Using Laughter to Inspire Change: Absurdist

Theatre in Oppressive Societies

by
Mia Villeneuve

Dr. Daniel Venning, Advisor

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the
Degree of Bachelor of Arts
in Theatre

UNION COLLEGE
Schenectady, New York
June 2, 2022
Abstract

The 1959 play Rhinoceros by French playwright Eugène Ionesco is one of many plays consid-
ered by Martin Esslin to be a part of ”Theatre of the Absurd”, a genre of plays written by
mostly European playwrights in the late 1950’s. These plays typically center around ideas of
existentialism, and seem to lack any type of logical consistency. Rhinoceros centers around
a small French town in which all the inhabitants slowly turn into rhinoceroses, and was a
response to the uprising of fascism in Nazi Germany and a commentary on how social ideas
spread.
This thesis will discuss the use of absurdism to satirize and comment on political issues,
in Rhinoceros as well as in plays that followed it, such as Dario Fo’s 1970 play Accidental
Death of an Anarchist, which was a response to the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and the
subsequent mishandling of the situation by police. Both plays use exaggerated comedy and
humorous characters, such as the Logician in Rhinoceros and the Maniac in Accidental Death
of an Anarchist, to undermine authoritarianism and unjust systems as well as revealing the
darker side of society as a whole.

i
Contents

Abstract i

1 Introduction 1
1.1 European Art Movements in the Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.1 Italian Futurism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.2 French Surrealism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.3 Middle Eastern Absurdism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Defining Absurdism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Rhinoceros 6
2.1 Historical Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Conformity vs. Defiance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 The Pitfalls of Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4 Modern Day Rhinocerization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3 Accidental Death Of an Anarchist & The Memorandum 10

3.1 The Death of Pino Pinelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2 Slapstick as Societal Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3 Anti-Catharsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.4 The Memorandum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

4 Fairview & Conclusion 14

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Chapter 1

Introduction

The art of theatre and dramatic performance has been approached in a variety of different
ways throughout history. While some seek to utilize theatre to tell down-to-earth stories and
perfectly imitate the world in which they live, others have been more creative and imagina-
tive with the art form. The concept of absurdism in theatre has been utilized differently by
a multitude of playwrights across history to portray their own unique visions of the world,
rather than the world as it “truly” is. In the rapidly changing society of the twentieth
century, many playwrights across Europe used absurdism to showcase unbelievable, fantas-
tical scenarios, transporting the audience to an entirely new world. For example, Eugene
Ionesco’s Rhinoceros uses the visual imagery of men literally turning into beasts to portray
the dangers of mob mentality in response to the spread of fascism in Romania and France.
Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist takes a specific historical instance of police
abusing their power and exaggerates the most incriminating parts of the story, bringing the
flaws in the police and justice systems into the spotlight. Vaclav Havel’s The Memorandum
satirizes the conventions of bureaucracy and the modern office environment by taking them
to the extreme through the actions and gestures of the characters and painting a picture of
a lifeless, robotic society. These plays make these tragic instances exciting and even funny,
while also serving as commentary on the societies in which they were written.

This introduction presents a brief history of various artistic movements in Europe during
the early 20th century, and touches on some of the important documents which contributed
to the absurdist movement. Chapters 2,3, and 4 discuss specific absurdist plays: Eugene
Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and Vaclav Havel’s The
Memorandum, respectively. These plays take familiar situations and make them exciting
and hilarious, while also serving as commentary on the societies in which they were written.
Chapter 5 discusses the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury,
and its use of absurdist techniques in a modern context.

1
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 2

1.1 European Art Movements in the Twentieth Cen-

tury
What we now think of as absurdism started as a combination of many European art move-
ments. This section provides a brief overview of the Italian Futurist movement, as well as the
French movements of surrealism and existentialism, and also looks into the use of absurdist
theatre in the Middle East in the 1960s and 1970s.

