课件：荒诞戏剧的介绍.ppt

Theatre of the Absurd,Huang Lihua Ph. D. & associate professor,Main Contents of This Lecture,1. Definition of Theatre of the Absurd 2. Historical & Philosophical Background 3. Differences between an absurdist play and the well made play 4. The Most Important Precursors 5. Theatre of the Absurd in China 6. Summary,1. What is called “absurd” and “Theatre of the Absurd”? 2. What are differences between an absurdist play and the well made play? 3. What are motifs & themes in Theatre of the Absurd? 4. How many important precursors of Theatre of the Absurd have you known?,Questions for your considerations,.Definition,The word “Absurd” was first suggested by Albert Camus (阿尔伯特加缪， 1913- 1960) in 1942 in The Myth of Sisphyus (西西弗的神话 ), in which Camus tries to diagnose the human situation in the world of shattered belief, as he said:,“A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light people feel strangers.,They are irremediable exiles because they are deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as they lack the hope of a promised land to come.This divorce between people and their lives, the actor and his setting, truly constitues the feeling of absurdity.”,According to Eugene Ionesco (欧仁尤奈斯库，1909- 1994)，who was born in Romania but lived in Paris, “Absurd is that which is devoid of purposeCut off from his religious, metaphysical & transcendental roots, man is lost, all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless. ”,The Theatre of the Absurd is a term applied to a group of dramatists who were active in the 1950s. The name was probably coined by Martin Esslin in his book The Theatre of the Absurd (1961).,The philosophical basis of the absurdist theatre is existentialism that denies the meaning of human existence and maintains that there is no communication at all between person and person. The world seems ruthless and incomprehensible. Human beings have lost confidence completely, which resulted from the capitalist ideology after WW2.,.Historical & Philosophical Background,1. Waning of religious feeling 2. Breakdown of the liberal faith in an inevitable social progress after WW1 3. Relapse into barbarism, mass murder & genocide in the course of Hitlers brief rule over Europe during WW2,4. Disillusionment with the hopes of a radical social revolution as predicted by Marx after Stalin had turned the Soviet Union into a totalitarian tyranny 5. The spread of spiritual emptiness in the outwardly prosperous & affluent societies of Western Europe and the USA,. Differences between an absurdist play and the well made play,1. The characters are well observed & convincingly motivated.,1. The characters are hardly recognizable human beings, their actions are completely unmotivated.,a well made play,an absurdist play,2. Dialogue is witty & logically built up,2. Dialogue seems to have degenerate into meaningless babble,a well made play,an absurdist play,3. Beginning-middle-ending clearly recognizable,3. It starts at an arbitrary point & seems to end as arbitrarily,a well made play,an absurdist play,4. It is primarily concerned to tell a story or elucidate an intellectual problem It can thus be seen as a narrative or discoursive form of communication,4. It is intended to convey a poetic image as a complex pattern of poetic images; it is above all a poetic form,a well made play,an absurdist play,5.Result :Final Message 6.DYNAMIC,5. It conveys a central atmosphere 6. STATIC,a well made play,an absurdist play,7. Politics, Religion, Implicit belief in the goodness & perfectibility of people Unthinking acceptance of the moral & political status quo,7. There is no faith in the existence of a rational and well ordered universe,a well made play,an absurdist play,8. Implicit idea that the world does make sense, reality is secure , all outlines clear, all ends apparent,8. Sense of shock at the absense , the loss of any such clear & well defined system of beliefs & values,a well made play,an absurdist play,. The Most Important Precursors,The precursors to the Theatre of the Absurd can be found in a number of late 19th century and early 20th century writers. For example, Ubu roi (愚比王1896), by French playwright Alfred Jarry （阿尔弗雷德雅里）, is considered an early example,of absurdist theatre for its use of nonsense language and mocking of theatrical conventions. However, the most prestigious playwrights are as follows: Eugene Ionesco, Smauel Beckett, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee. In what follows, Ill give you a brief introduction about them.,Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994) , Romanian-born French dramatist who was the most important dramatists of the 20th century. His one-act “antiplay” The Bald Soprano (秃头歌女， 1949) ， satirized the deadliness of life frozen in meaningless formalities.,Because of this, this play inspired a revolution in dramatic techniques and helped inaugurate the Theatre of the Absurd. So, people usually call Ionesco father of the absurdist play. Some of his other important plays include The Chairs, Rhinoceros, and Hunger and Thirst.,Ionescos achievement lies in having popularized a wide variety of nonrepresentational and surrealistic techniques and in having made them acceptable to audiences conditioned to a naturalistic convention in the theatre.,His tragicomic farces dramatize the absurdity of bourgeois life, the meaninglessness of social conventions, and the futile