Absurd Page for Theatre with Anatoly

Beckett/Ionesco * Pinter : Stoppard

...

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid." -- George Bernard Shaw * Next: POMO files and PostMarxism THR413 Playscript Analysis Notes. Beckett Page

Martin Esslin. The Theatre of the Absurd, Penguin, 3rd Ed., 1980

See Dada and Futurism Pages. Sur-Realism.

Textbook:

Samuel Beckett: The search for the self (29)

Eugene Ionesco: Theatre and anti-theatre (128)

Harold Pinter: Certainties and uncertainties (234)

Beyond the Absurd (430) links *

Postmodern

Also, I recommend "Modern Theories of Drama, edited and annotated by George W. Brandt, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998
I. General Theory
II. Varieties of Realism
III. Anti-Naturalism
IV. Political Theatre
V. Semiotics

"It is precisely the conformist, the petit-bourgeois, the ideologist of every society who is lost and dehumanized." (211) Ionesco.

"What then should the critic do? Where should he look for his criteria? Inside the work itself, its universe and its mythology. He must look at it, listen to it and simply say whether it is true to its own nature. The best judgement is a careful exposition of the work itself. For that, the work must be allowed to speak, uncoloured by preconception or prejudice." (212)

"Endgame" for acting/directing classes (Spring 2002)

Beckett: nihilism or irony? Wheelchair as thrown. Mind is blind. PM Symbolism

Where is the climax in Endgame?

[ compare Endgame and Godot -- where? ]

[Read my Theology of Technology notes for more theory.]

Summary

"'The Theatre of the Absurd' is a term coined by the critic Martin Esslin for the work of a number of playwrights, mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s. The term is derived from an essay by the French philosopher Albert Camus. In his 'Myth of Sisyphus', written in 1942, he first defined the human situation as basically meaningless and absurd. The 'absurd' plays by Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter and others all share the view that man is inhabiting a universe with which he is out of key. Its meaning is indecipherable and his place within it is without purpose. He is bewildered, troubled and obscurely threatened." [ * ]

"As we have seen often throughout our study of the theater, the form of a play often reflects its content. The Greeks and Neoclassicists believed in a harmonious universe, and their plays were carefully structured affairs in which problems were resolved (although not always happily) in five compact acts. By contrast, the absurdists wrote about the great "rut of existence" and devised cyclic plots to show the meaninglessness of our actions. Many contemporary dramatists -- because they see the world as a series of artificial constructs whose meanings change according to time, circumstance, and personal experience -- resist a single explanation for issues, characters, and plots, and thus fragmentation is often a characteristic of postmodern plays." [ from Longman Anthology ]

Many of the ides of Absurdism and Absurdist Theatre can be traced back to the literary works of Franz Kafka and Alfred Jarry or to the artistic movements in the early twentieth century such as Dada, Surrealism and Expressionism which in many cases were anti-establishment reactions driven by the atrocities of WWI.
However, the issues dealt with by the Theatre of the Absurd are most based on the ideals of Existentialist philosophy

Questions

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. -- Sam Beckett @ Amazon * In 1974, Kino International filmed a nickel-and-dime version of RHINOCEROS that has just been released on DVD (April 2003). It's really a low budget film adaptation by Julian Barry, directed by Tom O'Horgan. The performances are stellar: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, and Karen Black in the leads. Mostel executes the transformation into a rhinoceros on camera without any makeup or camera tricks. A hilarious, weird freeze-frame of theatre/cinema crossover history.

Notes

Irony: One needs to distinguish between three kinds of irony. Dramatic irony, found only in dramatic narratives, is not a figure but a kind of strategy; it established some important disparity betwen what the audience knows and what one or more characters in the narrative know. The classic example here is Oedipus in Oedipus Rex. It raises the question about the disparity between appearance and reality. Socratic irony, is also a strategy, but between a person's real and assumed character. Swift uses it in Tale of the Tub, but for Socrates, it is an argumentative strategy. Verbal irony is a figure; its essence is a disparity between what is said, and what is intended, or really thought. The essence of verbal irony is ambiguity. When one is ironic about a subject, one refuses to assent to the usual view of it, and at the same time one does not flatly condemn the usual view. We do not know, exactly, where the ironist stands.