1.1.1 Italian Futurism

The futurist movement began in 1909 when Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published The Man-
ifesto of Futurism, in which he called for a violent, incendiary revolution, and the destruction
of museums, libraries and relics of the past in favor of the modern age and the ”beauty of
speed” [1]. In 1915, Marinetti along with Bruno Corra and Emilio Settimelli published a
book called Il Teatro Futurista Sintetico[”The Synthetic Futurist Theatre”], which summa-
rized his dramatic theory and hopes for the future of Italian theatre. 1915 was also the year
futurists Fortunato Depero and Giacomo Balla wrote the manifesto Ricostruzione futurista
dell’universo [”Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe”] which expanded upon the ideas
introduced by the other futurists. The futurist movement in Italy called for less realism
and logical connections and more dynamic, poetic theatre based on movements and gestures
rather than the text itself. This new type of theatre was meant to encapsulate a rejection of
the past and a celebration of youth, industry and the future.

Marinetti also introduced the concept of Variety Theatre, a theatre comprised of all the-
atrical elements, including song, dance, gymnastics, poetry, etc. In a manifesto which he
would read aloud at cabaret performances, Marinetti would proclaim the reasons why he
believed the Variety Theatre was the way of the future. The manifesto ends with a stream-
of-consciousness ”poem” comprised of random words and phrases, in an utter rejection of the
logical conventions of realist theatre [2]. This theme of randomness-on-purpose is replicated
in many absurdist plays, including Ionesco’s La Cantatrice Chauve, which was influential in
defining absurdism (see part 1.2).

1.1.2 French Surrealism

In France, playwrights like Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cocteau incorporated surrealism
into their works, rejecting the depiction of reality in favor of a “deeper realism which. . . will
surprise us as bizarre, even fantastic” (Carlson 344) [3]. Cocteau’s The Eiffel Tower Wedding
Party incorporates absurd actions which Cocteau stated to be a type of ”theatre poetry”
which was meant to picture reality ”more truly than the truth” [4].

Existentialism was also present in France, with dramatists creating works which served to
communicate their views of the human condition. For example, Albert Camus’ 1942 philo-
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 3

sophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit emphasize the
struggles of man in a cold, uncaring universe, prompting the search for a deeper meaning in
life.

1.1.3 Middle Eastern Absurdism

In the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, Israel took control over parts of Egypt, Jordan and Syria and
placed about one million Arabs under control of a military government. The war prompted
many writers to focus on political writing in an attempt to make sense of, and protest
against, the effects of politics on the lives of citizens. Lebanese playwright Issam Mahfouz
wrote a trilogy consisting of The China Tree [al-Zanzalakht], The Dictator [al-Dictadur], and
Saadoun The King [Sa’dun Malikan], the latter of which was never finished due to the war.
Mahfouz then decided to focus on direct political writing, with his play The Killing [al-Qatl]
[5].

While Mahfouz believed in direct political writing and tried to avoid symbols or allegories,
Syrian playwright Sa’dallah Wannus implemented a more dramatic theatre, similar to the
epic theatre of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Wannus’ 1977 play al-Malik huwa al-malik
[The King is King] is a prime example of the use of theatre to critique societal hierarchies
and classism. Wannus draws on the fantasy world of Arabian Nights and creates an epic
drama about an ordinary man who is tricked into believing that he has been made king. At
the end of the play, the ordinary man becomes king in a symbolic reversal of roles, showing
that political hierarchies are meaningless, but also emphasizing the power of performance,
in taking on a role and becoming a character.

Throughout the play, Wannus maintains a dramatic distance from reality, calling the play
a ”game” and having characters refer to themselves as ”players”. Aleya A. Said compares
Wannus’ technique in writing this play to the techniques of Brecht, stating that his writing
”establishes a break with the audience/reader’s comfortable understanding of what is real”
[6]. This break from reality, which Brecht called the Verfremdungseffekt, was meant to cause
an effect of alienation, or defamiliarization, between the audience and the world on stage. By
combining this technique with the political themes of the play, Wannus draws a comparison
between politics and theatre, suggesting that political roles are as arbitrary as actors playing
roles in theatre.

1.2 Defining Absurdism

In “Theatre of the Absurd,” Martin Esslin describes a form of theatre that seeks to portray
not the “truth,” but the playwright’s inner truth. Absurdism forgoes the typical beginning-
middle-end plot structure and subtlety of characterization in order to portray a world that is
not real but exists in the author’s mind. As opposed to the realist convention of plays with
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 4

a beginning, middle and end and a clearly summarizable plot, absurdist plays were ”not in-
tended to tell a story but to communicate a pattern of poetic images” (Esslin 294). Through
these heightened portrayals of the world, playwrights are able to critique the societies in
which we live by portraying characters whose actions appear nonsensical, but nonetheless
are reflective of the world around them. The audience is forced to reconcile with the collec-
tion of poetic images they have been faced with, and forced to ask questions and engage in
interpretation to try and piece these images together [7].

