Martin Esslin, a theatre critic, coined the phrase "Theatre of the Absurd" to address a groups of plays written mostly in the 1950s and 1960s. The name comes from an essay written by Albert Camus entitled "Myth of Sisyphus" in which the author outlines the human situation as pointless and futile.
Theatre of the Absurd was an attempt to address the social issues of the time. At a time when middle class life was becoming stagnant, when McDonaldization was taking its hold, a few playwrights at tempted to focus on the meaning of life: absurdity. Their work focuses primarily on a mistrust of language as a means to convey the human situation. The scripts are not necessarily an attempt to convey verbal truth so much as a feel of something in the play as a whole. Any means necessary to break the boundaries of modern mediocrity were taken.
The major proponents of Theatre of the Absurd include: