THE INTERSECTIONS OF AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE AND ABSURD DRAMA

Abstract

With its deconstruction of language and aesthetics, it is unequivocal that the avant-garde nourished the later evolving dramatic and theatrical phenomenon. Because of the in-between state of the characters, the gags and sketches, and the language games involved in these plays, it is transparent that tragicomic and grotesque elements are at work as well. According to Melvyn Gussow (2000: 202), Eugene O'Neill was also a precursor to the Off-Broadway movement.In the beginning, his plays were mostly presented by the Players. According to Enikö Bollobás, it was a period when the role of the text, the playwright and the audience changed (2005:746 [my translation]). The viewer became involved and the text started to be used as a tool for improvisation (746 [my translation]). [...]the boundaries between visual elements, dance performance and the use of music began to blur.

Headnote

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to observe the interconnections between American experimental theatre and the Theatre of the Absurd, which is generally accepted as a primarily European theatre phenomenon. What could these relations be? As the paper will hopefully prove, American absurdist and experimental theatre developed in an unambiguous parallel and had a great impact on each other.

Keywords: Absurdist drama and theatre, Broadway, experimental theatre, Off-and Off-Off Broadway

1. Introduction

During the development of the American theatre, New York's Broadway became the centre of American theatrical productions. However, many theatres and theatre companies emerged by the 1950s, seceding from Broadway, which had mostly been led by professionalist and profit-oriented producers (Gussow 2000:196). Due to their location and objectives, these theatres were collectively named Off-Broadway. Once its playhouses, actors, producers and playwrights let their need for profit take control, it became a part of the mainstream, not differentiating itself from Broadway anymore (197, 205). This is why towards the 1960s and afterwards, coffeehouses and theatre clubs invited playwrights with ideas and eagerness to create another counter-movement, called the Off-Off Broadway movement (202, 206). In the 1960s, theatrical experimentation flourished and became a pivotal concern for American dramatists, directors, producers, pedagogues and even actors.

One significant distinction from Broadway is that Offand Off-Off Broadway theatres were extremely open to the plays of the European representatives of the Theatre of the Absurd, e.g. Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Arthur Adamov and Harold Pinter. Also, their plays were very successful for audiences rejecting the mainstream (204). Waiting for Godot (1953) by Beckett was presented on Broadway in 1956, but the audiences who were used to visiting spectacular musicals were not satisfied with the play (Aronson 2000:214). This and similar dramas were then staged on Offand Off-Off Broadway stages, only Ionesco's Rhinoceros (1960) had a season of a highly modified production on Broadway (Albee 1962). Off-Off Broadway railed against the commercialist attitude that eventually reached Off-Broadway; even so, this tendency strongly connects them. Although in the hierarchy of theatre types Broadway is on the top and Off-Broadway closely follows it, Off-Off Broadway was as acceptant to these dramas as its antecedent that had originally resisted commercialization.

There were American playwrights who wanted to express the questions of existence and the absurdity of mankind too. Eugene O'Neill, active in the first half of the twentieth century, was one of the playwrights in American drama literature who had an immense influence on later authors. The unbearable feeling of containment recurrent to his plays resonates with the world picture of the Esslinian absurd drama. One of O'Neill's followers, Edward Albee borrows the idea of the world being an unlivable place in the second half of the century, as well as other dramatists, whom the paper shall refer to in the following sections. This paper investigates the connections between Martin Esslin's notion of the Theatre of the Absurd and the history of the Offand Off-Off-Broadway movements.

