The Theatre of Absurd movement began in Paris in the mid of the 20th century, in fact, the first precursors of this movement were french like Eugene Ionesco or Jean Genet. But it considered that several older plays inspiring this movement like The Winter’s Tales or The Tempest by William Shakespeare.

The term of « Theatre of the Absurd » was given by theatre critic Martin Esslin in 1961, he also says that the four leader of the genre were Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamov and Jean Genet.

The particularities of this kind of plays are meaningless or repetitive dialogues and nonsense. It says that this movement is an answer to the realistic movement, when playwrights tried to represent the real life in their works. Unlike them, absurdist try to give an unreal and unique exprerience to the viewer. In this kind of plays, time and setting are not precisely defined and the characters can’t exist in real life, they are often metaphorical or archetypal.

This genre is very particular, we can say that it can’t please everyone, but I really enjoy this ! What about you ?