theater of the absurd: a child studies himself

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Theater of the Absurd: A Child Studies HimselfAuthor(s): Peter J. SheehanSource: The English Journal, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Apr., 1969), pp. 561-565Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/811960 .

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Theater of the Absurd:A Child Studies HimselfPeter J. SheehanDepartmentof EnglishSt. Paul'sSchoolConcord,New Hampshire

N a paper read at the American Studiesmeeting of the Modern Language As-sociation conference in New York andsubsequently published in the April 1968issue of College English, Herbert Blauremarked that we live in an age moredramatic than any which preceded it.In the present age, he said, "The illusionof reality has been replaced by thereality of illusion"; it is an age whereinboth the rapidity and the fluidity ofevents in our daily lives have forcedus into the game of constant "role play-ing." Furthermore, as a result of tele-vision's success, and the ad men's sellingus on the doctrine of instant gratification,our culture has produced what I callthe "to be or not to be" children, forwhom the easy kick of "turning on,tuning in, and dropping out" with drugsis an exciting game of suicide, a religionin which one worships by repeatedlyenduring one's own crucifixion. For me,the frightening part of the service is thatthe devotees participate willingly, indeedpiously and dramatically.

Editor's Note: This paper was presented atthe Milwaukee Convention of NCTE, Novem-ber 1968.

An uncle of one of my students oncelikened this process of repeated exitsand entrances to a life of open doors,all of them unmarked. Our students runaround, frantically, trying the variousdoors, while we merely decry the factthat someone has removed the signs overthose doors. Just as Alice in Wonderlandcame across a tiny bottle labeled"DRINK ME," which she proceeded todo, so too, in effect, do our studentsconfront doors which bear green neonsigns which say "TRY ME." What weneed to do is to admit that we are theones who allowed the signs to be re-moved, and that now, given that fact,the only way we can save Alice is tofollow her down the rabbit hole vicari-ously, through our imaginative powers.As concerned teachers, we all haveour own various ways of followingAlice, and it is my purpose here toexplain one of mine.As a teacher of English, one of myconcerns is to open the minds of mystudents to the variables of human natureand so teach them to express their ownnatures intelligently and effectively. Mymain instruments are short stories, novels,

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562 ENGLISH JOURNALplays, and poems, though I see no reasonwhy any medium, be it Oriental musicor Eskimo statuary, is invalid if the mainconcerns of awareness and coherent ex-pression are adhered to. The key elementin whatever I do is "Interest," with acapital "I." My students must have alively, personal interest in what they'relearning. Otherwise, there's no point inmy being in the classroom save themechanical one of riding herd overboredom.With this in mind, my favorite wayof following Alice is to teach the playsof Absurdist Theater. My doing so de-pends, of course, upon certain premisesregarding the teacher-student relation-ship.THE first of these premises is that the"to be or not to be" children, unlikeHamlet, want to find their own solutionnow and are willing to seek that solutionanywhere. Rejecting apathy, the vicethey abhor in adults, they deeply andsincerely care. Modern role playing hasmade the identity crisis never-ending forthem, and they want to cope with itcreatively, so much so that, as neverbefore, they've created their own sepa-rate culture.

Second, just as I cannot fully com-prehend their culture, so too, is it im-possible for them to fully understandmine. What I must try to do, therefore,is to find a common ground where mystudents and I can agree to share mutualpoints of interest, points whereon eachof us has some meaningful things tocommunicate to the other. Essential inachieving this rapport is my need to es-cape the various pejorative connotationsof being an adult. Students are quickto discover what a dogmatic teacherwants and to respond accordingly-theirvery existence heavily depends upon suc-cessfully doing so. They know that sucha response stifles their creative search;they occasionally rebel against it as theydid at Columbia and elsewhere last

spring; but in the main they swallowtheir pride and pretend to live with it,while seeking any escape from it intheir free time. It is, therefore, imperativethat I not have all the answers, and,indeed, that I not have all the questions.I must be human and fallible; I mustnot be a machine, nor an oracle, nora system.My third premise is that, whiledemonstrating an active interest in theirculture, I must get them interested inmy own, in my humanity. They mustlearn that although the structures ofadult life are often hard to put up with,those structures do permit constant, in-vigorating, and creative individuality.Their own culture is one wherein theindividual strives to have no illusions,yet that whole culture at present isbased upon created illusions. They at-tempt to "turn on, tune in, and dropout" on the grounds that adult life isa state of vapid, hypocritical, and trivialnon-being; the only way to change theirview is to convince them that adultlife can be, and should be, a constantlycreative process of self-discovery, a jour-ney into consciousness through an ac-ceptance, rather than a rejection, of thatconsciousness. In short, I must showthem that my life is no different fromtheirs, that beyond the adult mystiquelie the same problems and the samepleasures. The best meeting place thatI have found for our minds is our mutualstudy of the plays of the Theater ofthe Absurd.

