How do you direct something with no plot, nonsense dialogue and uninformative characters? A daunting task, but a potentially exciting one. Absurd Plays offer no easy guide map as to how they should be directed. Here are a few things to think about as you prepare:

1.  What main image does the play represent to you?

Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros shows a time and place where all citizens turn into rhinoceros around the main character. Can he resist the compulsion to conform? When Ionesco wrote the play one of the things he was concerned about was the number of people around him who were converting to Fascism. On the other hand, it has also been suggested that the image deals with the main character resisting the conformity of old age.

It's important to direct with an image in mind. A visual picture of what the play represents to you. When there isn't a story to tell, there must be something on which everyone (cast and audience) can focus upon. Create a list of pictures and images. How can you create these pictures on stage?

2.  Resist the temptation to pile on a meaning to the play because it's not immediately available in the text.

Samuel Beckett was, and his estate is, fanatical about bizarre productions of Waiting For Godot. Many directors have, because the play is so sparse in its action, tried to force a meaning on it by putting the play in a funky location or by changing the gender of the characters and so on. It's harder to find the meaning of these plays because the characters don't tell you right out.  It's easy to want to put a  fancy outer shell on the play. Focus on the images that are found in the play, do not create them externally. 

You also want to resist the urge to have actors mug to the audience. It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to pull the audience into the experience with a look of "Can you believe what I'm saying?" That creates a false connection between audience and text.

Absurd plays require a lot more work from the actors, the director and the audience. Just because meaning isn't on the surface doesn't mean it's not there. For example, on the surface it seems there is little meaning to Waiting For Godot because nothing apparent happens. But how many people live lives where "nothing" happens? How many people live their lives and do their jobs in a endless state of repetition? It's a pretty common phenomenon. How does that reflect the action of the play?  All of a sudden the play has a grounding....

3. Communicate with your actors.

Don't let them flounder about on their own with this. Ensure that everyone is on the same page with the image you have in your mind for the play. Decide as a group on the backgrounds for the characters, decide on what is going on in the relationships: just because the information isn't in the text doesn't mean the actors should forget this part of the process. In The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco characters descend into complete gibberish. If the actors let the words just blather out of their mouths without a sense of background it will be meaningless. And everything has meaning in an Absurd play (even if it is that life has no meaning!)

As stated above, these plays include an extra layer of work. It's not just a little blocking and a little character development. But with that work comes the potential of giving an audience an experience they will never forget.