Notes on Beckett’s Plays for an Intensive Theatre Course

Abstract

In Beckett’s works the medium-oriented “how” is inseparable from the “what” of the message. Therefore, the very performance of the piece does not describe but rather creates a new – fi ctitious as it may be – situation, a performative act, which is not “about” anything but is, fi rst and foremost, that very thing itself. Beckett’s medium-oriented approach does indeed invite a fresh analytical perspective to the methodology of teaching his works, especially his plays. In place of McLuhan’s famous “the medium is the message”, Beckett posits the message as inseparable from the medium. I argue, that most of Beckett’s works intended for performance treat the typical tools and mediumoriented components of radio or television too, thus indeed presenting master-classes especially of theatricality itself as an existential mode of being.