My fourth, and final premise, is that,of the various literary genres, dramais the most instructive. The reasons forthis are twofold: first, drama is a studyof human nature directed at the commondenominator, everyman. Serious novelsrequire adult experience for completeempathy, while poetry usually grabsonly those sensitive to it. Anyone doubt-ing the universal power of drama shouldread the introduction to Martin Esslin'sstudy, The Theatre of the Absurd (An-



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THEATER OF THE ABSURD 563chor Books, Doubleday, 1961), whereinhe describes the enthusiasticreceptiongiven Beckett's Waiting for Godot bythe inmatesof San Quentinpenitentiarywhen it was performed herein Novem-ber 1957.Second, dramamakes the mostintensive and creative demandson theimagination,drawingfrom the individuala more or less total commitmentof theself, whereas poetry hits a limited partof the mind, and novels often leave themind untouched.

N light of these premises,then, andgiven my belief in the power of dramaas a teaching medium,what special ad-vantages are inherent in the plays ofAbsurdistTheater? Why do Absurdistplays, in particular,acilitatethe locationof an exploratory,creativemiddle-earth,a land where both teacher and studentmust rely on the other for enlighten-mentand collectivegrowth?First let me state that my definitionof Theater of the Absurd encompasses

more than the school of French dramawhich succeeded ExistentialistTheater.While centered aroundBeckett, Ionesco,and Genet, it also includes Pinter, theearly Albee, and isolated plays such asGiraudoux'sOndine and Betti's Corrup-tion in the Palace of Justice, as well asplays influencedby Absurdistdramatictechniques, such as Stoppard'sRosen-crantzand GuildensternAre Dead. TheoversimplifieddefinitionI give my stu-dents is that Theater of the Absurdis a form of drama which originatedin the French theater of Alfred Jarryand Antonin Artaudin which the thesisthat the human condition is absurd ispresentedby means which reflect thatabsurdity.I do not say, of course, thatI wholly concur with the absurdist he-sis, but merely that its thesis does makea few cogent points about the natureofour existence.The main value of Absurdist dramais that it possesses he fascinationof thecontemporary. Although our students

may become mildly interestedin Mac-beth or Tess of the D'Urbervilles,theywill not become very involved partlybecause these works represent past his-tory, andpartlybecausethey arewrittenby adults for adults.To the immediacyof the contemporary,however, our stu-dents feel they have a great deal to con-tribute, and they do so with great de-light. Further,AbsurdistTheater sharesa view often entertainedby the young-that adult life is, indeed, absurd. Thatadultscan have the same opinion of lifeas their children often comes as a sur-prise to those children. Delighted toshare a common reaction to life withadults, students tend to bubble overwith their own observations.ANOTHER advantage nherent in theplaysof the Theater of the Absurd sthat, to understandany of these plays,the audience s forced to reactcreativelyto the stimuli presented on the stage.The Absurdist playwright supplies theelements in a confusing manner, thusleavingto the beholderthe task of mak-ing sense out of them. The audiencemust createa meaningfor the play, and,when used in the classroom,such playsforce the teacher and his students toshare in a collective, creative response.What I find even more fascinating isthat my students'receptionand compre-hension of Absurdist plays is a greatdeal faster and more complete than myown. They quickly realize this, andtheir resulting discussion of the playsbecomesa thoroughly absorbingexperi-ence.Severalweeks ago one of my sopho-more classes read Pinter's The DumbWaiter.They walked into class expect-ing me to summarize definitively themeaningof the play. Instead,I came in,wrote the title of the play on the board,put a question mark after it, and satdown without saying a word. Since Iplanned to remain silent for the entireforty-five minute classperiod,it was up



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564 ENGLISH JOURNALto them to derive a meaning from theplay. Four times, when their discussionbegan to get repetitive or trivial, I putthe name of an object in the play onthe board, an object such as the "speak-ing-tube" or the "twelve matches," anact which led them to consider the playfrom a new perspective. By the end ofthe class period they had decided thatthe play was a commentary upon theineffectiveness of religion in the life ofmodern man, that modern man couldn'taccept the "God's up there, I'm downhere, and all's right with the world"philosophy, that Ben's confrontation ofGus at the end of the play related insome way to man's conception of theafterlife, and that the twelve matchesrepresented the twelve apostles. Stillwithout a word on my part, they de-parted at the end of the period. Thenext day I began the class by readingone critic's banalities about the play,showing them that the conclusions theyhad reached through discussion weremuch more to the point than his hadbeen. I then offered my own interpreta-tion of the play, and the remainder ofthe period was spent in a joint discussion.Out of this complicated experience theyderived a great deal, mainly in the areaof self-knowledge. Because almost every-thing in the play is debatable, theylearned to listen to each other, and todemand reasons for any and everyopinion, including mine.THESE students taught themselves amost important lesson, the one whichexplains my title, "Theater of the Ab-surd: A Child Studies Himself." I havediscovered that the range and freedomof stimuli presented in Absurdist Theaterput pressure on the student to examinehis own nature and to respect the na-tures and expressions of others. Since itis difficult for a teacher to dominatethe interpretation of an Absurdist playwhen he himself is a bit unsure of itsmeaning, a climate is created for the