2. The Definition and the Definitional Problems of the Theatre of the Absurd in the United States of America

Esslin (2004) offers a definition for the Theatre of the Absurd in his study of the same title. He defines absurd drama as a post-World War II phenomenon characteristic of Europe. In the first edition of his book (1961), he discusses the works of Beckett, Ionesco, Adamov and, in later editions, Pinter and others as well. He claims that these playwrights depict "the absurdity of the human condition" (Esslin 2004:25). The characters in these plays are doomed to entrappedness and they are in a frustrating state of transition. There is no resolution or reconciliation for them, no development of their state. If there is any change for them, it only entails a severe sense of loss. By not providing real solutions to fictional - and humanity's - conflicts anymore, absurd drama challenges the plot structure of conventional pieces. The characters cannot find their way out, they are often in a net of relations - however, these relationships do not offer any support at all, they fail to function. This keeps alive the historical avant-garde's disenchantment that language lost its logic, and it is presented in the plays accordingly (329). However, with the help of performance, the language of the plays "ha[s] deep, often metaphysical meaning" that expresses the philosophical message behind it (329).

Esslin pinpoints literary, theatrical as well as philosophical precursors to the Theatre of the Absurd. Albert Camus, one of the major philosophers of Existentialism and Absurdism, tackles ontological questions in Le Myth de Sisyphe (1942). How Camus grasps absurdity, according to Esslin (2004: 24), is through the observation that "the world ceases to make sense" and that every intention leads nowhere. The avant-garde is also acknowleged as a forerunner - especially Dada, Surrealism and in the latest edition of his book, Esslin adds Expressionism to the list (366). With its deconstruction of language and aesthetics, it is unequivocal that the avant-garde nourished the later evolving dramatic and theatrical phenomenon. Because of the in-between state of the characters, the gags and sketches, and the language games involved in these plays, it is transparent that tragicomic and grotesque elements are at work as well. The curious surrealism of Alfred Jarry, the metatheatricality of Luigi Pirandello, and retrospectively, the madness scenes of Henrik Ibsen and the bound characters of Anton Chekhov are also recognized as influences (Brater 1990:298).

When it comes to contextualizing absurd drama and theatre in the US, Esslin seems slightly uncertain. Although he claims that the Second World War was not fought on American soil, so Americans do not share the feeling of the absurd, he mentions Albee as a potential representative of absurd writing. In his plays, Esslin writes, Albee "attacks the very foundations of American optimism" (Esslin 2004:311-312) and, in this sense, he can be referred to as am absurdist. Albee felt rather offended by this label and explains in his 1962 article published in The New York Times (available on the online archive) that, although he does not want to wear any labels, he acknowledges that this dramatic style exists and that it affected American theatre. To conclude that "[the Theatre of the Absurd] is out", he adds (Albee 1962), after its blossoming in Europe, would not be less offensive than the labelling itself. The essence of this theatre will remain the same, but its methods "will undergo mutation" (Albee 1962). For the theatre of the US, he claims, it is natural to "experiment" and give a "response" (Albee 1962 [my emphasis]).

Albee first thought that this label was a way of marking a set of overevaluated productions put up on Broadway stages. His opinion reflects his contempt for the marketing processes of the theatre district producers - who possess indispensable skills and have a free hand over dramatists and actors, contracts and the budget, in short, over the production itself.

What [...] could be more absurd than a theatre in which the esthetic criterion is something like this: A "good" play is one which makes money, a "bad" play (in the sense of "Naughty! Naughty!" I guess) is one which does not; a theatre in which performers have plays rewritten to correspond to the public relations image of themselves; [...] a theatre in which, in a given season, there was not a single performance of a play by Beckett, Brecht, Chekhov, Genet, Ibsen, O'Casey, Pirandello, Shaw, Strindberg - or Shakespeare? (Albee 1962)

This remark has direct connections to the aforementioned theatre movements. At that time, dramatists felt the urge to push the boundaries of Broadway, and Albee, for instance, very actively participated.

In terms of scholarly criticism, many theoreticians accept that the Theatre of the Absurd exists in the US, and they usually connect it to the 1960s in its essence:

Beckett and Ionesco, in particular, with their characters trapped in bizarre, inexplicable, and frightening worlds in which language either failed them or turned against them, seemed suddenly relevant in the American landscape of the sixties. (Aronson 2000:132)

This statement is crucial, completely relevant, absolutely acceptable, but provokes criticism. The possibility of questioning the limits of Esslin's definition cannot be seen here.