These new movements all rejected realism, traditional theatre conventions, logical connec-
tions between cause and effect, and the psychological development of character. Plays like
this cannot be “summarized” in the form of a narrative, and a simple, easy-to-understand
meaning cannot be extracted from them. As Esslin states, “the work of art itself is its mean-
ing” (Esslin 12). Rather than searching for an oversimplified explanation, Esslin suggests
that audiences pay attention to sets of themes and images and look for what questions the
author is trying to ask, rather than some hidden answer that may not exist. For example,
one should not try to analyze Beckett’s Waiting for Godot by searching for some nonexistent
clue as to who or what Godot represents. Instead, we must analyze the work as a whole and
see what Beckett is trying to say about the world. The play is a static situation where two
characters wait each day, repeating similar lines and never straying too far from the theme
of waiting. In this case, the play serves to illustrate Beckett’s perception of the world, which
is that nothing ever really happens. Despite there being no overarching plot or narrative,
the play itself still communicates a message through its form, structure and mood. We feel
the passage of time, we engage in the act of waiting, and so we gain a deeper understanding
of what Beckett thinks of life and the human condition.

The concept of forgoing traditional plot structure in favor of “poetic images” is exempli-
fied in Eugene Ionesco’s La cantatrice chauve, which Ionesco called “Anti-thematic, anti-
ideological, anti-social-realist, anti-philosophic, anti-boulevard-psychology, anti-bourgeois”
(Carlson 412). In this play, which was translated as The Bald Soprano, the rejection of tra-
ditional theatrical conventions is brought to the extreme. The play focuses on two English
married couples, the Smiths and the Martins, who parody the polite conventions of English
society by delivering meaningless poems and stories back and forth. The play begins with
Mrs. Smith robotically listing facts about the dinner she’d cooked, and continues with the
Martins seemingly meeting each other for the first time before discovering that they are
actually married and have a child together. The characters often say sentences that don’t
connect to what was previously said, or outright contradict it. The audience is meant to feel
disconnected, in the same way that Ionesco feels society is disconnected. At the end of the
play, the characters all start saying random phrases, at which point the curtain falls, and
rises again to reveal the play ending with the same lines that began it, an example of the
circular ending that shows up in so many other absurdist plays [8]. After the hundredth per-
formance, Ionesco changed the ending to substitute two different characters reciting the lines
at the end instead of the characters who originally said them, introducing a new dimension
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 5

to this ”anti-play” (Allen 42).

The Bald Soprano is well known as a perfect example of Theatre Of the Absurd – a
play with no meaning, that doesn’t tell a story. However, not every absurdist play has to
be completely devoid of meaning. Since the advent of absurdism, many have used it to
parallel real historical events, simply adding creative new elements or tampering with the
conventions of theatre to engage audiences in their own world by portraying it through new
and interesting ways. Absurdist theater became a way to comment on political situations
and fight for social change.
Chapter 2

Rhinoceros

After writing a few short sketches and one-act plays, Ionesco made his full-length debut
with the three-act play Rhinoceros in 1959. Unlike The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros has a
plot, or at least a situation that escalates from the beginning of the play to to the end.
Moreover, Rhinoceros has actual characters, who may not be fully developed as people, but
definitely stand for different ideas, and seem to encompass different types of people in the
face of a societal crisis. The plot of Rhinoceros centers around the citizens of a small French
town transforming into rhinoceroses until only one human is left [9]. The main character,
Berenger, acts as the representative of individuality, resisting the pressure to conform and
furthermore showing the perseverance and willpower it takes to remain an individual in a
totalitarian society.

