O Teatro do Absurdo

"Life is but a wandering shadow, a poor player that struts and faints during his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." In the 1950s, after Auschwitz and Hiroshima, this famous lament from Macbeth seemed more accurate than ever. While the globe was divided by an iron curtain, a playwright confessed: "I have never been able to fully adjust myself to existence, neither to that of the world, nor to that of others, nor, above all, to my own. Sometimes I feel that forms are suddenly emptied of their content, reality is unreal, words are noises stripped of any meaning... And yet, here I am, surrounded by the aura of creation, unable to grasp the smoke, understanding nothing, disoriented, torn from I know not what that makes me feel I have nothing." By materializing their intimate drama on stage, Eugène Ionesco, like Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Harold Pinter, and others of his generation, created incendiary plays for the theatrical scene. One journalist reacted thus: If a well-made play should have a constructed story, these have neither story nor plot; if a well-made play is judged by the subtlety of its characterization, these often have no recognizable characters and offer the audience almost mechanical puppets; if a well-made play should have an explainable theme, clearly exposed and resolved at the end, these usually have neither beginning nor end; if a well-made play holds up a mirror to nature, portraying the manners and mannerisms of the time in articulated scenes, these often seem to be reflections of dreams and nightmares; if a well-made play relies on witty retorts and sharp dialogue, these often consist of incoherent babbling. Far from dismissing them as "poorly made" pieces, however, Martin Esslin intended to awaken the public to a powerful poetic language, the one most capable of expressing the dramas of its time and, therefore, of transcending it. The term he coined – "Theatre of the Absurd" – would exert an irresistible magnetism on our cultural imagination ever since. And although these authors never lined up under a common manifesto or program, they would end up stereotyped as the ultimate exponents of the avant-garde. Ironically, there is no trace in their works of the contempt for tradition characteristic of countercultures. On the contrary: according to Ionesco, What people call the avant-garde is only interesting insofar as it marks a return to the sources, only if it integrates itself into a living tradition, traversing a sclerotic traditionalism and a worn-out academicism... The work of every authentic creator consists of freeing themselves from the debris, the clichés of a degraded language, in order to find a newly born, simplified, essentialized language, capable of expressing new and old realities, present and past, living and permanent, particular and, at the same time, universal. The youngest and newest works of art are recognizable, and speak to all ages. Yes, King Solomon is my true leader, and Job – that contemporary of Beckett. Guests Fábio de Souza Andrade: Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of São Paulo and author of *Samuel Beckett: The Possible Silence*. Luiz Fernando Ramos: Professor of Criticism, History and Theory of Theatre at the University of São Paulo and author of *The Birth of Godot and Other Imaginary Staging*. Viviane da Costa Pereira: PhD in French Literature from the University of São Paulo with the thesis *Ionesco the Critic*.