3. The Rise of Experimental Theatre in the US

When considering the development of Off-Broadway, the Little Theatre Movement in diverse regions in the US should be mentioned first. It was booming between the 1910s and 1920s and promoted regional theatres and theatrical innovation instead of Broadway's showcase performances (Carlson 2000:249). Marvin Carlson argues that the Off-Broadway movement in New York was "the post-war extension of the Little Theatre Movement" after 1945 (251). The Little Theatre Movement was a major step made to insert the European avant-garde techniques into the US repertoire starting from the 1910s and 1920s (Aronson 2000:88). Jacques Copeau's and Michel Saint-Denis' influence became visible in the "semi-abstract stage design" of many productions by the 1930s (89). As an example for abstract visual elements (though not particularly reminiscent of either Copeau's or Saint-Denis' techniques), Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine (1923) can be seen as a milestone in terms of its eerie, Expressionist stage design (Walker 2005:176-177). The fallen, almost pathetic protagonist, who cannot find a way out of his everyday misery (178), is akin to such characters as Estragon or Vladimir.

Inspired by the movement for regional theatres, the Provincetown Players, an amateur group of writers and actors, founded the Provincetown Playhouse in Manhattan by the twenties (Aronson 2000:107). Manhattan in the twenties also saw the opening of the Cherry Lane Theatre and has provided a home for it since then (107). Both engaged in staging innovative plays while searching for the American theatrical voice: the Playhouse gladly produced the plays of O'Neill, and a few decades later, those of Albee. Cherry Lane was no less acceptant of Albee as well as the slightly more anarchic and vaguely absurdist Imamu Amiri Baraka and Samuel Shepard (Gussow 2000:204). Thus far it might seem that the American theatre had insurmountable obstacles in finding its own distinct Americanness and adaptating highly respected European dramatists at the same time, but this supposition is false. As I will prove by the end of the paper, this dynamism was used as an advantage for American theatrical experimentation.

According to Melvyn Gussow (2000: 202), Eugene O'Neill was also a precursor to the Off-Broadway movement.In the beginning, his plays were mostly presented by the Players. Not until then did the theatre of the US start to become coherent and united. It is crucial to refer back to the issues raised by the former paragraph: American non-mainstream theatres staged European plays based on their selection - and on what was rejected by the mainstream - and simultaneously found their American voice. In O'Neill's The Hairy Ape (1922), Yank, the immigrant working class protagonist, wants to belong. He and his mates fuel the ocean-liner in the bottom of which they constantly shovel and bum coal. He seems the strongest of the workers and feels highly certain of his authority. However, the conflict (to Yank, a disturbing dissonance) begins when the heiress of the oceanliner, Mildred Douglas, descends to the level of the workers to "discover how the other half lives" (O'Neill 1980:1112), and calls Yank a hairy ape. Afterwards, Yank is tormented and cannot find relief. Wherever the slightly grotesquely depicted protagonist goes, he is excluded. He is trapped in transition (is he a civilized person? or just a hairy ape?), whatever he does, the opposite of his goal happens, and all his misery has to start all over again after each of his failures. He does not feel secure anymore, he is not accepted as a civilized person by the upperclass, and neither is he welcome in the workers' union to take revenge on the woman. The series of disappointments ends in his tragicomic death. He eventually decides to visit a zoo to meet the apes dwelling there, and a gorilla crushes him in a friendly but lethal hug.

Considering Esslin's definition, the play foreshadows the essence of the absurd. It presents a proto-absurdist theme, although it is regularly referred to as the follower of the Expressionist tradition. Even in his latest edition of his book, Esslin does not include O'Neill as an influence. Linda Ben-Zvi states - and I certainly agree - that:

What Esslin might well have done [...] was include O'Neill - as he did Strindberg and Ibsen - in that list of forerunners of absurdist theater acknowledging O'Neill's kindred worldview and some of his dramatic experimentation that helped pave the way for later writers. (1990:36)

This is absolutely the point to make here. O'Neill's other works, such as, Long Day's Journey into Night (1956) create, as Ben-Zvi claims, the atmosphere of containment and entrappedness Beckett uses later in his plays (37). In this sense, the observation that the Theatre of the Absurd is primarily European, and that the American theatre adapted it in the 1960s should be approached with caution. Although O'Neill experimented with European visual techniques (Walker 2005:152), he and his contemporaries were embedded in significant social and cultural changes that modernism brought about in America (153).

