Beckett's Play Research Articles

Rockaby: a director's response

Meeting a Beckett text for the first time engages one in a phenomenological consideration of the director/actor relationship through the rehearsal process as mediated by the distinct requirements of the Beckett production text. As a consequence of working with the actor Virginia Byron on Beckett's play Rockaby at the Drayton Court Theatre in June 2003, it is my contention that Beckett engages with a profound sympathy for the human condition in his text articulated by a genuine ‘warmth’ and ‘care’ in the delineation of character. This is counter-pointed by an intentionally harsh control of the performer's body and performance conditions to create the necessary tension of Beckett's theatrical vision. The director/actor relationship must negotiate the performative realities and possibilities offered through the text to find the true depth of this feeling. Beckett's conditions for the production of his plays are, I believe, necessary prerequisites for the realization of this feeling in performance.

Waiting for Marxo

Abstract Samuel Beckett's play waiting for Godot recounts the story of two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, awaiting the arrival of Godot. Within the boredom of the wait Estragon and Vladimir are forced to evaluate the purpose of their own life, their existence, the existence of God[ot] and the nature of the human condition. However, Godot never arrives and all that remains is the experience of waiting. In a similar way critical accounting is caught in an act of waiting. Waiting for Marx, for Habermas, for Foucault or for some other thinker to come and to rescue us from our predicament. In this lies some of the academic angst over the future of the critical project. Here we present an imaginative dialogue, substituting two accounting academics for Beckett's tramps. As such they do not represent real people but rather the struggle within the academic discourse for identity, self and meaning. While this dialogue might seem hopeless, reflecting the frustration present in the Beckett original, there is the possibility of emancipation as both of the characters agree to abandon the wait for Marxo and to proceed with their project, in effect fulfilling Marx[o]'s injunction that ‘the role of philosophy is not to describe the world but to change it’.

Discursive Events in the Electronic Archive of Postmodern and Contemporary Poetry

T     K , from Samuel Beckett’s  one-act play, Krapp’s Last Tape, which features one actor and “a tape-recorder with microphone and a number of cardboard boxes containing reels of recorded tapes” ().  e following is David Antin writing, in a  book of, as he calls them, talk poems.  is excerpt is from the introduction to the published rendition of Antin’s talk-poem entitled “whos listening out there.” Italicizing introductory materials is a publishing convention of drama that the Beckett play and the Antin talk-poem both follow.

