The politics of the absurd: Theatrics of stagnation and the Puerto Rican paradigm

La política de lo absurdo: La teatralidad del estancamiento en el paradigma puertorriqueño 

  

Nehemías Toro Padrón
Departamento de Literatura Comparada
Facultad de Humanidades, UPRM 

 

Recibido: 02/02/2024; Revisado: 29/04/2024; Aceptado: 03/05/2024 

Abstract 

From its origins in postwar Europe, the Theater of the Absurd has been a movement directed towards the reappropriation of theater as a tool for political dissent. Plays like Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Ionesco’s Rhinoceros employ pointless musings, unconventional narrative structures, and equivocated language to express social stagnation. Their efforts, however, are primarily limited by their adherence to some of the more fundamental conventions of dramatic theater, particularly the fourth wall. I propose that Beckett and Ionesco's European brand of absurdism meets an important counterpart in Puerto Rican playwright Myrna Casas' Este país no existe, which playfully weaponizes dramatic conventions to explore and reframe the themes of stagnation so central to the movement and further its political means. 

Keywords: stagnation, absurdist theater, Myrna Casas, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco 

Resumen 

Desde sus orígenes en la Europa de la posguerra, el teatro de lo absurdo ha sido un movimiento dirigido a la reapropiación del teatro como una herramienta para la disidencia política. Obras como Esperando a Godot de Samuel Beckett y El Rinoceronte de Ionesco emplean conversaciones sin sentido, estructuras narrativas poco convencionales y lenguaje equívoco. No obstante, sus esfuerzos se ven limitados por su apego a algunas convenciones del teatro dramático, particularmente a la cuarta pared. Propongo que el tipo de absurdismo europeo que está presente en las obras de Ionesco y Beckett encuentra un importante contrapunto en la obra Este país no existe de la dramaturga puertorriqueña Myrna Casas, que emplea las convenciones dramáticas para explorar y replantear de manera lúdica los temas de estancamiento tan centrales al movimiento con fines políticos. 

Palabras clave: estancamiento, teatro absurdista, Myrna Casas, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco 

Theater as a political tool 

Absurdist theater rises in the wake of World War II to express the existential crisis of post-war Europe (Seal 1-2). Taking from Albert Camus’s concept of “the absurd” as an effort towards accomplishing nothing (22-23), absurdist plays rescind from the generic conventions of the dramas that precede them, leaving plot and linear narrative behind as a means of exploring the confusion, senselessness, and stagnation under political and social unrest (Mekhloufi 1-4). They also employ vacuous or equivocated linguistic resources to challenge language use as a manifestation of linear thinking and a way of dominating other peoples through definition processes (Afridi 58). These peculiar uses of language and narrative structure, along with the lack of progression, are what drove literary critic Martin Esslin to originally coin the term “Theater of the Absurd” (4). 

Plays like Eugene Ionensco’s Rhinoceros and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot weaponize not only their formal aspects and their effect of estrangement but also their use of language in an attempt to seize control of dramatic theater as a valuable means of ideological production. This strongly reflects Augusto Boal’s understanding of theater as a political tool. “[T]heatre is a weapon. A very efficient weapon. For this reason, one must fight for it. For this reason, the ruling classes strive to take permanent hold of the theatre and utilize it as a tool for domination” (xxiii). Of course, although Ionesco and Beckett's absurdist theater shares a level of emancipatory aspiration, it does not perfectly fit Boal's proposal of reappropriating theater. In fact, for Boal, the first and most important level of domination implicit in dramatic theater can be found in the relationship it establishes with its audience by dividing spectators and actors and, in this way, delineating who is allowed to direct the narrative, which is essential and significant within the story and relegating the audience to the role of a passive consumer (15). In other words, the playwrights of the Theater of the Absurd are so profoundly dedicated to the repurposing of genre conventions and the use of language within scripted performing arts that they fail to consider the divisions and hierarchies established by the very structure of dramatic theater.  

