The 'absurd' is a
term derived from the existentialism of Albert Camus which stands for the
modern sense of human purposelessness in a universe without meaning or value. The critic Martin Esslin coined the phrase theatre
of the absurd in 1961 to refer to a number of dramatists of the 1950s (led
by Samuel Beckett and Eugene lonesco) whose works evoke the absurd by
abandoning logical form, character, and dialogue together with realistic
illusion.