Modern Interpretations of Being and Existence in the Absurd Works of Basa Janikashvili and Zurab Getsadze

The so-called “Theatre of the Absurd” has become active in Georgia since the 90’s of the XX century. Playwrights of the new generation try to keep step with the world art processes. Among them is Basa Janikashvili, a very productive playwright, many of whose plays have been performed on Georgian or foreign stages. Her plays have received awards here, as well as abroad. The playwright wrote “Before our acquaintance” with the techniques of Theatre of the Absurd.
The play is of intimate character - two lonely people, alienated from each other, decide to restore the lost unity, to become “one soul and one flesh” again. To renew their feelings, they hire a hotel room and start to play. The conditions of the game are as follows: a casually acquainted woman and man liked each other and they go to the hotel. Basa Janikashvili built the play by development of minimal actions and dialogues characteristic to absurd dramaturgy. The same story is repeated several times in different versions. The purpose of an alienated couple is to get to know each other again, to discover each other again. All kinds of options of marriage, or relationships of a man and a woman living together, are played out in their “fantasies”.
According to Zurab Getsadze’s conception, 22 spectators become participators of tragiomic coexistence of two lonely, alienated woman and man in room #2208 of “Ambassador-Tbilisi”. The story developed in one night covers the whole life of these two people. Conditional character characteristic for theatrical art has become even more significant for the theater of the absurd. Conditional character, conditional playing method is embedded in this very realistic, moreover, naturalistic plot from the very beginning. By this method of play, the absurdist playwrights build not only the structure of the play, but also offer the spectators to involve in the play. And in this case, the director and the actors (Nino Burduli, Goga Pipinashvili), combined a realistic, sensitive, transformation and alienation stylistics in the play built up on absurd stylistics.
Zurab Getsadze used video clips on a TV screen during the transition from episode to episode. These video insertions: TV ads, excerpts from news programs, etc., at one glance, as if fill the pauses... The director made a conceptually different finale of the performance. In the absurd theater, in drama, nothing ever ends. After a point in a play or a performance, everything starts over again ... The same is the end of Basa Janikashvili’s play. But Zurab Getsadze made the finale of performance like this: The spectators see on the TV screen that the characters are killing the author ... The director, as if intensified the irony of the “absurd-realistic” story conveyed in action.