Existentialism in

Contemporary Drama (post-60s

theatre)

BY: GAURI SHAHU

(TYBA)
INTRODUCTION
• Introduced in the late nineteenth/early twentieth
century
• Existentialist plays grew in number during the
Second World War in France and just after it.
 WHAT IS EXISTENTIALISM?

Existentialism proposes that man is full of anxiety and despair with no

meaning in his life, just simply existing, until he made a decisive choice
about his own future. 
 Existentialism in Plays- Theatre of the Absurd
“It is the freedom of
Characteristics the slave to crawl east
• No logical plot along the deck of a
• Proving the pointless existence of man boat going west”
• Used such techniques as symbolism, mime, the
circus and the commedia dell'arte -Richard Coe

Martin Esslin coined the term THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Anouilh Eugene Ionesco

Samuel Beckett
Albert Camus

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