Oh god I'm lonely.
American theater of the absurd
" Edward Albee"
- The Zoo Story
- Who's afriad of Virginia Woolf
A stage picture of The Zoo story from Google
(I'm going to call "the theater of the absurd" as "absurd drama"/ even though it's not proper please understand it. The full name is too long!)
Have you known that? Samuel Beckett wrote "waiting for godot" in French and translated it to English later (Actually he is Irish) and Harold Pinter of "Birthday Party" is British.
Then why don't we check an American writer this time?
So, I choosed "Adward Albee" to introduce American absurd drama.
Actually he is only American who writes absurd drama, as I know.
When I indulged in "waiting for godot" around 3 years ago, I found a book in the library about absurd drama.
This is Albee, He is still writing drama :-) Isn't it great?
If you interested in this book go to the library!
The title is "Absurd Drama" and author is Martin Esslin.
It has nice blue cover. I've borrowed that book more than 4 times not only for studying but.. to see the cover of that book ^^...
Anyway! Edward Albee is only American writer in that book.
And while I read that book, I get that Amercian Drama is very different with European one.
Many famous European absurd drama published near the time after Second World War.
Europe changed into a heap of ashes. People lost hope and started to think concerning an existence of human being , human's reason and interllect.
you might be heard about Existentialism in some place, right?
Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre are representatives of existentialism.
They tried to express and describe absurd of human being in their works and studys.
Then, Absurd drama appeared on this stage.
The writers of absurd drama thought "If you want to express absurd, you have to use absurd way to express the concept"
So "Anti-drama" is absurd drama's trait.
now let's come back to American absurd drama!
I mean, Albee's works.
His most famous drama "The zoo story" shows some similarities with European one but "Who's afraid Virginia Woolf" is very different.
If you espect typical absurd drama, you might be embarassed.
The style and background are seem more like a realism drama.
But that's American absurd drama's trait. sometiems, It uses a form of realism drama but what the drama wants to describe is "American's Absurd life"
While European and Aisa were sufferd from Second World War, American dreamt "American Dream"
People are seem happy and their life described perfectly but the dream was not a dream for everyone. Even a couple have wonderful house and cars and children, feel some wierd feeling. Something like a sense of alienation.
In the case of labor classes, they can't reach the American dream even though they work day and night without luxury.
These are main subjects of Albee's drama.
In the zoo story, A lonely man Jerry approached another Peter who sat on a bench in a park. Jerry has nothing except a dirty cheap room but Peter has a nice job and family and pets. This two different nation (I quote this from Disraeli's writing!) have a conversation.
Acutaully, Jerry almost begs to Peter to start to talk.
As time goes by, Peter shows interest in Jerry's Zoo story.
But Jerry never let peter know about Zoo story but speaks different silly things.
whenever peter trys to leave, Jerry talks about Zoo story again then Peter sits down on the bench again.
After all, Peter listens the story and that's quite unbeilievable story. - I'm not going to tell you about the end of this story :-)
The Zoo story is about loneliness of human and hardness of true conversation.
Jerry wants to have real, ture conversation but that's not easy with Peter who doesn't care about another man.
Who's Afaid Virginia Woolf is also a drama which describes loneliness of human being and fake happiness of American dream. A middle age husband and wife have everything - fansy house, car, reputation - but they fight every night and sneer at each other with cruel words. It is also made as a movie and Elizabeth Taylor acted Martha ,a heroine, in the movie. I recommed you to watch this one. It's quite long movie but great worth.
And One more thing!
"Who's Afriad of Virginia Woolf" is not realted to the writer Virginia Woolf at all !
The play's title, which alludes to the English novelist Virginia Woolf, is a parody of the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney's animated version of The Three Little Pigs. Because obtaining the rights to use the music would have been expensive, most stage versions, and the film, have Martha sing to the tune of "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush". This melody fits the meter fairly well and is in the public domain. In the first few moments of the play, it is revealed that someone sang the song earlier in the evening at a party, although who first sang it (Martha or some other anonymous party guest) remains unclear. Martha repeatedly needles George over whether he found it funny.
I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf . . . who's afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual joke.
— Edward Albee from Wiki
Video of a movie "who's afrid of Virginia Woolf"
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