Theatre of the Absurd

by Martin Esslin
translated by Alina Nelega

Martin Julius Esslin (1918-2002) was a producer, journalist, translator, critic and theater professor. Born in Hungary, Esslin was educated at the University of Vienna, where he studied philosophy and English, and at the Reinhardt Seminary of Dramatic Art. After moving to London, he worked for BBC as a producer, then director of the radio theater department. All this time he continued to publish theater essays, articles, reviews and studies. His best known books are: Brecht: A Choice of Evils (1959), The Anatomy of Drama (1965), The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold Pinter (1970), Artaud (1976), and The Age of Television (1981).
But the book that places him firmly in the history of theater is Theatre of the Absurd (1962), where Esslin for the first time used this term to define the work of four authors: Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter. Esslin compared the Theatre of the Absurd with the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, whose existentialist philosophy proclaimed the lack of meaning of life. John Calder, a theatre editor and close friend of Samuel Beckett, says that Esslin’s book is the most influential theatrical writing of the 60s. But the book lived well past its time: the newest edition, with a new preface by the author, telling the story of the book, was published in 2003.

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