Theater of the absurd

1. "What do I know about man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes." -Samuel Beckett Theater of the absurd

2. Existentialism • Addresses coping with the emotional anguish arising from our confrontation with nothingness • advocates a formula of passionate commitment and impassive stoicism • Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. • Any course of action is problematic

3. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) • Stressed the ambiguity and absurdity of the human situation • Truth and subjectivity, doubt and faith intertwined • Only meaningful response to such absurdity is to live a totally committed life

4. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) • Focused on the individual, not society, & admired only the superhero who refused to be bound by the prevailing social paradigms of nationalism, Christianity, faith in science, loyalty to the state or bourgeois civilized comfort • War & courage > love of neighbor

5. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) • “Question of being” • Somber vision of the “absurd” condition of human beings “thrown into the world” without any understanding of their fate

6. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) • Ideal of human “authenticity” which consists in choosing our actions at each point, avoiding the “bad faith” of pretending that others are responsible for our choices, and choosing not just for oneself but “for all” inasmuch as each choice envisages the creation of a new world (lonely tragic hero)

7. Existentialist Connections • “Existential action also assumes that the world comes to us void of horizons of significance. We have an urgent priority to impose on that world our own projects, freely chosen, and thus become a creator of values for ourselves. The world gives us no fixed priorities for choosing one project over another. But to be fully human, to achieve the dignity of being human, we must act upon our freedom to choose and launch ourselves into the world. This will not bring us happiness (de Beauvoir insists upon that repeatedly); it will, however, confer human dignity upon us.”

8. The ineffectual trying to cope with the incomprehensible-- • Dramatic world is empty of any meaning or reliability with regard to time, space, and memory • Heroes lack ability to act confidently or create purpose in the world • Subject of Absurdist Theatre: how protagonists try to cope in the face of helplessness, uncertainty, and lack of reassurance

9. Comic futility • Absurdity of language • Loose beginnings and endings

10. Tom Stoppard on R&G: • "As far as their involvement in Shakespeare's text is concerned they are told very little about what is going on and much of what they are told isn't true. So I see them much more clearly as a couple of bewildered innocents rather than a couple of henchmen, which is the usual way they are depicted in productions of Hamlet. "

11. Stoppard on R&G Are Dead • "not written as a response to anything about alienation in our times.... It would be fatal to set out to write primarily on an intellectual level. Instead, one writes about human beings under stress, whether it is about losing one's trousers or being nailed to the cross."