on Beckett * Make sense who may. I switch off. - Samuel Beckett

Absudism -- A reaction to the devastation of World War II, the dramatists and philosophers behind the absurdist movement attempted to give voice to the idea that, no matter what veneer we put on it, life is at best the sum of our actions and at worst meaningless. Samuel Beckett-Irish: Most famous works include Waiting for Godot in which two bums wait for someone who never comes, Krapp's Last Tape in which a man listens to recordings of himself at a younger age, Happy Days and Endgame. Although Beckett works have been notorious for their indecipherability, common themes include individuals that are pathetic in their existence and vainly try to find purpose within it.

Eugene Ionesco-Rumanian: Most famous works include Rhinoceros, a play about a man in a small village in which everyone slowly begins to turn into rhinoceroses and The Bald Soprano, an anti-play in which the characters exchange meaningless chit-chat and there is no story. Other works include The Chairs, Here Comes the Chopper, The Lesson and Oh What a Bloody Circus! One may say Ionesco dealt most strongly with the second idea of absurdist theatre, that of the lack of adequate communication among humans. In his plays he masters the clichés of modern language, for example in his first play The Bald Soprano the text of the play was derived from an English-language phrase book. Also consider The Chairs in which an orator appears that can only mutter nonsense noises.

Harold Pinter-English: Most famous works include The Caretaker, The Room and The Birthday Party. Pinter’s works centre around characters that live in an absurd world but feel safe in it. What is stopping them from looking outside their world for a possible purpose is the uncertainty of it. For example in The Room, two characters occupy a room, as the story unravels one must consider; why they stay in the room and the uncertainty involved with leaving the room.

Some of the predecessors of absurd drama:

In the realm of verbal nonsense: François Rabelais, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Many serious poets occasionally wrote nonsense poetry (Johnson, Charles Lamb, Keats, Hugo, Byron, Thomas Hood). One of the greatest masters of nonsense poetry was the German poet Christian Morgernstern (1871-1914). Ionesco found the work of S J Perelman (i.e. the dialogues of the Marx Brothers' films) a great inspiration for his work. The world of allegory, myth and dream: The tradition of the world as a stage and life as a dream goes back to Elizabethan times. Baroque allegorical drama shows the world in terms of mythological archetypes: John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, Calderon, Jakob Biederman. With the decline of allegory, the element of fantasy prevails (Swift, Hugh Walpole).

In some 18th and 19th Century works of literature we find sudden transformation of characters and nightmarish shifts of time and place (E T A Hoffman, Nerval, Aurevilly). Dreams are featured in many theatrical pieces, but it had to wait for Strindberg to produce the masterly transcriptions of dreams and obsessions that have become a direct source of the Absurd Theatre. Strindberg, Dostoyevsky, Joyce and Kafka created archetypes: by delving into their own subconscious, they discovered the universal, collective significance of their own private obsessions. In the view of Mircea Eliade, myth has never completely disappeared on the level of individual experience. The Absurd Theatre sought to express the individual's longing for a single myth of general validity. The above-mentioned authors anticipated this. Alfred Jarry is an important predecessor of the Absurd Theatre. His UBU ROI (1896) is a mythical figure, set amidst a world of grotesque archetypal images. Ubu Roi is a caricature, a terrifying image of the animal nature of man and his cruelty. (Ubu Roi makes himself King of Poland and kills and tortures all and sundry. The work is a puppet play and its décor of childish naivety underlines the horror.) Jarry expressed man's psychological states by objectifying them on the stage. Similarly, Franz Kafka's short stories and novels are meticulously exact descriptions of archetypal nightmares and obsessions in a world of convention and routine.

