38.Define the theatre of the absurd, explain its origins and links with existentialism.

DEFINITION & ORIGINS
The innovative dramatic movement known as the theater of the absurd, which developed in Paris during the 1950s, took its name from Albert Camus' existentialist description of the dilemma of modern humanity.
Considering humans to be strangers in a meaningless universe, he assessed their situation as absurd, or essentially pointless. Absurdist playwrights, led by Samuel Beckett, Eugčne Ionesco, and Jean Genet, embraced this vision and sought to portray the grim ridiculousness of human life using a dramatic style that subverted theatrical convention.
Characterized by fantasy sequences, disjointed dialogue, and illogical or nearly nonexistent plots, their plays are concerned primarily with presenting a situation that illustrates the fundamental helplessness of humanity. Absurdist drama is sometimes comic on the surface, but the humor is infused with an underlying pessimism about the human condition.


LINKS WITH EXISTENTIALISM

The Theatre of the Absurd is commonly associated with Existentialism. This philosophy was popular in Paris during the rise of Theatre of Absurd. Many of the Absurdists were contemporaries with Jean-Paul Sartre, a well-known existentialist, and many of the Absurdists had a complicated relationship with him. The absurdists' plays embody some aspects of that philosophy though the writers might not have been committed followers of it.

The Absurdists took a page from Existentialist philosophy, believing that life was absurd, beyond human rationality, meaningless, a sentiment to which, for example, Endgame subscribes, with its conception of circularity and non-meaning.

---