IONESCIAN AND BECKETTIAN MASKS AND STAGE PROPS
IONESCIAN AND BECKETTIAN MASKS AND STAGE PROPS

Summary/Abstract: In modern theatre shows, the masks were used to create typologies, to dis-individualize characters, to emphasize the ceremonial character of staging. The mask reveals the ritual roots of the genre, infusing the dramatic experience with more detachment, releasing it from the style and dynamics of realistic drama. The antiheroes / anti-heroines in the Absurd Drama appear as grotesque automata, drained of any human substance, like masks and puppets easy to handle. The playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd do not necessarily use the mask as disguise. The human figure becomes materialized in true masks. Stage props can have a plurality of meanings. Ionesco’s stage props can be understood as an attribute of the character, a distinguishing feature, that characterizes the antihero / anti-heroine, acquiring symbolic value. Beckett brings on the stage objects that overpower the spirit as the body separates from it. But the object can be bearer of humorous messages, tending to balance the feeling of despair or finitude. The absurd drama plays, the Ionescian or Beckettian ones cannot be reduced to the interpretations offered to traditional plays that have a conflict which can be summarized in narrative form. The essential feature of the plays indebted to the Theatre of the Absurd is precisely that they motivate us to find multiple reading versions.

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