However, new forms of absurdist theater have risen outside the European context to explore the themes of stagnation and further challenge drama structures. Namely, the plays of Myrna Casas break and weaponize the fourth wall, dismantling, to an extent, the divisive barrier between actor and spectator, as can be seen in one of her most recognized plays Este país no existe. For this paper, I will analyze the cyclicality and lack of progression in Waiting for Godot, Rhinoceros, and Este país no existe through the Camusian concept of the absurd. Then, I will criticize the European absurdist approach towards reappropriating theater as a political tool in Beckett and Ionesco's plays mentioned above in comparison with Myrna Casas’s, while also analyzing the achievements of the movement in terms of how they employ theater as a political tool, how their experimentation on genre conventions and the use of language served such goals, and what this reveals about the degrees to which dominant ideology has permeated dramatic theater. 

I propose that Waiting for Godot and Rhinoceros, through their rejection of genre conventions and use of binary opposition, have managed to not only challenge social hierarchies and invite their audiences to political action but have also contributed to a language that oppressed peoples have used to communicate and frame their struggle. However, in failing to consider the more structural aspects of dramatic theater, they limit their own political themes and find in Este país no exist a pivotal decolonial counterpoint that problematizes and weaponizes the divisions between actor and spectator within dramatic theater. 

There are copious studies on the European Theater of the Absurd and its emergence as a response to World War II, and plenty of analyses on Waiting for Godot and Rhinoceros discuss much of their more explicit imagery, symbolism, and political themes. However, recent papers that study the effects of estrangement, genre conventions, or language use within these texts are certainly more challenging to find. One of the most compelling in recent years is Ali Afridi's "Waiting for Godot: Adieu to Language”, which studies Waiting for Godot through Lacanian psychoanalysis and Saussurean linguistics. This approach, however, does not explore the connection between the supposed absences observed in the use of language and how the play converses with genre conventions. Another psychoanalytic approach to Waiting for Godot can be found in “Existential Crisis and War Trauma: Psychoanalytical Reading of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot”, which treats the play as a manifestation of postwar trauma but lacks in formalist analysis. A more recent paper by Demir and Durgun, titled “Defamiliarization through modality of discourse: Waiting for Godot", adds a formalist perspective to the conversation surrounding the odd use of language in the play by treating it as an effect of estrangement that exists in tandem to its discursive characteristics. On the other hand, Samantha Piede’s thesis Showing, Telling, or Proselytizing the Absurd: Dramatic Conventions in the works of Albert Camus and Eugène Ionesco, incorporates Ionesco's plays about Camus's proposal of the absurd analyzing the rising conventions of the Theater of the Absurd that can be found in Rhinoceros and how these diverge from the dramatic conventions that precede them. However, these explorations of Waiting for Godot or Rhinoceros delve little into the ways in which these texts employ the observed deviations from linguistic and literary conventions to contribute to political discourse nor is there much of an attempt to analyze their limitations to do so. 

In regard to Myrna Casas, there is a decently large array of literature analyzing her trajectory in comparison to that of other playwrights of the Theater of the Absurd. Aguilú de Murphy’s "Hacia una teorización del absurdo en el teatro de Myrna Casas'' is an exemplary article that attempts to provide a brief overview of Casas’s work while evaluating recurring themes and motifs through a study on her play titled La trampa. The article focuses heavily on the relations and interactions between men and women characters, occasionally accentuating the use of ambiguous language providing insightful feminist readings of the text and of Casas' overall style. However, it does not expand much on how the representation of these characters interacts with the themes of stagnation, which is quintessential to absurdist theater, nor does it consider some of the Puerto Rican playwright's most acknowledged works. Scholarly literature geared specifically towards analyzing Este país no existe is far rarer, but by no means non-existent. Carlos M. Rivera's paper "¿Existe la nación puertorriqueña?: Este país no existe de Myrna Casas" is a deep analysis of the play as a deconstruction of totalizing neo-nationalist discourses in Puerto Rico, supplemented by some of Aguilú’s observations. The one limitation of this article is that it does not involve a comparative effort. It does not analyze Este país no existe in the broader context of the plays of Theater of the Absurd. To summarize, none of the studies found approach the texts within the same framework, and hence the application of Boal’s framework in combination with a formal analysis treads new ground for the study of the Theater of the Absurd. 