and mechanical nature of modern civilization. His plays build on bizarrely illogical or fantastic situations using such devices as the humorous multiplication of objects on stage until they overwhelm the actors.,The clichs and tedious maxims of polite conversation surface in improbable or inappropriate contexts to expose the deadening futility of most human communication. Ionescos later works show less concern with witty intellectual paradox and more with dreams, visions, and exploration of the subconscious.,Samuel Beckett (1906 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.,Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists.,As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the “Theatre of the Absurd”. His work became increasingly minimalist (极简抽象艺术的)in his later career.,Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his writing, whichin new forms for the novel and dramain the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”.,2019/4/19,30,可编辑,The important plays written by Beckett as follows: Waiting for Godot (1953) Act Without Words I (1956) Act Without Words II (1956) Endgame (1957) Krapps Last Tape (1958) Happy Days (1961) , and so on.,Among them, the most important is Waiting for Godot. The characters of the play are strange caricatures who have difficulty communicating the simplest of concepts to one another as they bide their time awaiting the arrival of Godot.,Language is ludicrous and cyclical; called “the play nothing happens.” The detractors call this play “gibberish”, or prank played on audience, whereas the supporters describe it as an accurate parable on the human condition in which “the more things change, the more they are the same.”,Jean Genet (1910 1986) was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist.,Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing. His major plays includeThe Balcony, The Blacks, The Maids and The Screens. Among them, the important is The Maids which begins to explore the complex,problems of identity that were soon to preoccupy other avant-garde dramatists such as Samuel Beckett and Eugne Ionesco. With this play Genet was established as an outstanding figure in the Theatre of the Absurd.,Harold Pinter (1930- 2008), English playwright, achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II dramatists.,His plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, reticenceand even silenceto convey the substance of a characters thought, which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech. In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.,The most important play written by him are as follows: The Room 房间(1957) The Birthday Party 生日晚会(1958) The Caretaker 看管人(1960) The Homecoming 归家(1965) Old Times 昔日(1971) And so on,Pinters plays are ambivalent in their plots, presentation of characters, and endings, but they are works of undeniable power and originality. They typically begin with a pair of characters whose stereotyped relations and role-playing are disrupted by the entrance of a stranger;,the audience sees the psychic stability of the couple break down as their fears, jealousies, hatreds, sexual preoccupations, and loneliness emerge from beneath a screen of bizarre yet commonplace conversation.,Edward Albee ( born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and so on.,His works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugne Ionesco, and Jean Genet.,. Theatre of the Absurd in China,The Theatre of the Absurd had exerted strong influence upon China soon after its emergence in France in the middle of the 20th century. One of the most staunch and fruitful practitioners is Gao Xingjian, who, deeply influenced by Samuel Beckett, created his four major plays,Warning Signal绝对信号 The Bus-Stop 车站 Wild Man 野人 The Otherness彼岸,Running through the four plays is an overriding theme of escapeescape from the destructive mentality of the majority, from the polluted city life, and from the consciousness of guilt. The representative play of Gaos is,His The Bus-Stop, which takes place on a Saturday afternoon, somewhere on the outskirts of a big city. Eight passengers are waiting impatiently at a solitary bus-stop for a ride downtown, but none of the buses stops. Shocked by the absurd phenomenon, the characters want to,get out of the bewildering situation. However, none of them is able to make the first move: what if a bus comes the minute they walk away from the bus-stop? Should they march on toward the city or go back to where they came from? More annoyingly, they cannot reach an,unanimous decision, since they would feel safe to follow the majority. Before they can figure out what has gone wrong, ten years have actually ticked away. The moment they finally decide to split up, a rain shower begins.,The message, perhaps, rests on: One who makes an effort is expected to approach his destination, whereas those who would waste their time on meaningless waiting and intriguing if they merely rely on the outside forces.,Another influential absurdist play is Pan Jinlian written by Wei Minglun. The theme of this play is to “attract the healers attention.” Apart from these two plays, no other important absurdist plays appeared in China.,Anyway, Id like to say that, in China, there is, more or less, appropriate soil for the absurdist plays to survive and develop, for it is perhaps more incisive to expose and criticize the social evil phenomenon. O