[The essay from which the following excerpt is taken originally appeared in Educational Theatre Journal, October 1961.]

One of the most frequently noted aspects of the contemporary theatrical scene is the triumphant arrival of unintelligibility as a major feature of many highly regarded plays. Ionesco, in his Bald Soprano, indicates both by the irrelevancy of his play's title and by the repetitive no-sense of his dialogue that though his play may have meaning he is dedicated to the belief that that meaning shall not be achieved by intelligible devices. His meaning exists beneath the action and the dialogue and he faithfully, and successfully, shatters the normal, intelligible form of both so that the spectator is refused the possibility of deriving meaning by a rational or intelligible process. (p. 160)

The effect of such theatrical efforts was for some time, however, extremely tangential to the main line of theatre art and...