20th Century European avant-garde: For the French avant-garde, myth and dream was of utmost importance: the surrealists based much of their artistic theory on the teachings of Freud and his emphasis on the role of the subconscious. The aim of the avant-garde was to do away with art as a mere imitation of appearances. Apollinaire demanded that art should be more real than reality and deal with essences rather than appearances. One of the more extreme manifestations of the avant-garde was the Dadaist movement, which took the desire to do away with obsolete artistic conventions to the extreme. Some Dadaist plays were written, but these were mostly nonsense poems in dialogue form, the aim of which was primarily to 'shock the bourgeois audience'. After the First World War, German Expressionism attempted to project inner realities and to objectify thought and feeling. Some of Brecht's plays are close to Absurd Drama, both in their clowning and their music-hall humour and the preoccupation with the problem of identity of the self and its fluidity. French surrealism acknowledged the subconscious mind as a great, positive healing force. However, its contribution to the sphere of drama was meagre: indeed it can be said that the Absurd Theatre of the 1950s and 1960s was a Belated practical realisation of the principles formulated by the Surrealists as early as the 1930s. In this connection, of particular importance were the theoretical writings of Antonin Artaud. Artaud fully rejected realism in the theatre, cherishing a vision of a stage of magical beauty and mythical power. He called for a return to myth and magic and to the exposure of the deepest conflicts within the human mind. He demanded a theatre that would produce collective archetypes, thus creating a new mythology. In his view, theatre should pursue the aspects of the internal world. Man should be considered metaphorically in a wordless language of shapes, light, movement and gesture. Theatre should aim at expressing what language is incapable of putting into words. Artaud forms a bridge between the inter-war avant-garde and the post-Second-World-War Theatre of the Absurd.

* beckett ***

Godot.06 UAF main stage *

Happy Days: A Play in Two Acts by Samuel Beckett; Grove Press, 1961

囫箴滂珈 [ru]

pomo.vtheatre.net 2006 Mamet

...

Absurd

Camus: At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Beckett: the End of Modernism and the Postmodern (60s)
THR413 Playscript Analysis and acting, directing classes (how to do absurdism)
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don't want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the shit the more I am grateful to him. He's not f---ing me about, he's not leading me up any garden path, he's not slipping me a wink, he's not flogging me a remedy or a path or a revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs, he's not selling me anything I don't want to buy — he doesn't give a bollock whether I buy or not — he hasn't got his hand over his heart. Well, I'll buy his goods, hook, line and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty. His work is beautiful." -- Harold Pinter about Beckett

Themes:
Death
Love
   Hamm : You loved me once.
   Clov : Once!
   Hamm : I've made you suffer too much. (Pause.) Haven't I?
   Clov : It's not that.
   Hamm (shocked) : I haven't made you suffer too much?
   Clov : Yes!
   Hamm (relieved) : Ah you gave me a fright !
Death, dying (process). Body as Son of Mind? Boy. Retarded. Bicycle! Leaving the mind... Madness?
Read Endgame online at samuel-beckett.net!
Finale:
HAMM:
It's we are obliged to each other.
(Pause. Clov goes towards door.)
One thing more.
(Clov halts.)
A last favor.
(Exit Clov.)
Cover me with the sheet.
(Long pause.)
No? Good.
(Pause.)
Me to play.
(Pause. Wearily.)
Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing.
(Pause. More animated.)
Let me see.
(Pause.) Ah yes!
(He tries to move the chair, using the gaff as before. Enter Clov, dressed for the road. Panama hat, tweed coat, raincoat over his arm, umbrella, bag. He halts by the door and stands there, impassive and motionless, his eyes fixed on Hamm, till the end. Hamm gives up:) Good.
(Pause.)
Discard.
(He throws away the gaff, makes to throw away the dog, thinks better of it.)
Take it easy.
(Pause.)
And now?
(Pause.)
Raise hat.
(He raises his toque.)
Peace to our... arses.
(Pause.)
And put on again.
(He puts on his toque.)
Deuce.
(Pause. He takes off his glasses.)
Wipe.
(He takes out his handkerchief and, without unfolding it, wipes his glasses.)
And put on again.
(He puts on his glasses, puts back the handkerchief in his pocket.) We're coming. A few more squirms like that and I'll call.
(Pause.)
A little poetry.
(Pause.)
You prayed---
(Pause. He corrects himself.)
You CRIED for night; it comes---
(Pause. He corrects himself.)
It FALLS: now cry in darkness.
(He repeats, chanting.)
You cried for night; it falls: now cry in darkness.
(Pause.)
Nicely put, that.
(Pause.)
And now?
(Pause.)
Moments for nothing, now as always, time was never and time is over, reckoning closed and story ended.
(Pause. Narrative tone.)
If he could have his child with him...
(Pause.)
It was the moment I was waiting for.
(Pause.)
You don't want to abandon him? You want him to bloom while you are withering? Be there to solace your last million last moments?
(Pause.) He doesn't realize, all he knows is hunger, and cold, and death to crown it all. But you! You ought to know what the earth is like, nowadays. Oh I put him before his responsibilities!
(Pause. Normal tone.)
Well, there we are, there I am, that's enough.
(He raises the whistle to his lips, hesitates, drops it. Pause.) Yes, truly! (He whistles. Pause. Louder. Pause.) Good. (Pause.) Father! (Pause. Louder.) Father! (Pause.) Good. (Pause.) We're coming. (Pause.) And to end up with? (Pause.) Discard. (He throws away the dog. He tears the whistle from his neck.) With my compliments. (He throws the whistle towards the auditorium. Pause. He sniffs. Soft.) Clov! (Long pause.) No? Good. (He takes out the handkerchief.) Since that's the way we're playing it... (he unfolds handkerchief) ...let's play it that way... (he unfolds) ...and speak no more about it... (he finishes unfolding) ...speak no more. (He holds handkerchief spread out before him.) Old stancher! (Pause.) You... remain. (Pause. He covers his face with handkerchief, lowers his arms to armrests, remains motionless.)
(Brief tableau.) Curtain

