About the Institute of Absurdity

 

Uncle Tad Baker's Institute of Absurdity is modeled on the Academy of Plato and, similarly, is concerned with the proper preparation for a person interested in the creative life. The Institute, with its emphasis on Pre-Socratic and Socratic-period philosophy, theater and history, focuses on training the imagination for purposeful, ethical use in the arts by way of the development of a principled life, rather than a factual one. The Greek Masters felt that without the structure and discipline of principles, which allows you to categorize, there is no way to express the imagination, known in the Classical period as 'a pure form of hallucination'.

 

At the Institute of Absurdity, we foster and encourage day-dreaming, and we study our mistakes to train our characters.

 

At the Institute of Absurdity, we make observations not conclusions; our emphasis is to make things understandable rather than leave didactic messages.

 

At the Institute of Absurdity, emphasis is placed on Attention to Being, or That Which Is over That Which Changes. The Institute seeks a theatrical view of Reality in order to open up a subject and explore its possibilities as it relates to us; a poetic/philosophical view: oral, theatrical, unscripted and non-psychological.

 

At the Institute of Absurdity, we strive for a State of Clarity, which the philosopher/teacher Demetrius Toteras defines as 'taking all doubt from the mind, for doubt opens paranoia, which makes you sick'.

 

At the Institute of Absurdity, we present the concepts, not the personalities, of the pre-Classical and Classical periods, the Imaginative Periods before and during the Golden Age. We reinterpret this work and bring it forward in a modern context and setting.

 

Our subject matter is Absurdity, and our toolbox is 'Pataphysics, the Science of the Imagination, as first set forth by the poet, Alfred Jarry. In the hands of the Institute, we push 'Pataphysical solutions to their extremes.

 

This is Experimental Theater: we test the limits of what makes us human, and sometimes it’s extreme or by the thin-skinned, considered offensive, but nothing Man does is truly offensive. The Institute explores the boundaries of human expression to provoke thought, not to incite harm.

 

Absurdity is not slapstick, tongue-in-cheek or cruel stupidity; absurdity always has a philosophical backbone, if you know how to look for it!

 

However, this is not Theater of the Absurd, with its carefully scripted scenes and dialogue, where everything is controlled and the director has a ‘vision’ of what he wants to see, where only the initial relics of the Theater of the Absurd are allowed to be studied and admired. Fuck that! Our work is not scripted nor does the director have a vision he is ‘trying’ to achieve; again - no no - fuck that predetermined horseshit, this is true liberated audience participation as Antonin Artaud called for, held together by a philosophical bedrock that allows the free interplay of thought and feeling: whatever takes place is good theater!

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The Archive is maintained by Leslie Hale Roberts to ensure the lineage of Toteras and The Institute survives the collapse of the factual world.

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The Institute of Absurdity Archive is a non-profit philosophical and historical project. All content is presented for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and education under the Fair Use principles of U.S. Code 17 § 107. We prioritize Feeling about Thought to ensure the creative life remains free to the public. © 2025 Uncle Tad Baker.