Although there is broad diversity within modern European drama, there are parallels, common threads, and reactions linking them. This assortment of links is sometimes tenuous, at others blatant, but always in some form connecting plays from different European playwrights.
The ‘theatre of the absurd’ contains works by many leading mid to late twentieth century playwrights including Pinter , who’s early plays revolved around such questions as the relationship between “the necessary and the possible or being and non-being” (Innes. 1992b: 325). In particular, The Caretaker (Pinter. 2000) contains parallels with both the theatricality and the existentialism within In Camera by Sartre (1990).
Theatrically, both plays are set within a single location; The Caretaker takes place in a single room in a house in west London (Pinter. 2000) while In Camera occurs in a second empire style drawing room (Sartre. 1990: 181). A parallel can also be drawn connecting the relationships between Aston & Davies in ‘The Caretaker’ and that of Garcin, Inez, and Estelle during In Camera. For example, Davies is annoyed by Aston, leading to a verbal attack; while Aston is also annoyed by Davies, leading to a confrontation between the two (Pinter. 2000: 95-96 & 105-111). This is comparable to the notion that Garcin, Inez, and Estelle will each act as the torturer of the others and that “Hell is…other people” (Sartre. 1990: 195 & 223).
The three main protagonists of In Camera are bound together in Hell; linked to each other always. This is exemplified by the fact that Garcin states to Inez that “if you make any movement…Estelle and I feel a little tug. Alone, none of us can save himself or herself; we’re linked together inextricably”, and also by the ...
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Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a comedy that has been interpreted in different ways, enabling one to receive multiple experiences of the same story. Due to the content and themes of the play, it can be creatively challenging to producers and their casting strategies. Instead of being a hindrance, I find the ability for one to experiment exciting as people try to discover strategies that best represent entertainment for the audience, as well as the best ways to interpret Shakespeare’s work.
The Theatre of the Absurd (50's) draws on the existentialist writings of Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Camus adapted Dostoyevsky's The Possesed to the stage (1959).
When many people decided to sit down and read a book or a play it is because the title or summary entices them. As the story comes to an end it is decided whether or not the person related to or understood the point of the literature. Great authors and playwrights know this and set in place concepts. Many different concepts, to catch different audiences attention and to deepen the understanding of the literature. In order to understand Shakespeare’s play Othello, it is necessary to examine the emotions of jealousy, manipulation, being consumed by something, and gender.
Feste, the fool character in Twelfth Night, in many ways represents a playwright figure, and embodies the reach and tools of the theater. He criticizes, manipulates and entertains the other characters while causing them to reflect on their life situations, which is similar to the way a playwright such as Shakespeare interacts with his audience. Furthermore, more so than the other characters in the play he accomplishes this in a highly performative way, involving song and clever wordplay that must be decoded, and is thus particularly reflective of the mechanisms at the command of the playwright. Feste is a representation of the medieval fool figure, who is empowered by his low status and able to speak the truth of the kingdom. A playwright speaks the truth by using actors and fictional characters, who are in a parallel low status in comparison to the audience, as they lack the dimensionality of real people. Thus, the role Feste plays in the lives of the characters in the play resembles the role the play itself plays in the lives of the audience watching the performance. This essay will explore this comparison first by analyzing similarities between the way in which Feste interacts with other characters and the way the playwright interact with the audience, and then focus on the similarities between the aims and content of these interactions.
This essay will seek to outline my findings on movie and theatre by looking at still image and moving image. I will discuss the relationship between cinema and film, and also compare some works of artists in order to answer the question which how might photography be contextualized as image on the threshold of still and moving – as an object incorporating the temporal and the narrative, the writing of history, or the presentation of documentation as record.
Rose, Mark. “Reforming the Role.” Modern Critical Interpretations: Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Rpt. from Homer to Brecht: The European Epic and Dramatic Traditions. Ed. Michael Seidel and Edward Mendelson. N.p.: Yale University Press, 1977.
