MLA 382:
Learning from the Absurd: Drama for the Age of Anxiety
The third decade of the new millennium appears as a point of intersection of multiple crises of global scale, from climate change, to planetary migrations, to information technologies escaping human control, to unprecedented wealth inequalities. Yet, the feeling of anxiety that all of these and many other crises evoke is not new. Unlike the apocalyptic moods of the past, this new sense of anxiety was based on a realization that humanity has acquired the capacity to self-destruct, which was evidenced with the detonation of the atom bomb and the dawning of the nuclear age. One of the most effective artistic responses to this unprecedented human condition was the new form of theater that emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War: the theater of the absurd. This class will explore the unique artistic strategies that absurdist theater devised in response to a variety of overwhelming crises, with the ultimate goal of bringing its lessons into the present. This exploration is not limited to dramatic literature only. We will engage with philosophical texts from authors such as Albert Camus and Karl Jaspers, who provided theoretical grounds for the modern idea of the absurd, with critics such as Martin Esslin and Jan Kott, who recognized this new dramatic paradigm and elaborated on it, and with theater-makers such as Peter Brook, Roger Blin, and Pina Bausch, who responded to the unique performance potential of the absurd. Theater of the absurd contributed to the emergence of the first global form of experimental drama. The backbone of the class consists of dramatic works of canonical authors such Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Adrianne Kennedy, Amiri Baraka, and Edward Albee, and others, not as well-known but no less deserving playwrights such as Tewfik al Hakim, Slawomir Mrozek, and Jose Trijana.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 4