Returning to theatre history, Judith Malina's and Julian Beck's Living Theatre, which had its origins in 1948 (Gussow 2000:203), should be mentioned as well. They promoted avant-garde works, Brecht's political epic theatre, Antonin Artaud's and Jean Genet's "Theatre of Cruelty," which chose a violent way of shaking up audiences (Roudané 2000:338), and, undoubtedly, the absurdists of Esslin's definition were also appreciated (Gussow 2000:203). Malina and Beck worked on a considerable amount of productions of plays by such playwrights as Albee or Arthur L. Kopit (203) with slightly absurdist material. The Living attracted middle-class viewers and students (Aronson 2000:137). Malina and Beck believed that art had a calling, and that it could raise social awareness which might shake up the American theatre life (Gussow 2000:203). They were so influential that they were able to re-energize the European avant-garde (Aronson 2000:140). The Living was an especially important site of happenings and experimentation with its impressive visual elements, and the invitation launched to the audience to have a close experience with the actors' body. American performance art is unquestionably indebted to them.

Joseph Papp founded the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1954 that became the Public Theatre in 1967 (Gussow 2000:198). He was attracted to the European avant-garde, and although tailored the productions to his own taste, he enthusiastically presented Brecht's, Pinter's, and the works of absurdists in general (200). He was a devoted though controversial and charismatic person (200).

The end of the 1950s saw a transition between the two Off-movements. Caffe Cino, with its foundation in 1958 was a remarkable coffeehouse that signed the emergence of Off-Off Broadway (206). Founder Joe Cino invited plays with experimental undertones, and homosexuals, African Americans, Hispanics and other ethnic dramatists were also able to make themselves known. One of Cino's protégés before his shocking suicide in 1967 was Albee (206), whose works recurringly tackle the issue of homosexuality.

The beginner Albee could not stage his first well-known drama, the oneacter The Zoo Story, in the US. In its premiere it shared the bill with Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape in Berlin in 1959 (203). In the "Preface" to his volume, Albee states ironically that it was strange to produce an American play by an American playwright outside America, but this had its reasons to happen, it was "the nature of the theatre" (Albee 1997:7) - the nature of Broadway implied in the "Introduction." Not long after its success in Berlin, the play was first presented in the US in the Provincetown Playhouse, Off-Broadway, in early 1960, borrowing the double-ticket strategy with Krapp (Gussow 2000:203). The Living also staged the play in the 1959-60 season, and Cherry Lane had a long-running production too (204). The play revolves around the zoo story of protagonist Jerry near a bench in Central Park. He is a social outcast and the representative of post-war (and Cold War) disillusionment. One of the major themes of the play is the American family, the most significant social unit for the Americans in that period. The play does not support ideals such as the possibility of communication and the pursuit of happiness.

Jerry is a grotesque, ambiguous (shabby but wise, kind but arrogant) person who cannot blend in. He wants to initiate Peter, his complete opposite, who does not understand stories. Jerry tells him the story of the dog, which is an allegory about the inability to make contact. The dog wants to ward Jerry off the limits of the hell-house where he lives. However, unable to understand the dog's intentions, Jerry decides to take revenge and kill it. After the failure of his attempt, he pities the dog and wants it to love him. But nothing remains of the "contact" they made (Albee 1997:34) anymore, with the exception of a resignant nod. The conclusion of the dog story is that making contact is a series of trials and failures. The box-like apartment in which he lives, and where he is fully welcome after the murderous attempt, is metaphorical of the interrelatedness and the estrangement of people. Jerry impales himself on a knife held by Peter, and does it for the sake of Peter's brighter future, but the only thing left from his suicide is the sense of shock: nothing changes in the play's world.

