EXCO 540 - AbsurdCo

1 credit
How do we grapple with the apparent meaninglessness of human existence? How do we create art in that void of meaning? Theatre of the Absurd playwrights such as Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Becket, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, and others, confronted these questions in their plays, which they published throughout the 1950s and 60s. In the process, they built a theatrical movement whose legacy is very much alive today. In this course, we will uncover the unpredictable, inconsistent, strange, unfamiliarly familiar world of the absurd. In the first half of the semester, we will read seminal plays from the Theatre of the Absurd and examine the different ways in which they explore the meaningless absurdity of life. In the second half of the semester, we’ll shift gears and move into a scene workshop. Students will choose scenes from an absurdist work to do in groups of 2-5. This part of the class will function as a studio theater class, and over the course of several weeks, we’ll develop and rehearse our scenes, which will culminate in a final scene showcase.

Olivia Wohlgemuth
owohlgem@oberlin.edu
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