Looking with the ears – Tom Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase

Abstract

Artist Descending a Staircase is a radio drama in which Tom Stoppard makes an intertextual reference to the famous cubist painting of Marcel Duchamp – The Nude Descending a Staircase. Duchamp aimed not only at representing three dimensionality of the object on the two dimensional canvass (which was the attempt common to all the cubists) but also the notion of movement by means of a stroboscopic effect. Tom Stoppard, working in a different medium, tries to represent reality by means of the radio medium. In the process he invites the listeners to actively participate in the process of creating meaning. He sets yet another ambush for the listeners and makes them discover that the tape recording heard by them at the beginning and end of the play does not present a murder (as the characters of this short radio play assume) but an accident – Donner was not killed by one of his friends but fell down the stairs while chasing a fl y which was destroying Beauchamp’s tape of silence.