After the Off-Broadway success of the play, Broadway staged the equally slightly absurdist Who 's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1962, but shortly after this, the playwright returned to his roots outside Broadway (Gussow 2000:203). This shows that there was a transgressible border among Broadway, Off-Broadway and OffOff Broadway venues for the playwrights.

In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement endured, which was significant in the theatre movements and for playwrights as well. According to Enikö Bollobás, it was a period when the role of the text, the playwright and the audience changed (2005:746 [my translation]). The viewer became involved and the text started to be used as a tool for improvisation (746 [my translation]). Moreover, the boundaries between visual elements, dance performance and the use of music began to blur.

Ellen "La Mama" Stewart was an Earth Mother-like producer who "heard the vibes" (Gussow 2000:201) and sought talent right at the beginning of the new decade. She found ideas appealing in the first place, as she could "read" people and favoured each promising playwright (201). She founded La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (with the nice abbreviation "etc.") in 1961 (201). Many American dramatists e.g. Sam Shepard, whose works were also influenced by Beckett, Ionesco and others, had their plays staged at her club, and naturally, Beckett's and Pinter's works were present in her repertoire too (201).

One more step towards the Off-Off is marked by A1 Carmines' Judson Theatre founded at the beginning of the sixties (Gussow 2000:206). This period was already characteristic of the collaboration of directors, actors, playwrights, producers at different theatres simultaneously. Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre, the successor of the Living opened its doors in 1963 (Carlson 2000:255). The Open Theatre was a place for actors to experiment with new acting techniques that overwhelmingly affected the Off-Off movement, and that also paved the way for the American alternative theatre (256). Ralph Cook's Theatre Genesis welcomed playwrights to improve their work from 1964 on, Richard Schechner's Performance Group started to run in 1967 and worked with highly ritualistic material (Aronson 2000:136). All of these companies functioned as actors' and playwrights' workshops and made it possible for audiences to participate in the performances.

In the decade, many playwrights followed the absurdist route previously paved by O'Neill, Albee and their contemporaries. Such playwrights were Maria Irene Fomés and Adrienne Kennedy, who represented ethnic female playwrights among many others. As more and more playwrights were welcome, marginalized themes started to appear on stage. Many playwrights used the theatre to draw attention to the core of America's social problems (Baraka, Shepard and Israel Horovitz, whose drama is the next to be analysed, are such examples). Their plays were mostly presented outside Broadway, where producers and playwrights had the opportunity to find an open audience and convey their message (Gussow 2000:196).

Some playwrights hardly ever entered Broadway and stayed only Off-Off. Horovitz was such a playwright. His The Indian Wants the Bronx was performed in 1968 in the Astor Place Theater, which is an Off-Broadway theatre and was founded after Joseph Papp's acquisition of the Astor Place Library (Gussow 2000:199). The playwright came out of the early Off-Off generation of dramatists, who advocated Sartre's and Camus' Existentialist ideas (Aronson 2000:140-141). Geographically and from the point of its ownership, this theatre counts as an OffBroadway theatre: this is an example of how the two movements had overlapping venues. Because of the tight budget of the production, the minimalist stage design of the play was not exceptional in an Off-Broadway theatre (the same is true for the above mentioned plays). The play itself depicts an American urban wasteland near a telephone booth where a foreigner meets two American boys. The play expresses the social upheaval of the time. It has realistic tones and nightmarish undertones too.

Protagonist Gupta does not speak English and would like to call his immigrant son, but does not have enough money. The two boys decide to bully him, but after a short while it seems they can help. At the very last moment, after a series of trials and failures, when the problems appear to be solved, the boys cut the telephone wire and leave, thus Gupta cannot talk to his son: the opposite of his goal happens. Hope for Gupta is immediately and irreversibly dashed. The theme and the conclusion of the drama, hence the order of the drama's world, is that people are estranged. The protagonist cannot reach one point from another, but is doomed to be trapped. People are interrelated and entrapped because of this interrelation. With the theme of the stranger, the playwright shows that language is a means of not getting closer to someone else, but to get further away from them. When Gupta holds the dead phone and says the only words he learned in English, "Thank you", (Horovitz 1972:309) to the audience (this way involving them) instead of 'Help me,' the ultimate message of the play shines through, and it is clearly shown that language with its ambiguity and potential of failure is deconstructed on the experimental stage.

