Theatre Of Absurd Essay

I am Sarah Lucht, the Community Manager for the Relay For Life of Shelby County. For the past 3 years, the Spanish Club has partnered with Relay For Life to host a Coaches Vs. Cancer event during the basketball season. I had worked with Chris Bogart for those 3 years to raise close to $800 each year for our cause. The Key Club also helped at the event.

Every human has felt anger at some point. It is directly linked to the adrenal gland and therefore directly related to the survival of our ancestors. I myself have felt a lot of anger throughout my life. Mainly, the response is triggered by the mindset of people not allowing themselves see the reality. My personal experiences shows that anger is not simply the emotion of a crowd, but begins on the individual level. In our present day society, anger is incredibly contagious, starting at the individual level and it spreads rapidly, often through people with similar views. The spreading of anger often leads to violences. In recent events, widespread anger has led to mobs clashing with police in Catalonia, Spain. The spread of anger and its effects demonstrate the use of this emotion in our lives. In Lord of the Flies, the island is a mousetrap of anger, slowly leading up to the collapse of their island civilization. The tension on the island caused by anger shows one of our human flaws, and demonstrates what it does to a group, spreading quickly and reaping havoc. Anger is part of our human nature, and not much can be done to prevent it and its effects.

On April 2, 1917, President Wilson wrote and spoke one of his famous speech: War Message. President Wilson wants to ensure the people 's hope and faith from the war. As President Wilson (1917) stated in his speech "Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it... Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion."was to fix the issue the nation was in. President Wilson wants to show the people that we need to get involved war for the loss of many American lives that Germany took. Wilson persuades to Congress to go to war. President Wilson shows his persuasion effectively by using rhetorical strategies. Each strategy he used gave more persuasion to Congress to declare war on Germany. All the persuasion he used to convince Congress was put in his famous speech War Message.

Going into the 20th century, many theatre productions were very melodramatic. They had over-exaggerated motions and actions, and were aimed towards an upper class audience. However, once realism was introduced, spurred by the influence of photography, the audience of plays shifted from the upper class to the middle class. And it was at this point that plays like Trifles, Waiting for Lefty, and Mulatto began ushering in the type of theatre we know today, where the setting often reflects the society of the time of production.

Realism provides only amoral observation, while absurdism rejects even the possibility of debate. (Frances Babbage, Augusto Boal). The cynicism of this remark reflects the aberrant attitude towards absurdism, yet there is truth to it. Theatre of the absurd is an esoteric avant-garde style of theatre based on the principles of existentialism that looks at the world without any assumption of purpose. Existentialism and Theatre of the Absurd became identified with a cultural movement that flourished in Europe in the 1940s and 1950s, after the Second World War. The idea that man starts with nothing and ends with nothing is a common theme amongst most absurd plays. Despite this strange philosophy, Theatre of the

While writing and narrative (poetic or otherwise) were considered as means of survival, theatre remains outside the circle of literary survivalism. Indeed, according to Anne Ubersfield, “performance is a perishable thing.” (xxii) It is usually considered as an event that is bound by the present. The belief in the historicity of the theatrical event still dominates the critical approaches to theatre. Many contemporary critics maintain that on the stage, “drama takes place and takes time too.” (Worthen xi) They believe that it is “an historical event.” (Styan 6) that is limited in terms of space and duration. It cannot last beyond the performative moment.

Anger is perhaps not well understood because it is omnipresent; anger is so familiar that we assume we know what it is. Anger may be partly physiological, cognitive and psychological, yet it is also deeply ideological. Anger can be manifested in art or literature as a communal sensation towards social, political or economical conditions. (Sue J. 6)

Never before had someone so masterfully blend together the genres of comedy, romance, and tragedy. One of the main reasons “Romeo and Juliet” remains so popular is because of the unique combination of romance and tragedy. Prior to Shakespeare’s time, theatre only targeted the rich and wealthy. But Shakespeare changed this by appealing to the general population. He created plots and characters that everyone in the crowd could relate to, instead of only those with an abundance of wealth. Because Shakespeare’s plays were so popular, many playwrights have used him and his plays as inspiration for their works. Even some modern plays contain traces of Shakespeare in their storylines and dialogue. William Shakespeare forever changed theatre, and this has impacted many

"A Philosophy of Theater « " East of Mina. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2011.

Dramaturgy is an essential and significant fragment of both stagecraft and theatre itself, it serves to analysis and explore the dramatic structure of the play or performance that is being prepared or analysed and presented. In traditional theatrical turn of phrase, a dramaturge can be broken down as an rational deviser, or a associate of the production team who is bothered with the way in which the concepts, subjects and the ideas of a play are reflected on stage. The role of the dramaturge is both multifaceted and open to change, shaping and re-shaping to encounter the required needs of the theatre company, or of the specific production in question. A dramaturge may be called upon to complete a wide variety of tasks in the theatre. These

The very essence of Contemporary Theatre is that is such a diverse realm of performance art. Many different playwrights have contributed to this post World War Two theatre that instead of keeping to just one narrow genre it was able to branch out to cover all aspects and views of an ever transitional modern society. Theatrical pieces from this time period have ranged from Existentialism, pioneered by Jean Paul Sartre, to the Theatre of the Absurd, which was precedented by Samuel Beckett, and all along the way a myriad of performance genres sprung up to support this new post-war society. Most plays of the contemporary theatre tended to focus up on one single aspect of theatre, though a group of men formed a performance troupe that would

Bertolt Brecht was the pioneer of a new style of theatre, epic theatre. Epic theatre differentiates itself from Bertolt’s previous influences by presenting a series of loosely connected scenes that avoid illusion and often interrupt the story line to address the audience directly with analysis, argument, or documentation. He sought to remind the spectator that the play is an illustration of the playwright’s point of view rather than a slice from reality. This made audiences react with curiousity and participate in a dialogical argument criticising their own life and what they could do to change it rather than an emotional and empathic response that accepts events in the play as a slice of reality, accepted as the norm. He wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order to recognise social injustice and to go forth and transform the reality.

Theatre is a complex art that attempts to weave stories of varying degrees of intricacies with the hope that feelings will be elicited from the audience. Samuel Beckett’s most famous work in the theatre world, however, is Waiting for Godot, the play in which, according to well-known Irish critic Vivian Mercier, “nothing happens, twice.” Beckett pioneered many different levels of groundbreaking and avant-garde theatre and had a large influence on the section of the modern idea of presentational theatre as opposed to the representational. His career seemingly marks the end of modernism in theatre and the creation of what is known as the “Theatre of the Absurd.”

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything” (Shaw). Change is inevitable. Times change and ideas progress. One thing we think to be unacceptable now may very well be acceptable in the future. Look at the use of marijuana and even the homosexual agenda. Society is slowly progressing with its postmodern thinking and statistically speaking, those people are thinking it is more and more acceptable. We might not think that what I just said has anything to do with Theatre, but we need to put in perspective why we now have the theatre we do now. Ancient Greek theatre was not as open to civil human rights

Initially written in French in 1948 as “En Attendant Godot”, Samuel Beckett’s play was first staged in 1952, in Paris. It represents one of the most important movements of the twentieth century and is an example of the so-called “Theatre of the Absurd”, which had subsequently inspired numerous plays that were based on the idea of an illogical universe.