Theatre of the Absurd

Body of dramatic works of the 1950s and '60s that expressed the existentialist philosophy of meaninglessness and the absurdity of life.

Playwrights such as Arthur Adamov, Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Eugène Ionesco, and Harold Pinter created Absurdist plays without traditional plots and with characters who engaged in circular, purposeless conversations. Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953), in which two tramps wait for a mysterious man who never arrives, is a classic of the genre.