free exchange of opinion, a climatewhich stimulates all kinds of collectivelearning experiences.Such an experience occurred lastspring when my senior section was hav-ing trouble conceptualizing Ionesco'sThe Chairs. We decided that the playwas heavily dependent upon the audi-ence's reaction to the fact that the OldMan and the Old Woman were talkingto an increasing number of empty chairs,and that the only way to "feel" thisreaction was to experience it. One ofthe boys suggested the simple expedientof setting up three chairs in a semi-circle,with a boy in each of the two endchairs, and having these two boys carryon a conversation with the personifiedvoid of the empty, middle chair. Webegan with a simple personification-themiddle chair was "occupied" by a re-tired sea captain with a wooden leg, agrizzled and bearded face, and a goldearring in his left ear. The one rulewe set was that the two boys must talkwith the empty chair. At no time mightone boy address the other. The resultwas all we had hoped for-and more.Various boys took turns, and we filledthe middle chair with more and moredifficult "personified" voids, ending upspending the whole class period in thisexperience. The following day our dis-cussion of the play was deeply meaning-ful and thoroughly stimulating.ANOTHER method of employing thevirtues of Absurdist drama in theclassroom is to combine several playswith a more traditional play. A year agoI had my first experience of teaching asenior section. I quickly noticed that myseniors were pretty sure of themselvesand not very much interested either inthinking new thoughts or in listening tothe opinions of others. As a result, it tookme over two months to get them upto a level of performance appropriateto their age. This year I decided to trya new approach. We began by spending



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THEATER OF THE ABSURD 565eight class periods on Hamlet, then fol-lowed with four on Stoppard's Rosen-crantzand GuildensternAre Dead. Ourcommon theme was man's attempt tounderstand the nature of his existence,and as part of this we spent several classesreading and acting parts in both plays toget a feeling for the tones and moodsof each. Then we jumped into threeshort plays by Pinter-A Slight Ache,The Collection, and The Dwarfs, thelatter being by far the most effectiveof the three. By the time we got tothe Pinter plays, the discussions werelively, penetrating, and constructive.Finally, as a summary, we examinedHamlet's "To be or not to be" speech,the final speeches by Rosencrantz andGuildenstern, and Len's final speech inThe Dwarfs. The major results werethat, first, we concluded in our wisdomthat human nature doesn't change; sec-ond, that the speeches did, however,reflect the context of their times; andfinally, much to our surprise, that Pin-ter's play was far more optimistic andaffirmative about the nature of humanexistence than were Shakespeare's orStoppard's plays. The key result of this"set,1" o to speak, was that I now havea class greatly superior in awareness,judgment, and interest to that evincedat this stage by last year's group. Iworked to complement and excite theirintelligence, and they responded far be-yond my hopes, to the point where nowI really have to work to keep up totheir level of interest, a task well worththe effort.

N summary, then, what are the great-est advantages of using the plays ofthe Theater of the Absurd in the sec-

ondary school? They stimulate imagina-tive interest, they permit the teacher toachieve a common ground where hecan communicate with his studentsthrough collective learning experiences,and they permit a teen-ager to examinehis own nature through his introspectivereaction to the plays, and through thegive-and-take occurring when excitedstudents discuss materials relevant totheir own contemporary world. A fur-ther benefit, I've discovered, is that theintrovert gets excited and loses his in-hibitions, while the slow learner dis-covers his imaginative powers, a dis-covery which often stimulates a rapidimprovement of his overall performance.We teachers all know that there is a greatdifference between the expression whichparrots a teacher and that which is thepassionate outpouring of a growing in-volvement in conscious life. I havefound, and I firmly believe, that thereis far greater merit in teaching studentsthe real lessons of life through the thingsthey enjoy studying, than there is incontinuing to bore them with materialthey feel is irrelevant. They should readJulius Caesarand Death Comes for theArchbishop, certainly; but they shouldalso encounter the contemporary medi-um of Absurdist Theater. The plays ofBeckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and Al-bee have a great deal to offer, and Ihave only begun to explore the teachingpossibilities which they present. To date,they have allowed Alice and me tojourney down the rabbit hole together.In the process we have taught each othermuch, and above all we have learned tocommunicate more effectively with oneanother, which is, after all, what weteachers hope to accomplish.

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