{"id":26483,"date":"2025-02-11T13:38:36","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T21:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/?p=26483"},"modified":"2025-02-11T13:38:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T21:38:36","slug":"the-killing-game-tragedy-encased-in-absurdist-hilarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2025\/02\/11\/the-killing-game-tragedy-encased-in-absurdist-hilarity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Killing Game<\/em> tragedy encased in absurdist hilarity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Absurdism is a philosophical movement arguing that the universe is illogical and meaningless, and absurdist theatre, such as Eugene Ionesco\u2019s The Killing Game<\/i>, highlights this through a study of ridiculous human nature in response to extreme tragedy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although written in 1970, The Killing Game<\/i>, being presented through UVic\u2019s Phoenix Theatre, will feel familiar to modern audiences as it revolves around an outbreak of a deadly epidemic that mows through a French city, cutting its citizens down like wheat before a scythe. Scores of theories arise about the origin of the disease, whether it be a natural disaster or a \u201cplanned accident,\u201d a conspiratorial plot.<\/p>\n

The play is directed by UVic theatre professor Conrad Alexandrowicz, who believes that the real arrowhead of the work is lodged in a biting critique of human judgment within overwhelming situations.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Killing Game<\/em> uses absurdist comedy to address serious issues (photo by Dean Kalyan).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOver the course of working on this piece, I realized that it could be about a different kind of crisis,\u201d says Alexandrowicz. \u201cIt\u2019s not really about a deadly epidemic, it\u2019s a satire on people\u2019s folly, bad behaviour, criminality. It could be something else that [Ionesco] had chosen to reveal all these things. It presents a very dim view of humanity, indeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The real-life roots of absurdism have a much darker history, emerging in the wake of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Senseless horrors such as this are so incomprehensible it creates a void of trauma within a culture, and absurdist comedy is a way of resolving the unresolvable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Holocaust was kind of the ultimate absurdity because it was kind of like a factory, an industrial operation that produced a negation,\u201d says Alexandrowicz. \u201cIt didn\u2019t produce goods, it produced this vast emptiness, where millions of people have been killed for no reason, except they were of a particular ethnicity, race, political opinion, or religious belief.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crux of comedy in absurdist theatre is that some tragedies are so beyond our comprehension that the result of our inability to process it is uncontrollable, inappropriate laughter, says Alexandrowicz, and this phenomenon is underscored in the satire of The Killing Game<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe absurdists were very much about the way the comic and the tragic are intertwined, it\u2019s not an either\/or proposition. We laugh at things that are horrible sometimes, and I\u2019ve really tried to go as far as I could with that idea,\u201d he says. \u201cOf course we laugh at all this ridiculous activity and nonsense and insane beliefs that people hold. It makes people dropping dead mostly hilarious, and I\u2019m really pushing the comedic aspect of this because I think that\u2019s what [Ionesco] intends us to experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theatre-goers who are expecting a traditional story should look elsewhere, says Alexandrowicz, because The Killing Game<\/i> features a non-linear narration with little consistency or coherence, and this ridiculous, unpredictable chaos is iconic of absurdism as a philosophy. However, this doesn\u2019t mean that the production will be unenjoyable, says Alexandrowicz; indeed, quite the opposite, as a tremendous amount of fun can be found in satirizing the ridiculous ways that humans fail to cope with unimaginable trauma.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all having a rollicking great time doing it, and there\u2019s tons of laughter going on,\u201d he says, \u201cso I think it will actually be a really great night out at the theatre for people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Killing Game
\n<\/i>Various times,
\nThursday, February 13 to Saturday, February 22
\nVarious prices, Phoenix Theatre
\nphoenixtheatres.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Absurdism is a philosophical movement arguing that the universe is illogical and meaningless, and absurdist theatre, such as Eugene Ionesco\u2019s The Killing Game, highlights this through a study of ridiculous human nature in response to extreme tragedy.\u00a0 Although written in 1970, The Killing Game, being presented through UVic\u2019s Phoenix Theatre, will feel familiar to modern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26485,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26483\/revisions\/26485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}