Theatre of the Absurd

*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Theatrics


There’s no theatre that’s not
theatre of the absurd because
in every case humans sit
observing humans acting
like humans.... Everybody
in the whole building
has a task, which both is
and is not what brought each
task’s respective human
to the building. The building
is a product of earlier innumerable
tasks. So is the play. All tasks
are ultimately meaningless maybe.
So is the play. The theatre-
building is filled with pretending
humans watching other humans
pretending, and this is reality,
and this is play, and if God
doesn’t exist, then none of it
means anything ultimately,
and if God does exist, then
does the play mean what it purports
to mean? Oh, and one additional absurd
thing is how ordered, dutiful,
polite, and amused we are as
we perform our tasks. We play
the game of As If as if it
weren’t a game, and that is
acting, and that’s absurd,
and that’s another good reason
to go see a play played live.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom