In 1961, a Hungarian-born English writer by the name of Martin Esslin coined the phrase “Theater of the Absurd” in an essay of the same name. He talks about Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot,” and Albert Camus’ essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Both works provide poignant examples for what Esslin calls “absurd theater,” and I believe that this kind of theater is just as relevant today as it was in the 1960s.
The original definition of the word “absurd” is “out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous; unreasonable; illogical.” To be absurd is to be out of step with the rest of the world. When Camus published his Sisyphus essay, it was 1955. The world was barely 10 years out of the end of the second World War and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The threat of annihilation by a nuclear missile was palpable, as both Russia and the U.S. were expanding their weapons programs. It was a world without reason. If millions of people could be slaughtered, what was the point of trying to live a life that made sense?
Indeed, nothing quite makes sense in the world today either. Here in America, mass shootings are normal, not to mention we have a president who tweets before he thinks. Health care costs are through the roof, and people die because they can’t afford the necessary treatments. In “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus proposes, “It is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope. [Revolt] is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it.” Several pages later, Camus states, “The absurd enlightens me on this point: there is no future.” If there is no future, there is nothing to live for. But if there is nothing to live for, what is the point in living? If there is nothing beyond death, it names suicide in and of itself as pointless. But how can both suicide and living be pointless? This is the purpose of the absurd: it does not exist to bring enlightenment to the masses on whether life has meaning.
We now take a quick shift back to Martin Esslin. He suggests that “[the] Theater of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being.” The point of this developing ideology is to provide a space for discussion. In a world where so much hangs in the balance, nothing feels concrete. Anything could happen. Absurd theater “tends toward a radical devaluation of language,” Esslin says. “What happens on stage transcends and often contradicts the words spoken by the characters.”
This, and this alone, is the pure representation of the utter ridiculousness of life. Plays written by Franz Kafka, Tom Stoppard, and Samuel Beckett still have the capacity to speak to our world today. I urge you to seek out what seems, at the outset, absurd. It just might change your perspective.
