How repetition and waiting shape absurdist plays

Theater of the absurd is a style of plays that focuses on life without meaning or purpose and on communication breaking down. What can repetition, waiting, and stalled action help us understand about this theater? The lessons consider how these patterns shape dramatic relationships and the sense of movement.

2 articles, 1 video, 1 book · about 45 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   theater of the absurd · Wikipedia · 32 min read

   In theater of the absurd, the action of Godot is centered around the absence of a man named Godot, for whom the characters perpetually wait. Absurdist plays often feature characters in interdependent pairs, commonly either two males or a male and a female. Their relationship may be roughly equal, dominant and passive, or shift dramatically throughout the play, as in Ionesco's The Lesson. Samuel Beckett's theater of the absurd play Waiting for Godot was first performed on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris.

2. Read
   The Theatre of the Absurd | British Literature Wiki · sites.udel.edu · 7 min read

   Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1952), the most well-known play from the absurdist movement, features the isolation of the individual. Vladimir and Estragon are tramps on the outskirts of society who are isolated from one another despite having each other; one indication is that they are never able to adequately communicate, and their conversation goes in circles.

3. Watch
   

   Asteroid City, Liminal Spaces and Absurdism · YouTube · 6 min watch

   Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus is one of the sources behind this video on Asteroid City, liminal spaces and absurdism.

4. Book
   

   Waiting for Godot · Bookshop.org

   Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett follows Vladimir and Estragon, two seemingly homeless men waiting near a tree for someone or something named Godot. The play's comical wordplay, poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense have been interpreted as mankind's inexhaustible search for meaning.

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