Modern drama, DYK Fact #22

[George Law]

Did you know? Movements in drama from the 20^th century include Epic Theatre, the Theatre of Cruelty and the Theatre of the Absurd.

On Wednesday 16 May 2001, I composed a poem about Modern Drama: #13 of what I call my general-knowledge sonnets.

An alienation state comes into play;
The audience in the grip of Bertolt Brecht
Are forced to look at things another way:
For what they thought was gut was really schlecht.
When their destructive natures have been purged
By Cruel scenes of Antonin Artaud,
Then they – by no more evil forces urged –
Say: On est libre comme les oiseaux.
Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, two
Outstanding playwrights: surely they had heard
Of existentialism? In their view,
The Universe is meaningless, Absurd!
Yet all of them, who took the stage by storm,
Gave fresh, new meaning to dramatic form.

© 2001 George Law

[Ebudae]

I don’t know about Ionesco but, did you know? Beckett’s En attendant Godot is indeed Absurd!

[BarnabyRudge]

Absurd maybe, but it’s a masterful work symbolically portraying the way some people lead their monotonous existence. Day in, day out, every day is the same for them. They keep doing the same things over and over again, sometimes saying they will do something else but never really getting round to it in the end – either because they don’t want to or because they are too bound up with some mysterious force or entity (Godot) to be able to break out of their routine. Occasionally the monotony is relieved for them by other people (Pozzo and Lucky) but even so very little if anything changes. There is so very little difference between one day and another, and what happens one day is almost as soon forgotten the next.