Structural Decay: Absurdism at the Edinburgh Festivals

The atmosphere of the Fringe allows for risk, although the losses incurred in the finance department for most – if not all – companies involved seems to work against this. Venues and curators tend to work around this by programming new, quirkier work alongside conventional theatre. 

Among the various genres of theatre, absurdist theatre seems to be the hardest to review, since it tends to come down to a matter of individual interpretation. The structures and symbolisms of conventional theatre fall apart very quickly, whether that means there is no clear narrative or the narrative that is provided doesn’t make sense in relation to the ‘logical’ world we inhabit outside the theatre. Playwrights like Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco fall into this extremely broad category, as do performance companies like Clout Theatre, or, more famously, Monty Python.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of turning an everyday situation on its head, as demonstrated by the Berserker Residents’ The Post Show. The show itself begins at the end of the Prodigal Fathers, and launches straight into a post-show discussion about the play the audience have never seen. Part-improv and part scripted, the performers allow for audience interaction, but in turn sacrifice the overall control they have over the material and the end result. The reversal of what would otherwise be a linear story slips into the absurd and surreal.

On the other hand, Klip by Denmark-based Livingstones Kabinet leaves nothing to chance. Inspired by Kurt Schwitters' take on collage and the Dadaist movement, the award-winning production has been described as a 'theatrical collage experiment,' allowing Livingstones Kabinet to explore form and structure deconstruction. The intense precision in the direction and choreography required to put Klip’s fragments together isn’t something most people would associate with absurdism. The idea that absurdism consists of a series of thoughtless actions could be considered a terrible stereotype in relation to the careful construction of Klip. 

“It was extremely hard to make it hang together,” admits Nina Kareis, director of the piece. “I had to be very tight in the direction, so that it’s staged very tightly – so it doesn’t become boring.”

The open interpretation of the seemingly random actions allows the audience to construct their own meaning, which may be more terrifying, moving or funny than the company intend.

“The other impulse for the show was to make something about fragmentation and things falling apart,” adds Pete Livingstone. “Both culturally, and in the way that information is presented to us today. And collage is the obvious way to work with that, but we wanted to take it structurally a bit further.”

Absurdist performance isn’t limited to theatre, but also crosses over into dance, as showcased quite expertly by Karl Jay-Lewin & Matteo Fargion in Extremely Bad Dancing to Extremely French Music. The absurd seems to return to haunt Dance Base's programming quite often; this is obvious both this year, and comes across through last year's XD (Colletivo Cinetico). Also, it was indulged in the 2013 Edinburgh International Festival with Metamorphosis, based on Franz Kafka's homonymous tale about a man who awakes one morning, finding himself transformed into an insect.

It's easy to overlook and dismiss absurdist-based theatre because it can be extremely comical and nonsensical, but also often can be misinterpreted as utterly pointless. Usually, the first question that springs to mind is 'What did that mean?' In this case, the meaning comes from the audience, and their background and experiences. All the performances tend to do is provide an unusual (and sometimes unorthodox!) method of unlocking it.