The Development of Drama after

the Second World War

THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

ABSURD originally means "out of harmony", incongruous, unreasonable, illogical and ridiculous. In an essay on Kafka, Ionesco defined his understanding of the term as follows: "Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose […] cut off from his actions become senseless, absurd, useless". The theatre of post-war Britain was totally different from that of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The concept of the "well-made" play had completely given way to new forms of theatre that were more concerned with effect than with form. In the Fifties, a completely new prose drama form erupted on the scene in the form of the Theatre of the Absurd.

The major representatives of the form were Eugene Ionesco in France and Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard in England. The actual form (as well as the context) of the plays themselves contribute to the meaning they wish to express by having no formal logic or conventional structure.The lack of structure and logic, in other words, contributes to conjuring up the idea of incommunicability as well as the sensation of irrationality and absurdity. The Theatre of the Absurd seems to reflect the world of dreams and the nightmares of the subconscious mind.