The aforementioned absurdist plays communicate common experiences among oppressed and disenfranchised peoples. Hence, this study aims to compare how Waiting for Godot, Rhinoceros, and Este país no existe communicate their police themes. The phrase “Waiting for Godot” itself has become a part of political and academic discourse, as can be seen in papers such as Fielder’s "Still waiting for Godot? Improving Household Consumption and Expenditures Surveys (HCES) to enable more evidence-based nutrition policies”, demonstrating that Beckett’s play in which “nothing happens twice” (Smith 2009) has been commonly used to communicate, discuss, and challenge frustrating social stagnation. Meanwhile, the entire play of Rhinoceros may be thought of as an exploration of individual turmoil as a response to totalitarianism and fascism, considering that its premise is based around the opposition of fascist ideology which spreads in the form of an illness that turns its victim into rhinoceros as the play ends with the main character, Berenger, yelling “I am not capitulating” (Ionesco 107), indirectly inviting the audience to participate along with him. 

Waiting for Godot and Rhinoceros are extremely political theatrical pieces that attempt, through the rejection of the genre conventions established by their predecessors, to express social unrest. Though necessarily incomplete in their reach, since they fail to see that the structure of dramatic theater itself upholds dominant hierarchies, they certainly form part of a commendable effort and an important part of the development of theater as a political tool to combat oppression. I present the absurdist theater of Myrna Casas as a sort of development of absurdist theory that conceptualizes the absurd as a social phenomenon rather than one intrinsic to daily human existence. 

Rolling the boulder: Cycles of stagnation and collective trauma 

After having defied the gods, a man is eternally condemned to push a rock atop a mountain, where the stone would roll back down by its own weight. This is the myth of Sisyphus, a human trapped in an infinite cycle of pointless work. French philosopher and playwright Albert Camus evokes this very image when first exploring the concept of the absurd. “Sisyphus is the absurd hero... His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing” (23). Hence, central to the concept of the absurd is this theme of stagnancy, of a lack of change or progression that permeates all aspects of human existence, our societies, systems, and institutions.  

Consequently, plays from the Theater of the Absurd draw heavily from Camusian philosophy, representing the torpidity of human endeavor not only in their content but also in their narrative structure. The works of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco extensively explore these themes of frustrating senselessness and stagnation through various resources and symbols, among them bizarre transformations, pointless musings, illogical dialogue, and a general state of confusion. As Martin Esslin notes when categorizing their plays, “The Theater of the Absurd shows the world as an incomprehensible place. The spectators see the happenings on the stage…without ever understanding the full meaning of these strange patterns of events” (5). In this way, the playwrights invite the audience into an absurd endeavor, just as the characters of the plays are involved in inescapable futile struggles; futile is the spectator's effort to make sense of the occurrences onstage. Furthermore, the plays of Beckett and Ionesco completely discard the notions of plot and linear progression, leaving behind the narrative structure of the dramas that precede it. However, these innovations did not happen in a vacuum; scholars like Rania Mekhloufi (7-10) and Martin Esslin (13) himself contextualize the Theater of the Absurd between the 1950s and early 1960s at the end of Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, a period filled with uncertainty, loss of faith in the ideals of capitalist progress, nationalism and social institutions and plagued by the inevitable pondering of a second war of such magnitude. In reaction to this political strife, the plays of Beckett and Ionesco communicate the feeling of stagnation, of being trapped in perpetual cycles of violence. 

The stagnation theme is perhaps most notable in Beckett’s most famous play, Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. In it, two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, sit on a low mound, patiently waiting for the titular Godot. However, they do not know him, nor do they know who he is, what he looks like, what he does, or even why they are waiting for him. Their relationship is also dubious; we are afforded very little information about the main characters besides their being vagrants and being familiar enough to refer to one another by the nicknames "Didi" and "Gogo". In the very first line, it is Estragon who announces the absurdist stagnation proper to the Theater of the Absurd, saying, "Nothing to be done" (1). And indeed, there is a reason Waiting for Godot has been labeled as a play in which “nothing happens twice” (Smith). Its title is very literal, as for the most part Vladimir and Estragon sit in wait and engage in pointless, wayward conversation. 

