When critic Martin Esslin coined the term “Theatre of the Absurd”, many saw that iconoclastic 1950s and 60s theatre movement as more or less exclusively a French phenomena. And it’s easy to see why that impression was a persuasive one. All the early key figures of absurdist theatre had a connexion with France, specifically with Paris. While only Jean Genet was born in the country, the other seminal names in the Theatre of the Absurd exiled themselves from their native countries to Paris before the onset of the movement – Beckett born in Dublin but spent most of his adult life in France; Adamov, a Russian–born Armenian moved to Paris at 16; Ionesco, Romanian–born but lived most of his life in France. Fernando Arrabal, born in a Spanish enclave in Morocco, also an important “member” of that “non–club” of unconventional writers for the stage, exiled himself from the authoritarianism of Franco’s Spain to Paris in his early twenties (Arrabal described himself as “desterrado” (“half–expatriate”, “half–exiled“).
Far from being confined to Parisian literary circles, the Theatre of the Absurd had an impact in other countries during this period. Most notably Harold Pinter in Britain and Edward Albee in the US were important contributors to the movement. Other playwrights from outside France whose works express the preoccupations, observations on morality and trappings of absurdist drama include NF Simpson, James Saunders and David Campton (all from England), Sam Shepard and Arthur Kopit (USA), Václav Havel (Czechoslovakia) and Max Frisch (Switzerland).
The “Theatre of the Absurd” appellation never sat well with the practitioners themselves who tended to reject this description of their art§. They “saw themselves as individual artists, not part of a collective, and viewed their plays as nothing more than the expression of their personal vision of the world” (‘Stage School: What Is Theatre of the Absurd?’ (Jennifer Chamberlain), The Skinny, 17 Feb. 2016, www.theskinny.co.uk). Not all of the “absurdists” were adherents of existentialism—like the movement’s spiritual father Camus—some were more concerned with the irrationality of contemporary human society. The common denominator for this group of dramatists is a rejection of realism. In its void the plays “express…images that are themselves absurd…(the prevalence of) bizarre situations and objects, both sad and comic” (Pears Cyclopedia, 82nd Ed, 1973–74), eg, aged parents confined (literally and symbolically) to dustbins (Beckett). A motif of the absurdist play is the presence of dada and surrealist elements, the first demonstrated in an air of irrationality and the absence of meaning and the latter in vivid depictions of dreamlike images (‘Theater of the Time’ (Noah Pion), Digital Theater Profile II: Jean Genet, www.journeys.dartmouth.edu).
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For more detail on the history and “pre–history” of the absurdist drama movement see the 2021 post ‘Theatre of the Absurd: Anti–Realism, Anti–Language, Anti–Play?’(open or copy link below):
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§ other preferred names include “theatre of derision”, “theatre of ritual”, “theatre of cruelty” and “comedy of menace”