The Globalization of Beckett's Godot

COMPARATIVE 9T9ÎÏÏ9 Volume 37 No. 2 · Summer 2003 The Globalization of Beckett's Godot Enoch Brater When, in the second act of Waitingfor Godot, Samuel Beckett's landmark play that premiered in Paris in 1953, Didi complains to his sidekick about not wasting any more time in "idle discourse," he delivers a stage speech rich in die implications for diis work's range and accessibility: Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we are personally needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!1 Moments later, Gogò, not to be outdone, will prove similarly universalist in his approach to the matter at hand. Pozzo, transformed and now "as blind as Fortune,"and Lucky, now dumb, lie sprawled on Beckett's stage floor (and it should be noted that not every dramatist would risk placing actors in such a compromising position). Pozzo cries out for help, and he will do so more than once. On this stage space there's always time to 146Comparative Drama spare and time to fart, or so it seems; Gogo's game plan is to call the fallen protagonists by all the names he can think ofuntil he hits upon the right ones.A distraught Pozzo replies to the first two that come to mind, Cain, and then Abel. "He's all humanity," a delighted Gogò cries out in a rare instance of self-congratulation. Whether or not an agonized Pozzo is responding to the name-game, or merely repeating his frustration, is far less important than the universal reading Estragon gives to his line. In Waitingfor GodotBeckett's characters movevery deftly from their local situation to the global. Trapped in a manufactured tableau that always seems to yearn for a world that is both itself and yet larger than itself, they are, in fact, the first to identify their stage experience as emblematic . How quickly Beckett's "meremost minimum"2 accumulates resonances far beyond the unprepossessing scenographyofrock and tree and a pair ofboots that do not fit. Sterile branches sprout a few meager leaves and suddenly the tree of knowledge, that biblical agent of doom, becomes a brief sign of renewal. Late in the play Gogò and Didi mythologize the lone tree, classically, as a willow ("no more weeping")—to which these characters just might return to hang themselves, Judas-like, in some unspecified tomorrow. The wide applicabilty ofso manymoments imagined in this playhas been from the beginning the source of its appeal as Beckett's work continues to travel from one national stage to the next. Even in its original manuscript form, inscribed in a schoolboy's lined notebook and which this Irishman wrote in French, not in his native English (he complicated the matter by translating the play into English himself),3 En attendant Godot displays a perspective that is pan-European and everywhere internationalist . The protagonists are Slavic Vladimir, French/Spanish Estragon, Italian Pozzo, and English Lucky (Beckett once said "perhaps" he was called"Lucky"because he had no expectations).4 On the first few pagesofBeckett's GodotnotebookVladimirisJewish"Lévy";whenquestioned by Pozzo he gives his name without hesitation as Scottish/Irish/French "Macgrégor, André."5 Gogo and Didi have previously been identified as "little brother" and"big brother" in at least one dialect ofChinese, not to mention the possible but unlikely Freudian references to "ego" and "id."6 Taken as a whole,then,this cast ofunlikelycharacters,to echo this play's prophecies, may very well be intended to reflect Didi's "all mankind" and Gogo's "all humanity." Enoch Brater147 Certainly within the European community Beckett's play has traveled a well-documented path. Elmar Tophoven, a graduate student in Paris in 1953 when he was inspired by Roger Blin's premiere production at the Théâtre de Babylone, was an early advocate and translator. Later...

Making social science matter: why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again

ABSTRACT This book is a thoughtful antidote to the simple views that see social science as a science like any other-positivistic science. It begins with a well-grounded empirical case of the development and application of expert knowledge, then moves through consideration of context and values, the centrality of power, and a reconsideration of the Greek roots of modern knowledge. It concludes with some salient observations based on the author's own feedback and research practice. Making Science Matter: Why Inquiry Fails and How Can Succeed Again. Bent Flyvbjerg: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 205 Pages. INTRODUCTION is one of those phrases that, as an apprentice social scientist, I wished I had heard about 30 years ago. I was studying for a doctorate degree then, a process in which much musing was centered on some central issues in the philosophy of social science. In the texts that I read and the debates that I encountered there was a lot of about physics envy, that is. What was in short supply was much to make one feel confident as a social science researcher. Instead, rather like a character in a Beckett play, one was waiting for a character-the great deliverer of a truly social science-that never shows up. So I had to write a thesis regardless. Of course, there were various sightings that raised anticipations in different audiences, at different times: some barracked for Parsons, others for Marx, as a great unifier while others just got on with and didn't think too much about what it might mean. They just did it. How they did seemed to be based on an assumption that, while social science isn't physics, does have some formal similarities. It has hypotheses; contains propositions; and, maybe, some covering law-like explanations. (One colleague claims that the universal relationship between the size of organizations and their increasing need for centralization is such a relation.) If only Bent Flyvbjerg's book had been available then! BEYOND THE SCIENCE WARS The author begins with the hoax played by the physicist, Alan Sokal, one of the editors of the journal Text. Most people probably know about it. Sokal (1996) submitted an article that appeared to deconstruct physics and the editors accepted and published it. Thus was the latest salvo in the debate about the two cultures fired across the bows of the global social science community. The implications were clear: for bona fide-not to say macho-real scientists, social science is unreal and unnatural: simplistic in its assumptions, short on quality controls, and peopled by beings of lesser judgment, if not intelligence, than those to be found in the Natural Science Faculties. Flyvbjerg (page 3) is quite explicit about the implications of such warfare: Social science is locked in a fight that cannot hope to win, because has accepted terms that are self-defeating. What is to be done to change these terms and avoid defeat? Go back to Aristotle and start over again, says Flyvbjerg. Eschew Aristotle's path to knowledge that routes through the virtues of either techne or episteme and instead use Aristotle's account of a prudent and wise science-one founded on phonesis-and integrate with a Foucauldian conception of power. The route to Aristotle turns out to be quite contemporary-it works through the phenomenology of human learning in the light of the Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) model. This is the model that demonstrates that expert learning goes far beyond knowing and using the rules to accomplish an activity. Indeed, such explicit knowledge and referral is, in fact, counter to expertise that seems to rely on tacit knowledge and intuition embedded in context much more than does on explicit and disembedded knowledge. Physics envy is closely related to Cartesian anxiety-the fear of nihilism and relativism that lies outside the borders of a strict analytical and rational scientific tradition. …

