Absurdism is an idea commonly associated with existentialism. Beginning in the 19th century, mainly through the influence of Soren Kierkegaard, religion was often described as absurd because it could not be justified on rational principles; rather, it was considered as based on what Kierkegaard called "a leap of faith." In their discussions of consciousness, Martin Heidegger and Jean Paul Sartre described the human consciousness as facing an apparently absurd world-absurd because it finds itself at the crossroads of Being and Nothingness, baffled by the meaninglessness of the human condition.

Theatre of the absurd came about as a reaction to World War II. The world was a heap of broken images as Eliot put it in his poem �The Wasteland�. The situation could best be described by a Sylvia Plath poem where one could make a lampshade out of human skin. Theatre of the absurd was a term that was first derived from the essay � Myth Of Sisyphus�, written in 1942 by the French Philosopher Albert Camus where he first defined the human situation as basically meaningless and absurd. And it was Martin Esslin who coined this phrase for dramatists like Beckett, Pinter, and Ionesco who confront a world where there is no communication and man flounders in a void, cut off from all roots and shorn off all certainties.

Theatre of the absurd was strongly influenced by the traumatic experience of the horrors of the second world war which showed the total impermanence of any values, shook the validity of any conventions and highlighted the precariousness of human life and its fundamental meaninglessness and arbitrariness. Fascist regime also led to the feeling of the absurd. Absurd plays aimed to startle viewers, shaking them out of an existence that had become trite, mechanical, and complacent. The theatre of the absurd openly rebelled against conventional theatre. Indeed, it was anti-theatre. It was surreal, illogical, conflict less and plot less.

The work of playwright Alfred Jarry acted as a signpost, guiding theatre towards absurdism. The combination of Jarry�s work, the Dadaists, Writers like Bertold Bretch, and Surrealists painters like Salvador Dali, when joined with existentialists theories of Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus gave birth to a style of theatre that portrayed what Eugene Ionesco called � man as lost in the world, all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless�.

One of the most important aspects of absurd drama was its distrust of language as a means of communication. Words failed to express the essence of human experience not being able to penetrate beyond its surface. Theatre Of the absurd tries to make people aware of the possibility of going beyond every day speech, conventions to communicate more authentically. Theatre of the absurd highlighted man�s fundamental bewilderment and confusion stemming from the fact that man had no answers to the basic existential questions such as: why are we alive, why we have to die, why there is injustice and suffering?

Absurd dramatists try to present in their plays the idea of irrational human condition through the illogical combination of dramatic elements. In Esslin�s words, these absurdist playwrights hold in common a sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition�. They believe that a chaotic universe of shattered beliefs surrounds man. The Theatre of the Absurd is typified by apparently meaningless plots, repetitive dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs, which together often create a dream-like mood.

Among the major playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd are Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Adamov and Harold Pinter.