Jul 6, 2010

RIDICULE

One of the favorite (Romanian) authors during my upbringing was Eugene Ionescu.
He was one of the authors of the Theatre d'Absurd (Theatre of the absurd).

The Theatre of Absurd constitutes plays written by playwrights from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. The style of theatre was evolved from their work. Their philosophy was that in a godless universe, human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down.
Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.

Theme is absurdity.
I hear...

A man's reaction to a world apparently without meaning or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by an invisible outside force.

Someone is keeping me prisoner as we speak...

Seriously, life is comic, mixed with tragical events, hopeless situations, repetitive actions (were they all PhD students actually?), dialogues full of cliches, wordplay and pure NONSENSE. Plots were cyclical or absurdly expansive (Wagner?), either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of 'well-made play'.

Ah, I found my way home!

Other playwrights associated with the Theatre of the Absurd are: Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov,  Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Friedrich Durrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal and Edward Albee.

These authors obviously gave voice to Albert Camus' philosophy that life is inherently without meaning.

Mode is set to tragicomedy.

'NOTHING IS FUNNIER THAN UNHAPPINESS... IT'S THE MOST COMICAL THING IN THE WORLD!'  (Ahahahaha, it so is!!)

So, Pataphysics is the science of imaginatory solutions. I wonder if Nature will accept this?

Jean-Paul Sartre was the philosophical spokesman for Existentialism in Paris (expressed in being and Nothingness?).

Ionescu hated Sartre bitterly.
He accused Sartre of supporting Communism but ignoring the atrocities committed by Communists, so Ionesco wrote Rhinoceros as a criticism of blind conformity; at the end of the play, one man remains on Earth resisting transformation into a rhinoceros.



Ionescu wrote The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice Chauve), The Lesson (La Lecon) and The Chairs (Les Chaises) and Macbett (1972-they year I was born) among others.
The Chairs was on SVT many years ago, but I would like to see it again sometime, preferably in the theatre. How absurd is it that this would probably not happen?
Unless I put up the production myself?




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