Modern drama features themes of realism, absurdism, and naturalism rather than supernatural elements and fate. Some key characteristics include: naturalism as shown through Ibsen's A Doll's House depicting the domination of women; absurdism through Synge's Playboy of the Western World where people accept absurd things; and realism in Albee's The Zoo Story about how civilization makes people introverted. Modern playwrights like Ibsen, Shaw, Albee, and Miller incorporated these themes and styles.

1. Features of Modern Drama
Tayebul Aftab Zishan

2. MODERN DRAMA:
Drama is a literary art which usually have
Characters, Plot, Dialogue and acts on stage.
The difference between ‘traditional drama’ and
‘modern drama’ is actually the
THEME/STYLE.

3. Traditional drama dealt with Supernatural
elements, Fate, Heroic deeds etc whereas Modern
drama deals with Realism, Absurdism etc.
Some of famous Modern Playwrights are, Henric
Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, Edward Albee,
Aurther Miller etc. Among them Henric Ibsen
considered as “Father of Modern Drama”.

4. There are some characteristics of MODERN
DRAMA.
These are given below.
• Naturalism
• Absurdism
• Realism
Absurdism (Playboy of the Western World)
Realism (The Zoo Story)
Naturalism (A Doll’s House)

5. NATURALISM:
A manner or technique of treating subject matter that presents, through
volume of detail, a deterministic view of human life and actions.
Modern Playwrights like Henric Ibsen show naturalism in their
writings. As Henric Ibsen showed in his ‘A Doll’s House” that
women are always dominated by men and society as well. He
showed that Nora was ordered to listen & dominated by her
father in her childhood. After her marriage she is also
dominated by her husband as well.

6. She cannot do anything without her husband’s permission. She
has no will/right so that she can do something by herself.
Even when she did something for her husband’s sake, she was
marked as the guilty.
Henric Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” is clearly a reflection of
naturalistic picture of society; how women are dominated by
men as well as the system of society.

7. Absurdism:
The philosophical and literary doctrine that human beings live in
essential isolation in a meaningless and irrational world.
One of the prominent modern Playwrights is J.M Synge. In his
play “Playboy of the Western World” he showed how people
accept absurd things or happenings in their life. Christy
Mahon central character of this play who took attempt to kill
his father and when he came to ‘MAYO’ the people of ‘MAYO’
were astonished to hear “I Killed My Father” and they became
fan of him and his bravery.

8. Some of ‘girls and ladies’ were so excited to see this hero who
killed his father. A lady called ‘Widow Quine’ who started to
seduce that ‘so called hero’.
This is a play of total absurdity. This isn’t happen in our normal
life. Usually people never accept a criminal as their hero but it
happened in J.M Synge’s play “Playboy of the Western World”

9. REALISM:
The movement or style of representing familiar things as they actually are.
Another modern playwright Edward Albee whose one of the
renowned works is “The Zoo Story”. In this play he showed
how people confined themselves for the sake of civilization. As
example, in the play the central character ‘Jerry’ walked on
the park where a civilized man ‘Peter’ was reading newspaper.
Jerry started to talk with Peter without any introduction.

10. Sometimes he asked Peter about his(Peter) personal life; because
Jerry wanted to burst out Peter’s real attitude which was
covered by the sheet of civilization.
Jerry was tired off being confined himself into the cage of so
called civilization. He did not want to talk little, little intimacy
because he felt lonesome.
As he was lonely; he tried to make a friend like relation with a
dog of his landlord. And at last he killed himself.

11. So, from this context we can understand that, Edward Albee
showed a realistic picture which is clear to us that civilization
makes people introvert; and many people of this world just
unable to accept this.