2.1 Historical Background

Ionesco was born and lived for many years in Romania, a country which was plagued by
racism, fascism and anti-semitism during the 1930s and 40s. As a teenager and college stu-
dent, Ionesco witnessed the horror of the Iron Guard, Romania’s radical nationalist political
party. In a 1970 interview, Ionesco spoke of the ”ideological contagion” he witnessed as
more and more of his fellow Romanians, close friends and university professors succumbed
to fascism, stating, “all around me men were metamorphosed into beasts, rhinoceros . . .
You would run into an old friend, and all of a sudden, under your very eyes, he would begin
to change. It was as if his gloves became paws, his shoes hoofs. You could no longer talk
intelligently with him for he was not a rational human being.” [10]. Much like Berenger,
Ionesco found himself isolated amongst an evil herd, betrayed by his friends and his own
country.

In 1942, Ionesco left Romania and moved to France, another country which underwent a
fascist takeover. In the first few months of France’s occupation by Nazi Germany, Parisians
passively accepted the new regime, and collaborated with the Nazis, glad that they were
not being shot down in the streets [10]. Ionesco’s own experiences with fascism in both

6
CHAPTER 2. RHINOCEROS 7

Romania and France are reflected in the play’s text as the characters grapple with the issues
of conformity versus defiance, and of logic versus intuition.

2.2 Conformity vs. Defiance

In the first scene of the play, an immediate contrast is drawn between Berenger and his best
friend and literary foil, Jean. Jean is characterized as someone who is very concerned about
social standing and looking good – in the first scene he criticized Berenger’s appearance for
looking sloppy, then gets upset about not being invited to a party. He clearly cares about
looking good to others and performing well in social situations, in contrast to Berenger, who
doesn’t put much effort into his appearance or into showing up on time for meetings. When
Berenger complains about how draining his job is, Jean simply replies, “The superior man is
the man who fulfills his duty” (Ionesco 7). Jean is implying that everyone has an obligation
to society at large, in this case a duty as an employee, which also demonstrates his belief
in capitalism — the belief that everyone is a cog in a a societal machine rather than an
individual. Throughout the play, this belief in fulfilling a societal ”duty”, rather than ques-
tioning why we are put into societal roles and made to fulfill them, ends up causing people to
conform to a society that is ultimately destructive. In a review from The Los Angeles Times,
Philip Brandes focuses on a production of Rhinoceros performed by Pacific Resident The-
atre, calling Keith Stevenson’s Berenger “endearingly floundering” in his attempt to fit in
with a society that cannot be reasoned with [11]. However, Berenger is not weak – in a 1961
review, Howard Taubman spoke of the ”courage, will, and knowledge” that was required of
Berenger in order to resist conforming to the mob [12]. All in all, Ionesco’s development of
the characters in this play, especially Jean and Berenger, paints a picture for the audience
of the type of person it takes to resist conformity.

Although the metamorphosis into rhinoceroses is a fantastical and comical allegory, simi-
lar real-life events have shown that the urge to conform is a powerful one, and can lead
people to doing things that they might have originally never considered – even completely
unethical things. In a 1963 experiment, Stanley Milgram performed a study in which he
asked participants to administer electrical shocks at increasingly high levels until they re-
fused to obey, in an attempt to test their levels of obedience to authority. Most of the
participants obeyed the experimental commands fully, administering the highest shock level
possible, despite showing signs of nervousness including sweating, trembling and nervous
laughter [13]. This experiment demonstrated how far people were willing to go against their
own morals in order to obey authority.

Ionesco satirizes the extent to which we are pressured to conform by illustrating a soci-
ety in which humans literally transform themselves into beasts because others are doing it.
In Act Three, Jean slowly transforms into a rhinoceros, all the while engaging in an argu-
ment with Berenger in which he attempts to justify his transformation. Berenger attempts
to piece together exactly how and why the transformation happens, mentioning a “critical
CHAPTER 2. RHINOCEROS 8

condition”. Jean was very much in a constant state of wanting to be acceptable to society,
and so when the society began to change, he changed too. Brandes points out the “stultify-
ing effect” of herd mentality on the characters in this society, and points out that Ionesco’s
“potentially deadly penchant for repetition” is skillfully used to portray the extent to which
this mentality can be deadly.

