Samuel Beckett's Reponses to Pedagogy

Abstract

Beckett had many pedagogies. The academic pedagogy of set texts and examinations bred and fed insecurity, fostering the need to read before feeling ready to write. The pedagogy of music began, too, as rote learning. Enjoyment of music moved quickly beyond what Beckett himself could hope to achieve as a musician, to appreciation of what the forms of music could express. Likewise, with observation of the methods and techniques of cinematography, mime, music, radio, and television, and in the ‘hot-house’ of working with other artists, music opened words to rhythm and vocal timbre. Always, the listening ear was keen. When Beckett wrote, he listened to the voices in his head. By becoming himself a director of his work, the act of transforming words into three dimensions on stage or in other media tempered his expectations with great besoin of creativity: the need to find a way. Partnerships with composers and translators helped him toward both greater flexibility and greater precision. Collaboration with the technicians working with film and television brought creative experiment to bear on light, movement, and sound. And with that exposure came a willingness to risk, a capacity to adjust the preconceived to the pleasure of new discovery. Beckett's pedagogies may suggest to teachers of his work that there are many ways to engage students, so that the discoveries in sound, movement, image, and words can be theirs, and, that learning by doing can be transformative.