains stage instructions to start the performance over from the very beginning, with the Martin couple substituted for the Smith couple and vice versa. However, this decision was only added in after the show's hundredth premier, for it was originally for the Smiths to restart the show, in exactly the same manner as before.

According to Ionesco, he had several possible endings in mind, including a climax in which the "author" or "manager" antagonizes the audience, and even a version in which the audience would be shot with machine guns. However this was ultimately settled for a cheaper solution, the cycle. Ionesco told Claude Bonnefoy in an interview, "I wanted to give a meaning to the play by having it begin all over again with two characters. In this way the end becomes a new beginning but, since there are two couples in the play, it begins the first time with the Smiths and the second time with the Martins, to suggest the interchangeable nature of the characters: the Smiths are the Martins and the Martins are the Smiths".[3

Eugène Ionesco

Plays The Bald Soprano (1950) · Salutations (1950) · The Lesson (1951) · The Chairs (1952) · The Leader · Victims of Duty (1953) · Maid to Marry (1953) · Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It (1954) · Jack, or The Submission (1955) · The New Tenant (1955) · The Picture (1955) · Improvisation (1956) · The Future is in Eggs, or It Takes All Sorts to Make a World' (1957) · The Killer (1958) · Foursome (1959) · Rhinoceros (1959) · Frenzy for Two or More (1962) · Exit the King (1962) · A Stroll in the Air (1962) · Hunger and Thirst (1964) · Killing Game (1970) · Macbett (1972) · Man with Bags (1977) · Journeys among the Dead (1980) · The Viscount

Essays

Nu (1934)

Hugoliade (1935) · La Tragédie du langage (1958) · Expérience du théâtre (1958) · Discours sur l'avant-garde (1959) · Notes and Counternotes (1962) · Fragments of a Journal (1966) · Découvertes (1969) · Antidotes (1977)

Poetry Elegii pentru fiinţe mici (1931)

Children's books

Story Number 1 For Children Under Three Years of Age (1967)

Story Number 2 For Children Under Three Years of Age (1970)

Novels and stories

La Vase (1956)

Le Piéton de l'air (1961, A Stroll in the Air) · The Colonel's Photograph and Other Stories (1962) · Le Solitaire (The Hermit, 1973)

Opera adaptations and libretti

Le Maître (1962)

Maximilien Kolbe (1988)

Commons · Wi

The Maids

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

For the 1974 film adaptation, see The Maids (film). For the 1994 operatic adaptation, see The Maids (opera).

The Maids (French: Les Bonnes) is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. It was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris in a production that opened on 17 April 1947, which Louis Jouvet directed.[1] A film adaptation of the play was released in 1974.Contents [hide]

1 Background

2 Plot

3 Production history

4 Notes

5 Sources

[edit]

Background

Genet loosely based his play on the infamous Papin sisters, Lea and Christine, who brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, France, in 1933, although the play is not the story of the Papin sisters as such. Genet's original intention was that the three protagonists, Madame and the maids Solange and Claire, be performed by male actors.

[edit]

Plot

Solange and Claire are two housemaids who construct elaborate sadomasochistic rituals when their mistress (Madame) is away. The focus of their role-playing is the murder of Madame and they take turns portraying both sides of the power divide. Their deliberate pace and devotion to detail guarantees that they always fail to actualize their fantasies by ceremoniously "killing" Madame at the ritual's denouement.

[edit]

Production history

The play was first presented in Britain in French by the ICA, initially at the Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, London.[2] Peter Zadek directed, while Eduardo Paolozzi provided the scenic design.[2] Selma Vaz Dias played Solange, Olive Gregg played Claire, and Oriel Ross played Madame.[2] The production subsequently transferred to the Royal Court Theatre, where Betty Stockfield played Madame and David de Bethel provided the scenic design.[2] Zadek also directed the play's first production in Britain in English, which opened on 5 June 1956 at the New Lindsey Theatre Club.[2] Selma Vaz Dias again played Solange and Betty Stockfield played Madame, while Hazel Penwarden played Claire.[2] Nigel Whittaker designed the sets for that production.[2]

Minos Volanakis directed the play at the Oxford Playhouse in 1963.[3] This production was reprised in 1964 in a double-bill with Bertolt Brecht's The Exception and the Rule.[4]

The play was revived at the Greenwich Theatre in 1973 with the actresses Vivien Merchant as Madame, Glenda Jackson as Solange and Susannah York as Claire. This production was filmed as part of the American Film Theatre series in 1974, directed by Christopher Miles and photographed by Douglas Slocombe.