In theatrical performance, the fictional realm of drama is aligned with the factual, or “real” world of the audience, and a set of actors feign re-creation of this factual world. At the same time the audience, by participating as spectators, feigns believability in the mimic world the actors create. It is in this bond of pretense between the on-stage and off-stage spheres of reality—the literal and the mock-literal—that the appeal of drama is engendered. The Merchant of Venice then, like any effective drama, ostensibly undermines realism by professing to portray it. The work contains no prologue to establish dramatic context; it offers no assertion of its status as imitation, a world separate from our own. And yet, the bond of pretense forged between actors and audience prevents the line between the fictional and the factual from being blurred completely. This division allows the device of metatheatricality to emerge as a means by which the play can ally itself with realism, rather than undermining it, by acknowledging its own status as drama.
At the centre of the existential angst, dominating the great movements of life, there lays an essential absurdity. England in the aftermath of the two wars inherited this absurdity that upheld the human predicament in a world where “nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm.” Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus diagnoses humanity’s plight as purposeless in an existence out of harmony with its surroundings. This irrationality and pointlessness of experience is transferred to the stage where by all semblance of logical construction and all intellectually viable argument is abundant. In the same strain, developed the Angry Plays of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beckett, Adamor and Pinter with the difference of attempting
Modern day Theater hasn’t changed much from 20th Century Theater. However, European Theater is nothing like 20th Century American Theater. 20th Century Theater was greatly influenced by World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression. This caused lack of communication in families, which was shown in the play Landscape.
Theater of the Absurd applies to a group of plays with a certain set of characteristics. These characteristics convey a sense of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an unexplainable feeling. These plays all have unusual actions and are missing a key element that would clearly define other pieces of literature. Language and actions differ from the usual and sometimes cannot be explained in the Theater of the Absurd. In the works of Albee and Ionesco language, behavior, and structure are abnormal if compared to other plays. Language is a key factor that is presented as a weak form of communication throughout “The Future is in Eggs,” “The Zoo Story,” “The American Dream,” and “The Leader.”
In 1962, writer Mark Esslin took pleasure in composing the novel Theatre of the Absurd and quickly became a major influence on the works of many inspired writers. Esslin subsequently made ensuing plays and stories which focused on nonspecific existentialist concepts and which did not remain consistent with his ideas, rejecting the “narrative continuity and the rigidity of logic.” As a result, the protagonist of these stories is often not capable of containing himself within his or her disorderly society (“Theatre”). Writer Albert Camus made such an interpretation of the “Absurd” by altering the idea into his view of believing it is the rudimentary absence of “reasonableness” and consistency in the human personality. Not only does Camus attempt to display the absurd through studied deformities and established arrangements; he also “undermines the ordinary expectations of continuity and rationality” (“The Theatre”). Camus envisions life in his works, The Stranger and “The Myth of Sisyphus,” as having no time frame or significance, and the toiling endeavor to find such significance where it does not exist is what Camus believes to be the absurd (“Albert”).
The name most associated with excellence in theatre is William Shakespeare. His plays, more than any other playwright, resonate through the ages. It may be safe to say that he has influenced more actors, directors, and playwrights than any thespian in the history of the stage. But what were his influences? During the Middle Ages theatre was dominated by morality, miracle, and mystery plays that were often staged by the church as a means to teach the illiterate masses about Christianity. It wasn’t until the early sixteenth century that Greek tragedy experienced a revival, in turn, inspiring a generation of renaissance playwrights.
Absurdism, a very well known term in the era of modern theatre, has played a very significant role in the field of dramas. It’s significance and its presence in the modern theatre has created all together a different and a specific area in the world of theatre, widely known as “the theater of the absurd”. The theatre of absurdity was given its place in the 1960’s by the American critic Martin Esslin. In a thought to make the audience aware that there is no such true order or meaning in the world of their existence. It’s an attempt to bring the audience closer to the reality and help them understand their own meaning in life.