THE EVOLUTION OF FORM IN CONTEMPORARY DRAMA

MICHAEL CHARLES O'NEILL, Purdue University

Abstract

The growing acceptance of the conventions of the theater of the absurd in the late 1950's presented new dramatists with an artistic dilemma. Modern drama had been characterized by revolution against the limits of representational drama; the theater of the absurd seemed to be the culmination of this revolutionary impulse, for its anti-mimetic structures coalesced with the absurdist metaphysical ideas upon which it was predicated. The consequence, anti-form, became the means of expression for such playwrights as Arthur Adamov, Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. Despite modern revolt, innovation, and experiment, however, form remains necessary and inescapable. In form, structure and idea synthesize; the result is lasting artistic expression. Post-absurdist dramatists attempted to create new form through understanding the absurd as yet another form with its own conventions, and they revolted by parodying their predecessors and by adapting the conventions of the absurd to fit their needs. Unable to continue the theater of the absurd or to return to representational drama, contemporary playwrights began to incorporate elements from all of past drama into eclectic, derivative forms that implicitly celebrate the continuity of the theater. The plays utilize history, myth, and ritual to shape an organic, collage-like whole; in their complex effects, the plays employ the full technological resources of the theater and call attention to the theater-as-theater. Such plays as Slawomir Mrozek's Tango, Arthur Kopit's Indians and Tom Stoppard's Travesties embody these methods. Through form they achieve Jean Cocteau's ideal of a poetry of the theater which is "truer than truth." Mrozek's fiction satirizes established literary forms, but such early plays as The Police and The Martyrdom of Peter Ohey demonstrate his inability to write within the limits of the absurd. Anchored in romanticism, yet cultivated in an environment of communist oppression, Mrozek's vision is more originally expressed in such later plays as Striptease and The Party. His efforts to find a synthesis of structure and idea succeed in Tango, which renders poetically the political and cultural history of the twentieth century. Kopit's first play, The Questioning of Nick, is realistic, but Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad demonstrates his revolt against both representational drama and the absurd. A series of short, experimental plays leads to Indians, which re-interprets American myth and history in an eclectic, fundamentally theatrical form. Wings transforms a clinical case history into a collage of sounds and images. Stoppard's Enter A Free Man and his early radio plays bear witness to his unsuccessful attempts to write in established forms. Stoppard's universe is relative, and his major plays, beginning with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, are based upon the premise that nothing, including works of art, is absolute. Jumpers and, especially, Travesties comprise elaborate artifices that nonetheless assert the power of theater to shape the fragments of contemporary life into a form that transcends chaos. Eclectic, intellectual, traditionally astute, stylized into ritual, contemporary drama is unique to a post-absurdist epoch which necessitates a break with any single established dramatic form. The peculiar quality of contemporary drama is that its form explicitly embodies an artistic dilemma. Unable to invent a totally new drama, the contemporary dramatist has fashioned a poetic form out of the bits and pieces of all that has come before.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Modern literature

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