However, the lack of plot and progression are not the only ways in which stagnation is present in Waiting for Godot. Throughout the play, several characters make their way by the mound. During the first act, a man named Pozzo enters while leading his slave Lucky by a leash. He orders Lucky to entertain Vladimir and Estragon, and then the slave and slave owner leave the stage. Afterward, a boy enters, announcing Godot will not arrive that day, ending the first act. These characters all return in the second act; this time, Pozzo is blinded and guided by Lucky, and the boy returns with his disappointing news: Godot will never appear before our characters, nor will there be any conclusive statement as to his whereabouts or identity. This cyclical aspect of the play is another manifestation of the absurd, though small—but not insignificant—changes occur. 

The second act replicates the first character dynamics, reinforcing the fact that nothing has really been achieved, save for Pozzo and Lucky's exchange of positions of power. Nevertheless, the structure behind their interactions remains the same. Even Vladimir and Estragon, upon realizing for the second time that Godot will not arrive, agree on leaving and yet they do not move, as is clearly stated in the final lines of the play:  

ESTRAGON: 

Well, shall we go? 

VLADIMIR: 

Yes, let’s go. 

They do not move (49) 

The characters are trapped. Their existence, ramblings, and patient waiting, much like Sisyphus's rolling of the boulder, are profoundly fruitless and evoke the powerlessness of the common folk in wartime and the frustration that emanates from the repetition of an atrocity on such a scale as the First World War. 

In contrast, Ionesco’s Rhinoceros involves the theme of stagnation in much less direct ways. It also lacks a conventional narrative structure, where the play is far more a series of happenings that interrupt one another than a coherent linear narrative. Events still take place, and changes can be observed between acts. Rhinoceros is more interested in exploring the lack of change on a more individualized scope. The play mostly follows the main character, Berenger, an alcoholic office worker, as all the people in his town slowly fall ill and turn into rhinoceros. This rhinoceros epidemic has long been read as a symbolic representation of the spread of fascist ideals throughout Europe (Piede 6-7). The play makes many significant allusions to Nazi ideology. During moments of transformation, several characters explicitly bring up the theme of race. Berenger’s opposite, the jovial and gentlemanly Jean, makes explicit (and let it not go without saying, horrible) racist remarks about Asian people shortly before transforming: “They’re yellow. Yellow! Completely yellow!” (40). Another example, when undergoing transformation, the character Dudard says, "I believe in one universal family" (128), a reference to the beliefs of racial superiority propagated by the Nazi party. By the end, the media has also been transformed into rhinoceros and service officials have become a sort of organized militia, further accentuating the similarities with the spread of fascist ideology. Berenger is the only one to remain human, to remain unchanged, and yet there is a level of conflictive significance behind this. It is stated as a possibility that Berenger’s alcoholism is part of what keeps him from becoming a rhinoceros, as he says: “Alcohol’s good for epidemics” (107). In a way, being unable to leave his vicious cycles behind is part of why he cannot become something worse. His apathy to the world renders him immune to becoming a rhinoceros, regardless of how much he wants to at the very end. Berenger says, "I'll never turn into a rhinoceros—never—never. I just can’t change. I want to—I so much want to—but I can’t” (147). Hence Rhinoceros’ approach towards stagnation is not only more individual, but also profoundly paradoxical. Berenger’s incapacity to change for either good or bad keeps him from becoming a part of the infected and forces him against the rhinoceros. 

The so-called European “anti-plays” (Esslin 3) by Beckett and Ionesco clearly explore the themes of stagnation towards social and political means. However, the Theater of the Absurd has expanded far beyond the borders of Europe and found fertile ground in the colonial and neocolonial contexts of Latin America and, more specifically, the Caribbean. Among those who explored this particular brand of theater, the works of Puerto Rican playwright Myrna Casas stand out as an important development of the Theater of the Absurd, both in terms of content and form. 