As Quinney points out, Ionesco’s ”mechanical repetition of clichés” represents the ways
in which fascist movements like these simplify their ideologies into easily digestible slogans,
which citizens blindly listen to and repeat, not thinking deeply or critically about their be-
liefs at all. Ionesco called these “des architectures de clichés,” and believed that they were
as reprehensible as fascism itself [10]. Ionesco spreads a clear message that one should think
for oneself, rather than blindly repeating ideas. However, he also shows how the process of
logical debate can go wrong.

2.3 The Pitfalls of Logic

Another theme in the play is the misuse of logic, most clearly seen in the first act when
a character aptly named the Logician explains logical syllogisms to an old man. Quinney
points out that syllogisms can be seen as deceptive, as many philosophers have used them to
prove nonsensical arguments. The Logician does just this as he provides an example to the
old man: “The cat has four paws. Isidore and Fricot both have four paws. Therefore Isidore
and Fricot are cats” (Ionesco 18). Clearly, this syllogism is flawed, as many animals have
four paws but are not cats. Ionesco uses the Logician to critique pseudo-intellectuals who
attempt to justify dangerous ideologies by coming up with long arguments and using a lot of
words to say nothing. Later on in the scene, the Logician creates a long, drawn-out argument
about whether or not the rhino the townspeople had seen had one horn or two, during which
he doesn’t actually answer the question at all. When Berenger points this out, the Logician
simply replies, “Obviously, my dear sir, but now the problem is correctly posed” (Ionesco 37).

With Dudard and the Logician, Ionesco personifies the idea of using logic and facts to
try to rationalize ideas which have no rationalization. The Logician embarks on a long and
lengthy diatribe about how to tell whether or not a rhino is As Berenger states, “it doesn’t
much matter which comes from where. The important thing, as I see it, is the fact that
they’re there at all. . . ” (Ionesco 60). People often try to analyze problems and figure out
where they came from instead of solving them, and, though this can be helpful sometimes,
it can often distract from the real issues. The problem of false balance or ”bothsidesism” is
well known even today, as the media often portrays both sides of a debate when one side is
clearly more factually correct.

Dudard is another character who exemplifies the ”facts and logic” mentality. He says “I’m
simply trying to look the facts unemotionally in the face” (Ionesco 83), talking down to
Berenger and trying to look smarter than him. While Berenger actually wants to act and do
CHAPTER 2. RHINOCEROS 9

something, Dudard is still trying to use an “intellectual effort” to try to figure out where the
problem comes from instead of solving it. Through characters like the Logician and Dudard,
Ionesco shows the problems with using cold, unemotional logic to try to tackle societal issues,
and offers Berenger’s humanity and emotional willpower as an alternative.

2.4 Modern Day Rhinocerization

The overwhelming ”rhinocerization” of the citizens in Ionesco’s play feels especially relevant
in the modern age, where the internet acts as an echo chamber and creates more opportunities
for unsuspecting people to become radicalized. The internet’s version of turning into a
rhinoceros is ”taking the red pill”, a process by which ordinary citizens can be radicalized by
right-wing content online, where they are able to find vast amounts of misinformation and
rhetoric, packaged with clichéd slogans designed to be blindly repeated. Brandes called the
play ”disconcertingly timely” for 2017, stating that it did not feel like an exaggeration in a
society where people were rapidly becoming radicalized. It is no surprise that Rhinoceros
continues to resonate with audiences even to this day.
Chapter 3

Accidental Death Of an Anarchist &

The Memorandum

Rhinoceros is an abstract allegory and has been read as a commentary on multiple different
fascist and authoritarianism regimes, from the Nazi occupation of France to the Iron Guard
in Romania. In contrast, Dario Fo’s 1970 play Accidental Death of an Anarchist is based
on, and directly references in great detail, a singular event of cultural significance. While
Rhinoceros is a play about society losing its humanity, and Accidental Death of an Anarchist
is about the abuse of power, The Memorandum seems to combine these two ideas. Satirizing
the Communist government in place in Czechoslovakia in 1965, Vaclav Havel shows a society
where humans are no longer human, and also one in which they conform to a strict social
hierarchy.

3.1 The Death of Pino Pinelli

In 1969 a series of bombings took place in Italy, the most deadly of which was the Piazza
Fontana bombing, in which sixteen people were killed and ninety injured. Police immediately
blamed anarchists and arrested one anarchist named Giuseppe “Pino” Pinelli, who was
subjected to three days of interrogation before “falling” to his death – his body was seen
plunging out of the window of the office of Inspector Luigi Calabresi. The exact truth of how
he died was never uncovered, but the police gave many contradictory statements in regards
to his death, suggesting the police themselves were culpable. The title of Accidental Death
of an Anarchist refers to the police ruling Pinelli’s death “accidental”, and many of the
characters in the play are based on real people, including Calabresi himself. However, one
character, known as the Maniac, was created wholecloth by Fo in order to create a dramatic
statement and bring the absurd into the world created by this incident [14].

10
CHAPTER 3. ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST & THE MEMORANDUM11

3.2 Slapstick as Societal Commentary

In the original performances, the Maniac was played by Fo himself, as he is heavily based on
Fo’s own style of comedy. Channeling the stock character from commedia dell’arte known
as Arlecchino, the Maniac disguises himself as several different characters, including a judge,
a doctor and a bishop, and utilizes the classic “jester” persona, whom Joseph Farrell states
“has the license granted to the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear but makes use of it not merely
to amuse the power-holder but to jeer at all he stands for” (Farrell xlvi). The Maniac breaks
into the police headquarters and starts questioning the officers about an incident of a man
who died by falling out a window while in police custody, referencing the real-life statements
of the officers and making comedy out of the fact that they were ridiculously inconsistent.
For example, one of the officers was questioned and said the man’s shoe came off in his hand,
when he was clearly wearing two shoes after he fell. The Maniac extrapolates that the man
must have been wearing three shoes, and questions whether he might have been a triped (Fo
52). By utilizing the archetype of a “jester” character that can see through the lies of those
in power, Fo expertly critiques the police force and the justice system by revealing them to
be untrustworthy and incompetent.

Fo also uses slapstick and comic violence to put the failings of the police force on full display.
When the Maniac impersonates Bertozzo and antagonizes another officer, the situation es-
calates until Bertozzo gets punched in the face by an arm “shoot[ing] out of the doorway”
(Fo 16). The Maniac’s multitude of disguises and removable body parts also contribute to
the exaggerated atmosphere of the play and help it to read as a farce. On the topic of farce,
Fo stated in an interview, “I want to rehabilitate farce. Theatre critics have adopted the
habit of writing that an unsuccessful comedy ‘declines into farce’. Now I believe that farce
is a noble – and modern – genre of theatre (Farrell xxiv).”

3.3 Anti-Catharsis
Fo believed that laughter was the opposite of catharsis, and his goal was to make audiences
laugh so that they could then become angry. By pointing out the flaws in society in an
absurd, comical way, Fo was able to draw greater attention to society’s greatest danger,
which is that it never changes. The Maniac reveals the hopelessness of trying to change
when he states, “They want a revolution. . . and we give them reforms. We’re drowning
them in reforms. Or promises of reforms, because let’s face it, they’re not actually going to
get anything” (Fo 75). At the end of the play, after it seems as though the Maniac is gone,
he enters again exactly as he did in the beginning and begins the exact same investigation
as before, much like The Bald Soprano ends in the same way as it starts. In the original
performances, Fo would enter as the Maniac at the end of the show and proceed to open up
a discussion with the audience, bridging the gap between the stage and reality.

The concept of anti-catharsis has since been utilized by Brazilian theatre practitioner Au-
CHAPTER 3. ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST & THE MEMORANDUM12

gusto Boal in order to spread similar ideas about the potential for theatre as a vehicle for
social change. In the book ”Theatre of the Oppressed”, Boal discusses how the ideas of
traditional Aristotelian storytelling and catharsis designed to uphold the societal status quo
and are not suited to theatre that wants to incite social change. Boal also discusses the
concept of the ”joker”, a figure that, much like Fo’s Maniac, interrupts the action and starts
discussions with the audience. Boal notes that the Joker is closer to a spectator than a
character, bridging the gap between stage and audience. Much like Fo’s Maniac comments
on the world he occupies and gets its characters into outlandish situations, Boal’s Joker is
also able to change the world his characters live in. However, the Joker actually has the
ability to step outside the scene and change the course of the story, through the creation of
new items or characters – ”He is magical, omniscient, polymorphous and ubiquitous” (Boal
182). In many ways, Boal’s introduction of interactive theatre and improv helped to further
Fo’s message of anti-catharsis and the use of theatre for social change.

