I'm no theatre history expert, but I think the term "surrealism" refers more to painting (i.e. Salvador Dali) than to theatre. In the theatre we have the genre of "absurdism," a.k.a. Theatre of the Absurd. There are lots of variations on non-realistic theatre that can fall under this category, ranging from Samuel Beckett to "Theatre of Cruelty," "Theatre of the Oppressed" (look those up), and certain modern playwrights like Sarah Kane. It's a pretty big topic! But trying to find stuff under the genre of Theatre of the Absurd or absurdist theatre will get you farther in your research than "surrealism" probably. Good luck!
EDIT: After skimming through that link above, it looks like there really was a genre of theatre called surrealism, but it looks like it was really more of a French thing. Perhaps Theatre of the Absurd was the American version of that, resulting from the first performances of Samuel Beckett in America. Something you might want to look up too! Maybe you can talk about how the French (including Beckett, who lived in Paris and wrote his plays in French initially even though he was of Irish decent) influenced American absurdist theatre. Also look into "avant guarde" theatre, which I think is basically the same thing as aburdist theatre, although there are probably some differences.
Updated On: 5/19/08 at 07:44 PM