As a reaction to the exploitation from the United States towards Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican theater has long been obsessed with the theme of stagnation. The plays of Jesus Amadeo, Luis Rafael Sánchez and René Marqués, among many others explore in their own way themes of stagnation in relation to colonialism, national identity, class and race (Ambroggio 738-741). Utilizing tools from the Theater of the Absurd, Myrna Casas explores Puerto Rican national identity within the neocolonial context of the archipelago in Este país no existe (Rivera 9). This text responds to both the colonial subjugation of the archipelago and the previous generation of playwrights that sought to consolidate a monolithic Puerto Rican identity in the face of U.S. cultural influence (Ambroggio 739-740). 

The short play consists of two acts that follow a group of amateur actors as they rehearse a play that the town mayor has asked Don Crisol to direct as a favor. Much like Waiting for Godot, Este país no existe establishes the theme of stagnation with its very first line: “¡Desaparecerán todos los árboles y quedaremos rodeados e immersos en cemento!” (229). This line alludes to the frustrating absurdity of attempting to define a consolidated national identity within a neocolonial context. Throughout the play, Don Crisol attempts, on several occasions, to impose certain totalizing narratives of Puerto Rican national identity, only to be corrected and opposed by the actors: 

ROSA LUNA: Los antepasados de la Confraternidad no eran indios, eran africanos. 

DON CRISOL: Yo tengo derecho a una licencia poética…” (Casas 260).

The group commonly pauses to talk about events of their daily lives, and it is forced to take breaks between sessions of practice and continue the following days, discovering multiple historical errors along the way. During the final scene, the actors attempt to rewrite the play with some historical inaccuracies and omissions of their own: 

JUAN: Pero, ¿no menciona usted en el Primer Acto unos antepasados esclavizados? 

ESTHER: Eso lo cambiamos, ¿quién se acuerda de esa gente?” (Casas 280). 

In the end, no new play is written, and no compromise is achieved between the actors or the director, as no totalizing discourse can properly characterize the archipelago's complex history. In a way, like the title says, the Puerto Rican Nation does not exist, at least, not as long as it is conceptualized this way (Rivera 20-21), because attempting to define the Puerto Rican national identity through totalizing discourse is pointless, it is nothing if not an absurd endeavor. The characters leave the stage agreeing that the play is not to be shown; they say goodbye to the audience and exit as the curtain drops. The stagnation is tied to the structure of the dramatic, to the written world they had been placed in, and in leaving that structure, they have shown it to be artificial and unnecessary. 

Within and without structure: The linguistic, narrative and spatial frontiers of absurdist theater  

As I have previously established, the plays mentioned above from the Theater of the Absurd all transcend the traditional narrative structure as part of their effect of estrangement; they are plays that lack plot and/or linear progression and are based entirely on a lack of knowledge of the characters or of where the action takes place. However, narrative structure is one of several barriers to be transcended in the process of reappropriating theater as a political tool. A second, also famous characteristic of the Theater of the Absurd is transcending the logic of language. Finally, the most relevant for the purposes of this paper is what I will call a "spatial frontier", the invisible conceptual wall that divides spectator from actor, stage from stalls and keeps the audience from being able to participate directly in the action. For theorist Augusto Boal, this is an essential barrier to transcend in the work of reappropriating theater and liberating the art from the clutches of the dramatic structure that serves the ideals of the dominant class. To attempt to dissolve or tear down this wall is to challenge dominant ideals around whose stories are relevant and who is allowed to direct narrative (13-19). 

In this category, the plays of Ionesco and Beckett meet their limitations regarding their political aims. Waiting for Godot and Rhinoceros both maintain many aspects of the dominant structure of dramatic theater, even preserving the fourth wall. This creates an interesting, but jarring effect, it makes their characters appear even more fatally trapped. Vladimir, Estragon, nor Berenger have a way out of their stasis. Like Sisyphus, they are eternally condemned as if by divine ordinance to live out their state of endless cyclical violence. They are incapable of changing themselves or the world around them and so the texts do little to imagine a possible way out for these characters. Their strife and stagnation may be communicated, but they are trapped within the confines of the dramatic, ruled by script, and surrounded by conceptual walls, which almost makes their suffering seem less like a product of the social and political struggle and more of a fact of human life itself. 