3.4 The Memorandum

Like Dario Fo, Vaclav Havel was a playwright who was committed to political action and
social change; he was a political dissident who was arrested multiple times for protesting
on behalf of human rights. After the fall of Communism, Havel even became president
of Czechoslovakia, and then of the Czech Republic. In his play The Memorandum, Havel
critiques the economic state of then-Czechoslovakia under Communism’s totalitarian rule,
and the ways in which it affected working citizens. The Memorandum is a play about an
artificial, inhuman language that is spread throughout an office environment, much like the
rhinoceroses spread in Rhinoceros. The language used is virtually impossible to learn – the
same word can have several different translations, none of which are grammatically related
to one another, and this seems to be on purpose. Not only that, but it is impossible to have
it translated due to the nonsensical bureaucracy of the office – the translation needs to be
approved, but it can’t be approved without the translation. All of these elements combine
to portray a society that is no longer human, that has somehow lost its humanity due to a
series of rules imposed on itself by the very humans who live in it.

The main character, Mr. Gross, is seemingly the only person who is against this language,
being a self-proclaimed humanist, and ends up fired from his job for being against the lan-
guage and its establishment. Eventually, though, the rest of the office ends up seeing the
language’s flaws and Gross ends up back at his old job, only now he has to fight for the
establishment of a different artificial language [15]. This play has a circular format, much
like Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and seems to convey a similar message – that no
matter how many small changes take place, society at large ultimately stays the same and
returns to the status quo. As Esslin puts it, “what passes in these plays are not events
with a definite beginning and a definite end, but types of situation that will forever repeat
themselves” (Esslin 39).
CHAPTER 3. ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST & THE MEMORANDUM13

One of the ways in which Havel communicates this theme of society repeating itself is by
including the repetition of various lines, gestures and actions in the play. The same conver-
sations repeat several times, there is a birthday party every day, and certain characters have
their own gestus, or characteristic gestures. In his 1913 essay “On Laughter,” Henri Bergson
explains why it can be funny when a situation repeats several times. These events are funny
because they appear extremely coincidental, contrived, and in that way, mechanical, like a
jack-in-the-box popping out over and over again. In the Italian Futurist movement, repeti-
tion was also used to emphasize the ”crushing monotony” of life [16], a description which
certainly seems to apply to the life of Mr. Gross. Bergson’s main point in discussing the
underlying principles of humor was that laughter comes from viewing “something mechanical
encrusted on the living” (Bergson 37), meaning that when a person or a society acts as if
they are automated, controlled by a machine, or being puppeted, the surprising contrast
in this scenario makes us laugh. Hana does nothing but comb her hair and ask for food,
and Mr. Lear continues to teach his class even after all the students have left, because they
are puppets of the robotic society in which The Memorandum takes place. The “automatic
regulation of society” (Bergson 47) is another example of what Bergson considers laughable,
and the society in The Memorandum exemplifies this as well. It seems as though its rules
were simply automatically put in place without any human input.

Another notable aspect of The Memorandum’s society is the theme of surveillance. The
position of ”staff watcher” is introduced when Mr. Gross hears an unseen voice talking to
him from offstage. As it turns out, the building employs someone to sit in a hidden room
between the offices and watch everyone who works there. At one point, Mr. Gross is forced
to fill this position himself, and thus the audience is forced to reconcile with the fact that
they, too, can play the role of ”watcher”. This certainly adds to the feeling of unease shown
throughout the office environment, reminding the audience of George Orwell’s ”1984” and
the pervasiveness of Big Brother. This idea of being watched is so powerful that it is no
surprise how often it is used as a theatrical device. In fact, the play Fairview shows how
the theatre can be used to communicate the theme of surveillance in a modern American
context.
Chapter 4