Perceiving Bodies in Beckett's Play

A source-critical or tradition-historical approach to the Genesis Apocryphon will quite justifiably emphasize the features of the Apocryphon that point toward what can be described as its lack of compositional unity. There exists, however, a level on which the Apocryphon can be shown to be a whole; that is its narrative unity. The latter is the result of the ways in which the final author/composer organized and manipulated the sources and traditions, whether written or oral, with which he worked. The acknowledgment that the Apocryphon is unified on this level opens the door to its treatment as an integral (if fragmentary) literary artifact, as I shall demonstrate in further studies.

Out of Ireland: Revisionist Strategies in Beckett's Drama

Out ofIreland: Revisionist Strategies in Beckett's Drama LAURA BARGE Adeliberate and very public effort to situate Samuel Beckett within he Irish dramatic tradition occurred during thel991 Dublin Theatre Festivalwhen Michael Colgan,Director ofthe GateTheatre,remarked that the moment had arrived "to introduce a Dublin Audience to this greatwriterwho needs to belooked at in Ireland."1 Anyone familiarwith this writer's history understands only too well Colgan's sense ofthe necessity ofsuch an introduction. Beckett's personal, cultural, and aesthetic expatriation from Ireland is so adequately documented in the critical and biographical literature that it needs no reiteration here. Instead, we can remember that Beckett chooses early in his career not only to reject but also to insult—albeit with a humorous mockery—the Irish Celtic literary movement, that he forsakes Ireland as homeland in a biographically definitive manner, and that he deliberately adopts French as the language in which he writes. Thus Rodney Sharkey is surely on target when he claims that any effort attempting to "view Beckett in an Irish context cuts its own throat ifit chooses to ignore" that Beckett's literary careerwas definitivelyformed bythe philosophical and aesthetic culture ofEurope.2 Embracingas earlyas 1934 theaesthetic credo thatthewriter must cut all ties with familial, national, and cultural origins in order to explore the interior ofhis own unique vision,3 Beckett early stakes out his literary path and its territory and never departs from it. 175 176Comparative Drama How, then,can we account forBeckett's recitation in theyearhe died, 1989, on the occasion of the critic Hugh Kenner's final visit, of the last movement of Yeats's poem "The Tower," beginning wim the line referring to artistic self-creation, "Now shall I make my soul"?4 And how explain Beckett's literary Irishness as documented in Vivian Mercier's book The Irish Comic Tradition, in John Harrington's The Irish Beckett, in Mary Junker-Brennan's The Irish Dimension,5 and in a growing collection of scholarly articles? In particular, what should we make of the fact tiiat several of these studies connect specifically both the content and style of Beckett's drama with Irish influences, such as the plays of Yeats, Synge, and O'Casey?6 These numerous evidences ofBeckett's literary debt to the history, culture, language, persons, places, and landscapes of Ireland cannot be ignored. I think the answer to these questions lies in critically situating the Irish influences within the boundaries of Beckett's expatriation, that is, by foregrounding the revisionary nature of the majority of such influences . By following this course, we can contest Anthony Roche's misguided assumption that Beckett's quoting Yeats's "Now shall I make my soul" to Hugh Kenner indicated that Beckett had chosen Yeats rather than Joyce as a "major precursor."7 Few statements about Beckett as a writer could be more misleading. As Harrington says, "Beckett's work deconstructs a local revivalism confident ofthe sureties ofplace and collective consciousness." But Harrington is stopping short of exploring the rich Irish dimension of Beckett's writings when he argues further that because Beckett does not "consequently construct a positive" and "evident alternative" but remains in an "intractable" mode that issues merely in "an endless comedy of substitution," his writings are "unsuitable for revisionist use."8 1 think instead that Beckett moves beyond the stasis of revolt to function as an expatriate Irish writer on the literary frontiers ofthis century. As Sharkey insists,"...it is important not to view Beckett's Irishness as a type of tale ...signifying nihilism," but rather as the "condition" of"specific Irish experiences" and "understanding" out ofwhich Beckett's "extraordinary artistic vision emerged."9 A strong proof for this claim that springs immediately to mind is Beckett's incredibly innovative response to the work of James Joyce. Nothing could be more expected—and easily executed by someone of Laura Barge177 Beckett's genius—than to follow in the revolutionary/revisionary mode executed by Joyce's literary upheaval. That Beckett incorporates in his saying ofnothing the revisionarysaying ofeverythingby Joyce, and then moves beyond Joyce's amplitude ofform and content to an original impoverishment of both form and content that makes Beckett's achievement equal that...