"A work of art is the expression of an incommunicable reality that one tries to communicate..." Ionesco
Student Papers:
Robynn Gille
Dramlit 215
4/13/00
200 Words "Endgame"
"Over My Head, But Wow! What a PLAY!!!!!"
I'm not quite certain I have a handle on how to grasp this play, it was more difficult to picture, it just comes across as a better play to watch rather than to read. But there are some concepts in here that made sense and I really enjoyed pondering them. It's precisely for times like these that I'm grateful that art is relative, I'm grateful it's based on individual interpretation, or I'd be in a lot of trouble, here:
If I understand this play correctly, nothing is finished. Things are ending, the world has ended, and these characters (Hamm, Clov, Nagg, Nell) are somewhat trapped here, waiting to die, waiting for closure, waiting for SOMETHING! There's no reality, no consistancy, no sense, nothing is certain. There's no ocean but the sound of waves, there's no place "just right" to put the chair, nothing is where it should be. The dog is fake yet it's real to Hamm. It's not time to take the painkiller, but there's no painkiller left anyways...There are so many Zen concepts in here I can't begin to count them! Everything in nothing! It's all here!
I love the relationship (strained as it is) between Hamm and Clov. Some beautifully haunting lines come from their dialogue. ("If you leave me how shall I know?" "You won't come and kiss me goodbye?") I was strained by the desire for one to have the other stay against his/her will. The fact that these characters are genderless make it easier for me to project my own emotions upon them. I understand this as a possible aim Beckett had: how would we respond when there is nothing left?
This play was very profound to me, amidst all the talk of pee and corpses, there's an underlying sense of the fragility and profundity of humankind, of human thought. Our thoughts are all we have that tie us to our understanding of the world around us. This play made me think of the possible results of when the end does come, when we don't even have the tangibility of our thoughts to rely upon... Perhaps I really do understand something about this play.

Did we finally arrive to the war with the "last enimy -- death" (Bible)? Is it about the mortality? Death of every individual is the death of the world?

Paradox: the 20th century is the bloodiest!

Most populated...

As with Chekhov, we do not see comedy in Beckett (Ionesco's absurdism is easier). Again, remember "Divine Comedy" (concept).

Tragic Comedy!

PS

Mind and Body, Master and Servant (Plato). Memory (parents) are separated too.

[ image ] "What is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart... The absurd is born of the confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world." - Alfred Camus (qtd. Brockett, Century, 311)

[ Godot.06 Theatre UAF production ]

Becket after the Postmodern: transcultural (Existentialism ends in a concept of "Culture of One") -- M. Epstein

Posthumans (3rd millennium) -- WWIII (Cold War), or 50 years of the end of the century is overlooked. Technology aspect -- "post-nuclear anxiety" (we can't trust oueselves).

