Visualizing the unseen: Stage and screen adaptations of Samuel Beckett’s radio play All That Fall

Abstract

Samuel Beckett’s radio play All That Fall (1957) has been adapted for different media. In order to understand the challenges it poses for any form of visual representation, this article will first show how the radio play exploits the acousmatic nature of the medium and its so-called ‘blindness’. In a next step, it will discuss how the various stage performances of All That Fall have dealt with these difficulties, in light of the author’s reservations about the matter and the restrictions imposed by his estate. However, Beckett did allow French film and television versions to be made during his lifetime – respectively by Alain Resnais and Michel Mitrani, the latter for Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF). This raises questions not only about how authors and cultural contexts impact the adaptation process, but also about the aesthetic differences and historical relations between theatre and technological media, which the article will additionally probe.