Immediately after the second world war, French theatre was associated with a short lived corruption of surrealistic drama which came to be known as the Theatre of Absurd.The sudden outburst of French absurdism was partially nihilistic reaction to the recent atrocities,had chambers and nuclear bonds of the year.Theatr of Absurd revealed the negative side of satire and express the helplessness and fatality of a world which seemed to have no purpose.
Samuel Beckett drew upon the contents and techniques of the music hall, the techniques of mime andaspectd of comedy to represent the business of everyday living.The characters of Beckett’s two famous plays -“Waiting for Vodot” and “End Game”-Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky, Hamm and Clove, Nag and Nell are essentially pairs of comics or clowns who divert themselves and also their audience with double acts of cross stock, tumbling, falling asleep,switching hats.The tramps who wait for Godot quarrel, eat, try go sleep, even attempts suicide- all the fashion of such performersand loss of dignity implicit in the antique itself becomes an absurdist image of life.The activity of these characters is not action in the sense that it works to develop a story,it is merely performance,the visible presence of an entertaining character Hamm and Clov wait for the end that does not come like figures curved in time,but they also do so with a pathetic animation and at the same time it is also funny to watch them.As in farse,cause and effect are discounted,time is speeded up or slowed dowm,fat is unpredictable and anything can happen.This is how Beckett sketches the absurd form of drama.It seems that the universe is an international one.Eachcharacter is ridiculously dependent on the other but the laughter is without mirth.
Harold Linter is another fine writer who was indebted to Backett as he himself said and this can be seen in his bleak settings and in the occasional patterns of pair dialogues in some of his early plays.Pinter’s extraordinary characteristic for a suggestive obliqueness is in his dialogue.Part of Pinter’s achievment has been to find a dramatic way of revealing the thread behind everydaylife and to convey tension between people who think they know each otherThis obvious in his later plays.In ‘Betrayal’needless mystery and violence was incorporated, suggesting the dramatist’s passion for this method.
Pinter’s typical props like a bucket, a kettle and the electric heater may not be symbolic but his dramatic treatment of reality is certainly symbolic.He does not build his dramatic treatment of reality is certainly symbolic.He does not build his drama on any current philosophy of the absurd but he is concerned to show people engulfed in trivia, in their dialogues, actions or nature.” A Nightout”,”The Home Coming” shows another element of Pinter’s drama that of sexuality when the relationship between a man and a woman are examined by Pinter each little fear of rejection and loneliness,each hint of threat to security and identity is as amusing as before,but much more painful.Pinter’s perception of human behaviour is acute and his ability to convey objectively what he sees through character and dialogue makes him a freat playsright.Although Pinter publicly shunned applying the term’political theatre’ to his own work in 1981,he began writing overtly political theatre’ to his own work in 1981,he began writing overtly political plays in the mid 1890 reflecting his own political interest and changes in his personal life,due to his leftwing political activism.