The artists that would meet at Cabaret Voltaire were most likely in Zurich because of Switzerland's neutrality. They were seeking refuge from the invasion happening in their home countries. They started to perform short plays in order to condemn Word War I.
It is not certain where they got the name from their movement, but it was called Dada. The most famous story is that one of the artists opened a French-German dictionary to a random page and picked the first word seen. The word was dada and means hobbyhorse.
The artists dedicated themselves to the absurd. The dada movement was a rejection of Western conventions of fine art and of social normality and rationality. It was purposefully nonsensical and obscure.
By 1917, a Romanian Jewish writer naemd Tristan Tzara was writing performances. His most famous play, The Gas Heart was written and first performed around 1921. The entire play mocks traditional theatre. While it is broken down into the traditional three acts (remember, in playwriting, there is a traditional three act structure), each act is extremely short. None of the acts contain a logical plot structure.
During the first performance of The Gas Heart, the audience loudly mocked it. Even though Dada didn't seem to exist as a cohesive movement by 1922, The Gas Heart was performed a second time in 1923. During its second performance, it sparked a theatre riot.
Tzara's play is rarely performed. However, at times performances of the play still happen because The Gas Heart is admired as one of the vehicles of the Dada movement.
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