"In the Beginning was the Pun": Figures of Speech and Figures of Thought in Beckett's Novels and Plays

"In the Beginning was the Pun": Figures of Speech and Figures of Thought in Beckett's Novels and Plays

Beckett's Play, in extenso

To date none of the commonly available English texts for Samuel Beckett's Play, in fact, none of the printed texts in any edition in any language, is entirely accurate. None reflects the final text Beckett took such pains to establish; none, that is to say, includes the revisions he made after first consulting on the world premiere in Gennan (1963), then overseeing more directly nearsimultaneous productions in French and English (both 1964), and finally directing the play himself at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt in October 1978. British and Americ~ publishers tried to accommodate Beckett's production changes in various editions of the published work, but Beckett's revisions were made in as well as on stages, over an extended period. As publishers revised texts to accommodate productions, Beckett fe-revised his work to accommodate insights drawn from new productions; that is, production generally outpaced publication. The production and textual history of Play testifies, as well, to the growing professional pressures on Samuel Beckett as an international artist (if not an international commodity) by the mid-t960s. That pressure would culminate in the so-called catastrophe of the Nobel Prize in 1969.' The early productions of Play, moreover, suggest a singular shift in Beckett's development as a theatre artist. At this period, Beckett began to embrace theatre not as the medium through which an authored script was given its preconceived expression but as a (or even the) means through which his theatre art was created. In many respects this aesthetic shift, much of it the result of theatrical necessity, represented a break from the hegemony of modernist textuality, from Modernism itself, in fact, and a move' closer to the indetcnninacy we more often associate with post-modernist textuality. Beckett was never quite willing to abandon the authority of authorship completely, however, since even as a director he simultaneously (if not primarily) functioned as an author. But his uncertainties about the text of Play began from this period to affect all of his dramatic work, and he began to re-author earlier

