About the Show:

Once you see this show, you might ask yourself: “What the heck did I just see?” And that kind of reaction would be perfectly understandable. I think the students in our group reacted exactly the same way when we first all read the script together. They don’t call this style of show ‘theater of the absurd’ for nothing! We took some time to process and prepare before we even started to plan and rehearse the actual scenes, and so it makes sense to give you, the audience, some of the same background information we studied. This type of show is made that much better if you know a little bit about what it’s all about.

Theater of the Absurd is a theater movement that gained popularity in the mid-19th century. It grew out of a specific philosophy and genre of literature called existentialism.

The existentialist believed that the only thing we have as human beings is the here and now, just our current existence. Nothing comes before and nothing comes after. They also believed that life has no real meaning, but that as human beings we are drawn to try to find or impose meaning on that which is meaningless…and that this very human tendency to try to force life to have meaning results in two basic emotions: anxiety and nausea. Many people (especially religious people) found this philosophy very disturbing because they reasoned that without religion or the threat of an afterlife (hell), what’s to stop people from doing anything they wanted? And the very foundation of most religious ideology is to put meaning to life. But the existentialists felt that their philosophy freed them up to make the most of life (since that is really all we have) and to form your own, individual purpose and meaning.

Out of this philosophy was born the Theater of the Absurd. The absurdist playwrights (Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter) created plays like no one had ever seen before. The characters often spoke in nonsense dialogue. There often didn’t seem to be any real plot or forward motion to the story. Many times the characters end the play exactly as they began as if in some kind of endless cycle. Where most plays before emphasized theme and meaning, the central theme of these absurdist plays seemed to be that there is no meaning, and that as human beings we all seem to spend our time in pointless endeavors, floundering around like clowns or puppets.

While these plays can often be very bleak and seemingly hopeless, they are often told with great humor and can be quite fun to watch (in a dark, disturbing sort of way).

We hope that this play makes you think, and makes you question, and leaves you with something to talk about after!

Here are some links for further study:

Existentialism

Theatre of the Absurd

Absurdist Playwrights

Theatre of the Absurd: 6 Absurdist Plays

CAST

Black Monk, Sixth Doctor
Aaron Jeronimo

First Housewife, City Mother
Sierra-Leone Chhoeun Mcclenningham Greene

Second Housewife, First Servant
Ava Atton

Third Housewife, Third Doctor
Gabriella Burke

Fourth Housewife, Servant Girl
Tayja Laramee

Fifth Housewife, Jeanne
Khianna Jolibois

Sixth Housewife, Lucienne
Hadassah Brown

Seventh Housewife, Pierre
Ry Thompson

Eighth Housewife, First Doctor
Kara Nguyen

Servant Girl, Second Doctor
Alany Perez

First Man, Sixth Man, Jean
Erick Argueta

Second Man, Seventh Man, Fourth Doctor
Kayden Everett-Greene

Third Man, Eighth Man, Fifth Doctor Kennedy
Garcia Gomez

Fourth Man, Second Servant, Middle Class Man
Adam Tejada

Fifth Man, Master, Public Official
Carlos Mejia

TECH CREW

Stage Manager
Janice Cabral

Lighting Design
Adam Tejada

Light Board Operator
Luke Panameno

Sound Design
|Yashi Escribano
Eva Tejada

Sound Board Operator
Yashi Escribano

Costumes
Hadassah Brown
Evan Rodriguez

SET CREW

Isaiah Goorahlal
Keyla Lopez
Emmanuel Owens
Luke Panameno
Aiden Ramos
Evan Rodriguez
Eva Tejada