During the second half of the century, a "decentralization process" took place, which means that many seminal playwrights started to produce dramas outside Broadway (Roudané 2000:331). Also, although there were overlaps among On-, Off-, and Off-Off productions, one achievement the latter two had was that playwrights sought the possibility to stage plays in local theatres, university clubs, or coffeehouses (Bollobás 2005:771 [my translation]). From the 1970s onward, Off-Off Broadway had significant innovations: they made a "step beyond the Absurd" (Gussow 2000:209), and propagated a curious fusion of moving images, movements, music and mixed-genres (210), and new performers appeared (215). The Off-Off suddenly became widely-known and to some extent, commercialized (221).

It should be stated that these "new performances" had been nurtured by the Theatre of the Absurd (Szilassy 1986:84-85) to some extent. The disillusionment with language resulted in its total deconstruction, the interrelatedness and estrangement of people resulted in a theatrical community that offered new rituals (the Living, the Open Theatre, the Performance Group), and the depiction of decay and the vulnerability of the human body became a signifier in these rituals at the same time.

4. Conclusion

If we consider the proto-absurdist themes in O'Neill, it becomes obvious that absurd drama and experimentation are highly interrelated right from the very emergence of the Offand Off-Off Broadway movements. A major mistake Esslin makes is that his definition relies heavily on historical and geographical terms. As shown before, he also leaves out the works of O'Neill. He was as influenced by the philosophical, theatrical and literary trends as European absurdists. His American way of portraying severe psychological torments produced by society may have affected European dramatists. In the 1960s, when social problems were innovatively presented by the Theatre of the Absurd, the questions of existence became appealing topics. These fuelled American theatrical experimentation. Later in the century, many styles met and merged because of the cooperation of playwrights - a very unique feature outside Broadway. How American absurd drama changed from the modemist tradition to postmodernism cannot be tackled within the frames of this paper, but it is definitely worth the consideration. It will be a future project to observe the absurd's impact on what Hans-Thies Lehmann calls "postdramatic theatre" in his book of the same title (1999; the English version was published in 2006), especially because of the shift in the role of the dramatic text and the abundant use of impressive visual elements in the theatres beginning from the 1970s. Lehmann himself hints at the connection by saying

that the Theatre of the Absurd [...] belongs to the dramatic theatre tradition. Some of its texts explode the dramatic and narrative logic. Yet the step to post-dramatic theatre is taken only when the theatrical means beyond language are positioned equally alongside the text and are systematically thinkable without it. (2006:55)

What is for future research is to find out in what way the absurdist theatre influenced the turning away from the dramatic text that finally resulted in the high grotesqueries and neo-absurdist material of Off-Off Broadway theatres (Gussow 2000:214), and their new rituals.

After this detour, let the paper finish the conclusion by looking at the most striking connection in American absurd dramas. As presented, the protagonist's frustrations become states of mind, internalized gulfs after a violent cognitive dissonance and sense of despair. This way of description can be traced back to O'Neill's oeuvre in the early Off-Broadway, and was a dominant element throughout the twentieth century. One reason why this kind of representation was not acceptable on Broadway for a while might have been that the American man could not be presented as a fallen creature. Also, this scathing world view was not compatible with Cold War America; however, it was creatively and persistently presented outside Broadway. The ethos of the late 1950s and the 1960s, and Offand Off-Off Broadwayers' interest in raising social awareness could only boost this process. Lastly, it is equally apparent that absurd drama became extremely popular and common (maybe mainstream) in non-mainstream theatres.

References

References

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