Reframing stagnation and renegotiating the absurd: Myrna Casas and the advent of Puerto Rican absurdism 

Within Boal’s framework, the Puerto Rican Theater of the Absurd may also not quite fit the mold for emancipatory theater, and yet the works of Myrna Casas find important points of hybridization and political contention precisely by incorporating some aspects of dramatic theater and playing with the limitations that would otherwise hinder the political implications of the text. Some of Casas’s staples are essential to this analysis, these being her use of metatextuality and her breaking of the fourth wall. These cause the characters in Casas’s plays to exist on multiple levels of diegesis, which allows them to travel between different theatrical structures. In Este país no existe, the characters are actors rehearsing for a play within the play. They are not just characters in Este país no existe, but also in the play rehearsed as part of the story, the actor-characters change from playing or not their characters within the play, but just as the actor-characters are allowed to enter the world of the play within the play, they are also allowed to exit the structure of the play they belong to, breaking the fourth wall. There is a single instance that can be seen in the very last lines of Este país no existe when the character of Juan is last onstage, and he tells the audience goodnight.

“(Juan mira al público, se encoge de hombros y sonríe.) 

¡Buenas noches!” (297) 

This combination of metatextuality and fourth wall breaking affords the characters an escape from the absurd limitations that surround dramatic theater, communicating that there is an end to the cycle of absurdity. As Boal posits, their freedom is found in crossing the spatial frontier. They are no longer bound by the stage that confines them and are instead allowed to leave and find new meaning beyond the page. They can leave the structure of theater itself, the conventions that might initially seem to hold them hostage. The absurdity is not a natural aspect of their lives but rather a product of the structures, systems, and institutions they and we live under, making it possible to escape this cycle. 

Conclusion 

Waiting for Godot and Rhinoceros are extremely political theatrical pieces that attempt to express social unrest through the rejection of the genre conventions established by their predecessors. As part of this exercise, they stray away from the dominant narrative structure and use language to seize theater as a means of ideological production. However, they are incomplete in their scope as they fail to see that the structure of dramatic theater itself upholds dominant hierarchies. The Puerto Rican answer to the European Theater of the Absurd, Myrna Casas, employs in Este país no existe a complex mixture of metatextuality and the breaking of the fourth wall to transcend the limitations of its predecessors, achieving a new level of hybridization between dramatic and non-dramatic theater that makes space for disenfranchised peoples to imagine possible ways of breaking the cycles of the absurd. Although these do not quite fit Boal's definition of emancipatory theater, they certainly tread important ground and make a commendable effort and an important object of study to understand and observe the many levels on which one must fight to reclaim the genre of theater. 

References

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Demir, Mahmut Y., and H. Sezgi Saraç Durgun. "Defamiliarization Through Modality of Discourse: Waiting for Godot." Philologica Canariensia, vol. 28, 2022, pp. 23–36.  doi.org/10.20420/Phil.Can.2022.465.

Esslin, Martin. "The Theatre of the Absurd." The Tulane Drama Review, vol. 4, no. 4, 1960, pp. 3–15.

Ionesco, Eugène. Rhinoceros. Translated by Martin Crimp. Faber and Faber. 2007.https://archive.org/details/rhinoceros0000ione_d4y1/page/42/mode/2up

Mekhloufi, Rania. Existential Crisis and War Trauma: Psychoanalytical Reading of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. 2020. University of Biskra, MA thesis.  University of Biskra Repository.

Piede, Samantha. Showing, Telling, or Proselytizing the Absurd: Dramatic Conventions in the Works of Albert Camus and Eugène Ionesco. 2018. Millersville University of Pennsylvania, MA thesis. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31982624.

Rivera, Carlos M. "¿Existe la nación puertorriqueña?: Este país no existe de Myrna Casas." Latin American Theatre Review, vol. 40, no. 2, 2007, pp. 9–22.

Seal, Abhijit. "War Trauma and Absurdity of Existence in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot." Sahityasetu, vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 1-9.  http://www.sahityasetu.co.in/issue60/abhijit.html.

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Posted on May 30, 2024 by CRiiAS.