Friday, August 16, 2013

"In dealing with the dream world of the outcast of society, it explores the human condition, the alienation of man, his solitude, his futile search for meaning and reality."

"Genet's theatre is, profoundly, a theatre of social protest. Yet, like that of Ionesco, and of Adamov before his conversion to epic realism, it resolutely rejects political commitment, political argument, didacticism, or propaganda. In dealing with the dream world of the outcast of society, it explores the human condition, the alienation of man, his solitude, his futile search for meaning and reality.

Although Genet's theatre differs in many aspects of method and approach from that of the other dramatists discussed in this book, it bears many of the essential hallmarks that they have in common-the abandonment of the concepts of character and motivation; the concentration on states of mind and basic human situations, rather than on the development of a narrative plot from exposition to solution, the devaluation of language as a means of communication and understanding, the rejection of didactic purpose; and the confrontation of the spectator with the harsh facts of a cruel world and his own isolation. As such THE BALCONY and THE BLACKS can with certainty, THE MAIDS with a good deal of probability, be regarded as examples of the Theatre of the Absurd."

From:

The Theatre of the Absurd

by Martin Esslin

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