Theatre of the absurd: East and west

This study deals with the Theatre of the Absurd, not only the altercation of Western playwrights but also the concealed impact of Rajeshwar Prasad in India. However, the preoccupation of Western Absurdists with the universal existential situation was not quite so. He was sometimes different to all of the West by going deep into the socio-political dimensions of Jazz and his adaptations to the post-independent culture in India. Moreover, he spoke about the ways modernisation has become corrosive, how the influence of negative social elements is prevailing, and the traditional virtues of the people. Furthermore, he allowed the folk theatre and religious rituals to adopt new syntheses through which to give the old ones new life. What he actually did was invert the traditional correlation of values that deteriorated not belongingness, but communication, and the illogicality of power relations in a given time. The people, suffering with the loss of a feeling of their own essence, impersonating and at the same time trying to find the meaning of life, are to be viewed not only as portraits of the human condition but also as metaphors for the quest for identity. These characters are intermediaries between existential anguish and the question of the agents, a question that they ask through Eastern spiritual insight. While not going far from the Absurdism that the developed cultures had promoted and that, in reality, created the human being, Prasad was able to bring a new form of artistic expression and storytelling with the use of indigenous techniques. He thereby succeeded in laying bare the very essence of human endeavour utterly.