Web & Internet -- we do not see the changes, because we have changed!

Must work on 600 pages * new methodology, new definitions (film-philososphy)...

Absurdism : Social & Philosophical Concerns

horror at atrocities of WWII

post-nuclear anxiety *

Existentialism (Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus):

atrocities prove not the existence of evil but God-less & meaningless world

philosophy, religion, art, modes of identity = human-made structures that give illusion of meaning

meaning & purpose = attainable only through individual choice and action

repetitive speech undercuts possibility of ultimate meaning

dialogue that advances plot & reveals meaning

use of silence (pauses)

Absurdism tends towards minimalism

Brechtian Epic Theatre

avant-garde of 1910s-20s (e.g., Surrealism -- see Theatre Theory pages)

[ Endgame ] Exposition:
Bare interior. Grey Light. Left and right back, high up, two small windows, curtains drawn. Front right, a door. Hanging near door, its face to wall, a picture. Front left, touching each other, covered with an old sheet, two ashbins. Center, in an armchair on castors, covered with an old sheet, Hamm. Motionless by the door, his eyes fixed on Hamm, Clov. Very red face.
Brief tableau.
Clov goes and stands under window left. Stiff, staggering walk. He looks up at window left. He turns and looks at window right. He goes and stands under window right. He looks up at window right. He turns and looks at window left. He goes out, comes back immediately with a small step-ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, draws back curtain. He gets down, takes six steps (for example) towards window right, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, draws back curtain. He gets down, takes three steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, looks out of window. Brief laugh. He gets down, takes one step towards window right, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, looks out of window. Brief laugh. He gets down, goes with ladder towards ashbins, halts, turns, carries back ladder and sets it down under window right, goes to ashbins, removes sheet covering them, folds it over his arm. He raises one lid, stoops and looks into bin. Brief laugh. He closes lid. Same with other bin. He goes to Hamm, removes sheet covering him, folds it over his arm. In a dressing-gown, a stiff toque on his head, a large blood-stained handkerchief over his face, a whistle hanging from his neck, a rug over his knees, thick socks on his feet, Hamm seems to be asleep. Clov looks him over. Brief laugh. He goes to door, halts, turns towards auditorium.
CLOV (fixed gaze, tonelessly): Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. (Pause.) Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. (Pause.) I can't be punished any more. (Pause.) I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. (Pause.) Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me.
(He remains a moment motionless, then goes out. He comes back immediately, goes to window right, takes up the ladder and carries it out. Pause. Hamm stirs. He yawns under the handkerchief. He removes the handkerchief from his face. Very red face. Glasses with black lenses.)
HAMM: Me--- (he yawns) ---to play. (He takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes, his face, the glasses, puts them on again, folds the handkerchief and puts it back neatly in the breast pocket of his dressing gown. He clears his throat, joins the tips of his fingers.) Can there be misery--- (he yawns) ---loftier than mine? No doubt. Formerly. But now? (Pause.) My father? (Pause.) My mother? (Pause.) My... dog? (Pause.) Oh I am willing to believe they suffer as much as such creatures can suffer. But does that mean their sufferings equal mine? No doubt. (Pause.) No, all is a--- (he yawns) ---bsolute, (proudly) the bigger a man is the fuller he is. (Pause. Gloomily.) And the emptier. (He sniffs.) Clov! (Pause.) No, alone. (Pause.) What dreams! Those forests! (Pause.) Enough, it's time it ended, in the shelter, too. (Pause.) And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to... to end. Yes, there it is, it's time it ended and yet I hesitate to--- (He yawns.) ---to end. (Yawns.) God, I'm tired, I'd be better off in bed. (He whistles. Enter Clov immediately. He halts beside the chair.) You pollute the air! (Pause.) Get me ready, I'm going to bed.
Define the principles of Beckett's exposition in Endgame.

[ Commentaries on Beckett, textbook -- must read ]

NB

Minimalism -- stage directions Beckett's style.

