ABSTRACT
John Russell Taylor concludes his entry on Absurd Theatre by saying that it had spent its force by 1962, and Charles Marowitz, in the same year (1966) agreed (‘British Theatre’, Tulane Drama Review, No. 34, 1966, pp. 203–6. The whole issue is very helpful.) An end to Absurdity should come as no surprise: we cannot live permanently in an extreme situation, and that ‘ferocious hopefulness’ of which Camus accused the philosophers is a basic instinct, and one, moreover, not without rational support. Once we have got over the shock, common sense tells us that the shock is self-destructive. But whereas Marowitz speaks scornfully of ‘a brief vogue labelled Theatre of the Absurd’, and ‘absurd’ as a synonym for potty and screwed-up, Taylor points out that its effects as ‘a liberating influence on conventional theatre’ continue. Absurd drama in its short career has liberated. Sartre’s concept of freedom leading to revolt is, whatever its consequences, liberation. Herbert Blau in 1954 wrote that if nausea, angst, fear, and trembling are the stock-in-trade of Absurd drama, that drama was fundamentally ‘liberating’ and the plays have shown ‘intelligence, novelty and charm’ – qualities sadly lacking in contemporary theatre. (The Impossible Theatre, pp. 256 and 307).
