It's probably a question or a remark you've often made to yourself, while performing or watching an improvisation show: "Why is it so difficult to do an improvisation in the style of the theater of the absurd?", "Why do improvisations in the style of the works of Ionesco or Kafka, all look the same?"
"Because we don't know what the absurd is."
By definition, the absurd is contrary to reason and common sense. Absurd reasoning is a thinking mechanism that results in nonsense (1). And that's why, in the common imagination, when we hear "absurd", we think of something with no head or tail.
That's probably why the resulting improvisations sound more like a theatrical recording broadcast on ARTE at 3 a.m., with a naked man flapping his arms from courtyard to garden, while a blue-painted woman cuts a piece of ham hock, repeating over and over: "Consumerism".
And yet, the theater of the absurd is a complex, meticulous genre where everything is considered and calculated. The term "absurd" here refers to the condition of human beings, the meaninglessness of their lives, their meaningless existences. It takes great precision to create characters and dialogues that imagine the absurdity of the human condition.
" Waiting for Godot " - Samuel Becket. Photo by Bertrand Bovio
"Because we don't know what theater of the absurd is."
Probably because it's difficult to define what theater of the absurd actually is. The term "theater of the absurd" is merely a vernacular name given to the Parisian avant-garde theater of the 1950s, with Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Becket and Arthur Amadov at the top of the bill (2). This theater found similarities throughout Europe, with Kafka in Austria and Gombrowicz in Poland.
Let me make it clear that these are not names I'm throwing around to show off my big, beautiful culture. Oh no, they're there to bring you names, precursors, pioneers, authors you need to read and discover, because there are as many theaters of the absurd as there are absurd plays.
These authors all have one thing in common. They have experienced War. Sometimes Wars. With a capital G, like the dot. In a world that is becoming increasingly scientific and secular, even atheistic. Following the historical experiences of the concentration camps and Hiroshima, the conviction that the world has meaning was shaken. These authors became aware of the gulf between human actions and noble principles. They all began to ask themselves these questions:
"If there's nothing after death, what's the point of living?"
"If there's no one to judge us for our actions after we die, what's the point of being good?"
"If Man is capable of doing what he did in the two great wars, what is there to believe in?"
" Guernica - Pablo Picasso
No art is self-sufficient, and the absurd has its equivalent in painting and sculpture: cubism. Although cubism was born at the beginning of the 20th century, it too reached its apogee in Paris, as a result of the war's impact on its artists.
These artists (authors, sculptors, painters, etc.) have therefore created characters traumatized by war. In literature, they are characters who can no longer control their neuroses, as psychic life has taken over from reality.
Each piece obeys an internal logic, what I like to call "a rule of the game", these characters marked by trauma find themselves in a common universe because they are responding to the same rule of the game, at the same time. Although the scene is absurd, the characters are consistent with each other.
For example, the main characters in La Cantatrice Chauve are aimless, with no aesthetic end in sight. The other two characters (The Maid and The Fireman), on the other hand, are working at their jobs and aim to find each other.
In Becket's Oh les beaux jours, Winnie simply gets bogged down in a long, aimless monologue. Look at the precision of the staging, how everything is controlled, every word, every gesture to achieve a precise goal: to create the absurdity and authenticity of this situation.
"Because we don't know how to transcribe the theater of the absurd."
From then on, it's up to each person's apprehension to represent the theater of the absurd, depending on their opinion of this theater and the works that make it up. The main task will be to read these works and try to understand them. Understand why the author decided to write this work. Why do we like it or not? What do we like and what do we dislike? If we can formulate concrete answers to these questions, we'll be able to reproduce them on stage.
For example, the opening scene of La Cantatrice Chauve (3) is a rehearsal scene. The two main characters read a story in the newspaper and react to it. There's a repetition of the name Bobby Watson, which is used for all the characters in the story they're reading, but also a repetition of the two characters' reactions to the story. That's the rule of the game. Repeat the reactions and swap them.
In the scene that follows, two characters think they recognize each other and, through conversation, learn that they live in the same apartment. However, they never really recognize each other, and their reactions are the same every time one or the other gives information about them.
The second thing to work on is knowing how to create these "rules of the game" spontaneously. "We need to be able to say to each other quickly and tacitly, "What is the absurdity of the scene we're playing? We can't do and say everything and anything on stage. All the characters have to agree.
There are two ways to create a game rule.
The first is used to denounce something, to make a point. In this case, the rules of the game will logically break away from the purpose.
If I want to denounce the fact that I find it absurd to pay 60€ for a plate of asparagus with balsamic vinegar in a top restaurant just because everyone knows it's THE restaurant. We could play on the fact that there's a nightclub queue outside the restaurant and bouncers to open the door, or that you have to offer part of your body in payment for the food, or even that on the plate there's only a kernel of corn.
You can't mix all these situations together, because the message would be too obvious and the audience would lose focus, as each one denounces a different facet of the same problem. The result would be a cacophony of events making no sense whatsoever. And yet it's this first method that, in my opinion, comes closest to a work of theater of the absurd. Even if it may lack subtlety.
The second method would be to simply create a game rule and then find out what you can convey or denounce through it.
If we all decide to call each other by the same first name, then perhaps we'll have to play on the fact that nobody is unique, and create situations that emphasize this. Or if we decide to slap each other in the face every time someone says the word "banana", we'll have to create situations where this word is often used, in a universe where it means something.
This method is much more difficult to achieve during a match or a show in which the actors don't necessarily know each other. On the other hand, in a collective that is used to performing together and knows each other well, it can be an optimal solution, and what's more, it will be virtuoso in the eyes of the audience.
Conclusion on theater of the absurd in improvisation
Finally, I always come away dissatisfied from an absurdist-style improvisation, because it's hard not to fall into the trap of saying anything at all. It's even harder to get your partners to understand the rules of the game. When the universe is more precise, like Kafka or Ionesco, it's already much easier to organize a thought and an objective.
When this photograph was taken, during an improvisation match, we were in the middle of an Ionesco-style improvisation. I was lucky enough to have in front of me a very receptive Quebec player who understood what I was setting up. We managed to create a coherent and justified beginning to the story. So, strange as it may seem, this position where I carry my partner was perfectly explicable.
But the longer the improv went on, the more "off-the-wall" the lines became, and the more difficult it became to hold a story, a dialogue or a situation together. Despite our best efforts to use these lines in context and link them together, we ended up with an improvisation that looked more like conceptual theater at the Théâtre de la Colline than Ionesco theater.
It's always frustrating, but at least we managed to create something interesting that didn't sound like two English burghers drinking tea and alternating their lines while a comedian in the background chimes in like: "Thirteen hours sixty-four".
The theater of the absurd remains, come what may, a precise form of theater. It corresponds to an era, an atmosphere, a way of thinking that no longer exists. So it will always be difficult to represent on stage, and even more so in improvisation. It's a bit like improvising alexandrines, with the twelve feet, the caesura at the hemistiche, the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes and the truth that bursts out at the rhyme. It takes a lot of practice to get the hang of it, but at its worst, all it takes is the right speaking style and a few technical tools.
*****
"The truth, moreover, is not to be found in books, but in life."
Eugène Ionesco / " The Bald Cantatrice
"In the beginning was the pun."
By Samuel Beckett / "Murphy
Author's notes
(1) Larousse dictionary definition.
(2) Personal definition inspired by various works.
(3) I use this play a lot as an example, because each scene can be used independently of the others to make a point.