[ 200 words on Endgame ] godot: fate is determined by chance = the meaninglessness of time, or "+"

Next: Beckett

Before -- "the Existentialist assumes that existence precedes essence, that the significant fact is that we and things in general exist, but that these things have no meaning for us except as we through acting upon them give them meaning. That is, there is no real meaning in any event or group of events except what the individual gives it." One of the key ideas of existentialism that the Absurdist playwrights locked onto was this idea of this world without meaning, it was Absurd, without purpose and yet people continued to live in it and do their absurd duties in their absurd lives in their absurd world

Consider Albert Camus The Myth of Sysphus, which deals with the character of Sysphus who is damned to push a boulder up a hill, only to fall back to the bottom whenever he reached the top. This is the perfect example of human existence being barred by an absurdist notion KEY points: ~ " Nonlinear dramatic structure "

- Godot doesn¹t go anywhere.

~ " Characters are stereotypical "

~ " Language is devalued "

- language games in Godot

~ " Symbolic use of stage properties "
- Tree in Godot

~ " Concerned with philosophical issues "
- Human loneliness in a world without God
- The inability to communicate
- The dehumanization of the individual
- meaninglessness of life
~ mixture of comic and tragic

Absurdism: Ionesco

"It's not a certain society that seems ridiculous to me, it's mankind." Eugene Ionesco (1912-1994)

Living is abnormal. -- The Rhinoceros

Berenger - an average citizen in a nameless French city - is not interested in the fact that rhinoceros are on the loose. This causes him to quarrel with his friend Jean and his attractive secretary Daisy outside a grocer's shop. The argument continues with many local joining in - these include the grocer and his wife, a waitress and a housewife, a cafe owner, an old gentleman, a waitress and a logician. The group try to reason the events that are happening around them. The results are understandably chaotic.
In the local government office where Berenger works he witnesses that the staff are gradually turning into rhinoceros.
Eventually Berenger finds out that Daisy and he are the only human beings left. To his surprise Daisy then too turns into a rhinoceros. Berenger concludes he will then fight against all the rhinoceros... [Ionesco Page]

Bald Soprano *


School/Movement     -   
Theatre of the Absurd             
Dates  1950-1960 
Description/Philosophy 
     Plotless plays, discontinuous dialogue, empty set filled with mysterious  suggestions, denouement 
     never comes, effects of silence and tension  builds in a pause, sheer theatricality held by actor抯 
     voice in extended  monologue, actor抯 standing perfectly still for effect 
     Use of cliches, seemingly irrelevant remarks 
     Repetitious activity instead of logical action, automatic behavior - often  inappropriate, poetic 
     imagery, mythological/allegorical/dreamlike  thought modes, can have circular structure, 
     unexplained char. actions 
     Distorted meaning of familiar words, nonsequential dialogue 
     Frequently exemplify existential point of view toward human behavior 
     Search for images of non-reason, lost faith in reason, man is lost 
Founder/Key Influences 
     Martin Esslin - coined the catch phrase and did the grouping   (after the fact)  Ionesco, Albee, 
     Beckett 
     Influenced by Jarry抯 - Ubu Roi, sometimes called 1st absurdist drama (always called 1st 
     something) 
     Sartre - No Exit - existentialist influence 
     Manifesto (of sorts)  -  Martin Esslin抯 - Theatre of the Absurd 1961 
Plays and Playwrights 
     Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, Rough  for the Theatre I, Rough 
     for the Theatre II 
     Eugene Ionesco - The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros, The Chairs, The  Leader, The Lesson 
     Edward Albee - The American Dream, Zoo Story 
     Harold Pinter - The Dumb Waiter 
     Slawomir Mrozek - Striptease 
     Paul Maar - Noodle Doodle Box 
For Future Reference 
     The Collected Works of Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot - Beckett 
     Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern Drama - Brater, Enoch, Cohn 
     The Theatre of the Absurd - Martin Esslin 
     The Theatre of Essence - Jan Kott 
     The Two Faces of Ionesco - Lamont, Friedman 
     Rhinoceros and Other Plays - Eugene Ionesco

http://www.geocities.com/shalyndria13/ref1.htm

http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD: THE WEST AND THE EAST

...

"Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost, all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless." - Eugine Ionesco (qtd. Brockett, Century, 312)