Tuesday 12/6/16 Agenda

Pre AP Lit Term List

15 minute Pre AP Terms "Learn" session with flashcards-everyone needs to be on an electronic device! 

You are responsible for reading the play Waiting for Godot over the Winter Break.  Please read this introduction aloud to your elbow partner now and make a prediction about what you think the play will be about.  Do you think you will like this type of "theater of the absurd?" Why or why not?

Though difficult and sometimes baffling to read or (even) view, Waiting for Godot is nonetheless one of the most important works of our time. It revolutionized theater in the twentieth century and had a profound influence on generations of succeeding dramatists, including such renowned contemporary playwrights as Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. After the appearance of Waiting for Godot, theater was opened to possibilities that playwrights and audiences had never before imagined.

Initially written in French in 1948 as En Attendant Godot, Beckett's play was published in French in October of 1952 before its first stage production in Paris in January of 1953. Later translated into English by Beckett himself as Waiting for Godot, the play was produced in London in 1955 and in the United States in 1956 and has been produced worldwide. Beckett's play came to be considered an essential example of what Martin Esslin later called "Theater of the Absurd," a term that Beckett disavowed but which remains a handy description for one of the most important theater movements of the twentieth century.

"Absurdist Theater" discards traditional plot, characters, and action to assault its audience with a disorienting experience. Characters often engage in seemingly meaningless dialogue or activities, and, as a result, the audience senses what it is like to live in a universe that doesn't "make sense." Beckett and others who adopted this style felt that this disoriented feeling was a more honest response to the post World War n world than the traditional belief in a rationally ordered universe. Waiting for Godot remains the most famous example of this form of drama.

Video Examples of Theater of the Absurd

HW=
1. Read your LC Text
2. Read Waiting for Godot, take notes and write a two paragraph summary due when you return from Winter Break.