1 RECONNECT: BECKETT, RELOADED Silvia Osman, PhD Associate Professor Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University Bucharest, Romania Abstract You’ll have to agree with me: we are leading absurd lives nowadays! Dawn ‘til dusk we chase dreams, build careers, families, communities, intricate political structures, but on our way there we lose track of our inner being, getting lost, entangled in a jungle of material needs which most of the time leads us astray from who we really are. How do we reconnect with our inner self? How do we stay true to who we really are? If Shakespeare was right and the entire world is a stage, there might be a way to bridge the gap created this way: my paper is a diatribe for the Theatre of the Absurd, showing how it leads us towards soul searching and the introspection we need in order to reconnect to our inner being. Like abstract art, the Theatre of the Absurd is not for everyone. Not everyone is interested in extracting meaning from a play that presents the meaninglessness of life, just as not many are capable of finding enjoyment in a painting by Pablo Picasso or Jackson Pollock. Some of us want art to be easily digestible, whether they are in the art gallery or the theatre. It is easier, I suppose, to recognize oneself in a photographic representation, which only reflects what is on the surface, whereas abstract art, surrealism, expressionism, and yes, the Theatre of the Absurd, attempt to get at something closer to real truth - a representation of our inner being, of our fears, our weaknesses, our inadequacies, the archetypal human predicament.