contemporary absurdist playwrights
contemporary absurdist playwrights
CleveNMLActor
Swing Joined: 7/25/11
#1contemporary absurdist playwrights
Posted: 9/23/11 at 12:25amDoes anyone know of any prominent contemporary absurdist playwrights of the past 5-10 years?
#2contemporary absurdist playwrights
Posted: 9/23/11 at 12:01pmThe term "absurdist" is a silly catchall meant to cover all sorts of unrelated writers from Ionesco to Genet to Pinter. If Albee is to be included it's only in his very earliest work. Personally, I think it applies to Ionesco (maybe) and no one else.
Faced with these Loreleis, what man can moralize!
#3contemporary absurdist playwrights
Posted: 9/23/11 at 1:41pm^ I actually would consider "The Goat" to be an absurdist play as it is apart of the theater of cruelty, which stems from theater of the absurd.
#4contemporary absurdist playwrights
Posted: 9/23/11 at 2:32pm
I don't know - I know people disagree a lot on this one, but both times I saw The Goat, it seemed like a good old raucous comedy, with tragic undertones. Except for the odd ending, of course.
But then, I know some people who swear that the audience didn't laugh once when they saw it, and who are sure it was a tragedy. Both times I went, people were guffawing.
#5contemporary absurdist playwrights
Posted: 9/23/11 at 2:52pm
I've noticed audiences during "The Goat" laughing hysterically throughout the first half of the play but as we [the audience] find out more information and as the story continues we realize that this isn't funny. The laughter turns uncomfortable as we don't understand why we are laughing. By the end of the play we should be shocked and disgusted and no longer think what we are witnessing is funny.
nomdeplume
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/20/05
#7contemporary absurdist playwrights
Posted: 9/23/11 at 3:51pm
"By the end of the play we should be shocked and disgusted and no longer think what we are witnessing is funny."
Should we? Has anyone informed the audiences?
#8contemporary absurdist playwrights
Posted: 9/23/11 at 4:22pmI would argue that The Goat is not an example of theatre of cruelty. Nor of absurdism. And that Theatre of Cruelty did not branch from Theatre of the Absurd. It has more in common with surrealism than absurdism.
"...everyone finally shut up, and the audience could enjoy the beginning of the Anatevka Pogram in peace."
#9contemporary absurdist playwrights
Posted: 9/23/11 at 5:07pmThe first that come to mind are Durang, Guare, McDonagh and Lindsay-Abaire.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
Videos