Fairview & Conclusion

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 play Fairview, Jackie Sibblies Drury criticizes the sys-
temic racism present in modern American society, and the extent to which minorities are
constantly viewed through a white lens. Fairview follows a middle class African American
family in what at first appears to be a simple family drama about preparing for a birthday
party, but soon turns into the story of a black family seemingly trapped in a stage show about
their own lives. The first act lulls the audience into a false sense of security by introducing
what appear to be typical characters living a normal life; however, in the second act, the
play takes a sharp turn as Drury introduces the element of a voiceover. While the characters
on stage repeat the same actions as in the first act, the voices offstage discuss what race
they would want to be, casually tossing around racial stereotypes as the black characters
simply try to live their lives [17]. In an interview with NPR, Drury stated that she wanted
the family’s house and life to seem “perfect” in order to directly contradict these racial
stereotypes put forward by the white characters [18]. Moreover, by utilizing a technique not
often found in traditional plays, Drury is able to have white voices literally speak over the
now-silenced black characters in the play, a theatrical representation of the ways in which
black voices are silenced by the oppressive white majority. In a New York Times article,
Jesse Green and Salamishah Tillet discuss the play’s connection to the world of theatre and
the ways in which the writings of white critics are considered more important than those of
people of color, pointing out the need for black writers, directors and critics, not just shows
like ”The Lion King” with a black cast and an all-white producing team [19]. By using just
one technique, Drury manages to convey a multitude of messages about the white gaze in
an abstract way that anyone can understand.

Drury stated that she based the play on the concept of surveillance, and the “suspicion”
one feels as a person of color when being watched by a white person. This echoes the con-
cept of surveillance introduced in The Memorandum, but takes it to a new level – rather than
being interchangeable and a meaningless position, the ”watcher” is created by the society as
a means for one group to exert power over another. As the offstage voices continue talking,
they begin to comment on the play itself, projecting their own warped ideas of blackness onto

14
CHAPTER 4. FAIRVIEW & CONCLUSION 15

the family members. Although the family does not seem to know they are being ”watched”
yet, the audience’s experience of the situation is still distorted. This distorted and discon-
nected vision emphasizes the idea of viewership, as when the audience is watching the play,
they are forced to watch the lives of black people through the eyes of white people. Thus,
the white audience members are forced to connect with their whiteness and realize that they
have been looking through this white lens their entire lives.

The climax of the play comes when the family sets the table, dancing while bringing out
more and more exaggerated fake food, all while the character Jimbo goes on an unhinged
rant about his white power fantasy in the background. The white characters then physically
enter the playing space and take on the roles of other black characters, basically performing
a minstrel show without the blackface, and distorting the family’s lives in order to fit in with
racist stereotypes. All in all, the actions of the white characters are portrayed as extremely
invasive, as Drury ramps up the absurdism with ridiculous costumes and reveals to further
display how warped the media’s portrayal of black characters is.

At the end of the show, the character Keisha breaks the fourth wall and addresses the
audience directly, asking the white members of the audience to step onto the stage and
become the spectacle in a symbolic reversal of the ways white people have viewed black
people’s lives as entertainment for centuries. This ending echoes the original performances
of Accidental Death of an Anarchist, in which Dario Fo as the Maniac would end the play
by breaking the fourth wall and opening up a discussion with the audience. Tillet calls this
ending ”a stunning representation of the violent schizophrenia of American racism”, and
points out that this ending would not work with a completely nonwhite audience. Thus, this
play is fundamentally about changing white audience members’ points of view. Fairview
is an example of theatre that, rather than simply telling a story which audiences can eas-
ily disconnect themselves from, incorporates the “poetic images” of absurdism to directly
engage the audience and bring them into the world of the play, which is really a distorted
representation of society as it is.

The concept of absurdism emerged in resistance to the traditional conventions and “rules”
of theatre, so the fact that it has been used to resist totalitarian societies and their strict
rules and bureaucracies comes as no surprise. By using techniques such as repetition of lines
and situations, comic exaggeration through images and costumes, and circular endings that
seem to break the fourth wall, playwrights like Ionesco, Fo, and Havel take the reality of
their societies and highlight the places where they want to see change. Dramas like these
have the power to change society by getting audiences to laugh at the world they live in,
seeing all its flaws on full display. Playwrights like Jackie Sibblies Drury have already shown
that these techniques can be brought forward into modern-day America, and used to shock
audiences into seeing the world in a completely different light. Through the art of absurdist
theatre, audiences can not only be made to laugh, but also to fight for real societal change.
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