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Absurdist Drama
In this session we will look at a couple of examples from absurdist texts.
Absurdist drama typically involves very big clashes between the audience
and the characters on stage in terms of the assumptions they hold. It
is a kind of deviation writ very large, as it were. The clash in assumptions
between the world of the characters and the world of the audience is usually
so dramatic that what we are presented with seems absurd – hence
the term ‘absurdism’. Big clashes in assumptions between characters
and audience also turn up a lot in situation comedies, and so, not surprisingly,
much absurdist drama has a comic element, as we will see in both of the
examples we will consider in this session. Sometimes, though, the absurdism
correlates with feelings of extreme threat.
Next in this session we will look at an extract from the beginning of
Zoo Story by the American playwright, Edward Albee. Then we will
examine an early sketch by the British playwright Harold Pinter, who is
well-known for his absurdist drama (though he has written plenty of non-absurdist
plays too). The sketch is called Applicant.
Because Applicant is the last text we will look at in the drama
section of the course, we will also use it as an opportunity for a ‘round-up’
analysis, looking at the sketch using all the different forms of analysis
we have used in the drama section of the course.
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