Beckett's Play, in extenso

To date none of the commonly available English texts for Samuel Beckett's Play, in fact, none of the printed texts in any edition in any language, is entirely accurate. None reflects the final text Beckett took such pains to establish; none, that is to say, includes the revisions he made after first consulting on the world premiere in German (1963), then overseeing more directly near simultaneous productions in French and English (both 1964), and finally directing the play himself at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt in October 1978. British and American publishers tried to accommodate Beckett's production changes in various editions of the published work, but Beckett's revisions were made in as well as on stages, over an extended period. As publishers revised texts to accommodate productions, Beckett re-revised his work to accommodate insights drawn from new productions; that is, production generally outpaced publication. The production and textual history of Play testifies, as well, to the growing professional pressures on Samuel Beckett as an international artist (if not an international commodity) by the mid-1960s. That pressure would culminate in the so-called "catastrophe" of the Nobel Prize in 1969. The early productions of Play, moreover, suggest a singular shift in Beckett's development as a theatre artist. At this period, Beckett began to embrace theatre not as the medium through which an authored script was given its preconceived expression but as a (or even the) means through which his theatre art was created. In many respects this aesthetic shift, much of it the result of theatrical necessity, represented a break from the hegemony of modernist textuality, from Modernism itself, in fact, and a move closer to the indeterminacy we more often associate with post-modernist textuality.

THE SECOND ENGLISIllNG OF ELEUTHERIA

A review of Barbara Wright's translation of Eleuthéria, Samuel Beckett's first full-length play in French, written in 1947. The posthumous publication history of Beckett's original text by Les Editions de Minuit (Paris), the first translation by Michael Brodsky into English, published by Foxrock Inc. (New York) and Wright's translation is briefly sketched. The two English translations are compared and Wright's is found not only superior but also eminently actable.

The Chess Metaphor in Samuel Beckett's Endgame

Samuel Beckett's drama depicts a relentless search for the central self or the ultimate being which remains unidentified, unseen and unattainable. Time makes this search an unending process by presenting the seeker with the illusion of being static and at the same. time creating a flux, making the distinction between illusion and reality blurred. The central self which eschews the seeker is often presented in Beckett's works as a non-existent entity. In Waiting for Godot the central self that the tramps could never get at is presented as the enigmatic Godot. Alain Robbe-Grillet observes that "Godot is the inaccessible self. " In Watt this non-existent central reality takes the form of Mr. Knott, who never makes his appearance and who is continuously sought out.4 In the course of this futile search, man is caught within the infinity of Time, and bewilderment at the nature of Time finds its expression in such telling phrases as Vladimir's "Time has stopped" or Hamm's "time was never and time is over." Thus an "Infinite emptiness" binds their lives, as Hamm says in Endgame.

No and the Aesthetics of the Post‐Modern Theater

The Empty Space (1969) by Peter Brook emphasized the intrinsic features of the contemporary theater. The new aesthetics of the post‐modern theater, which dates from Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1952), enabled the revival of the No theater in the Western world, favoring the No over the Kabuki tradition. This essay presents the analogous elements of two aesthetics: the aesthetic of No and the aesthetic of the post‐modern theater. Of the two characters appearing on a bare stage in the late plays of Beckett, one is a catalyst of memory — as the waki in the No plays, another recollects his or her memories — as the shite. In the second part of No, the shite arises as a ghost, while in Beckett's plays the recollection of memories symbolizes a process of dying. Satori — the term of No rooted in Buddhism — is analogically fitting in the aesthetics of Beckett's drama. The works of Peter Brook, Robert Wilson and Jerzy Grotowski exemplify the most characteristic features of post‐modern theater that are in some way analogous to the aesthetics of No.

"The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible": Perception and Genre in Samuel Beckett's Later Drama

amuel Beckett's pertinacity in refuting explications of the meaning of his plays is well known;1 less known perhaps is the fact that Beckett explicitly contrasted explications with the importance of minutely following scenic instructions. During a rehearsal for the Berlin production of Endspiel (Schiller-Werkstatt, Berlin 1976), he refuted questions about the meaning of his play with a remark in German: Das Stuck interessiert hier ausschlieglich als Spielvorlage (Cohn, Just Play 240).2 It is precisely this radical refutation of the desire for that is taken up in Beckett's drama: For God's sake! This craze for explication is the director's complaint in Catastrophe, Beckett's last play to be published in English (Collected Shorter Plays 299). Originally written in French for the Avignon Festival 1982 and dedicated to the imprisoned writer Vaclav Havel, who was later to become the Czech Republic's president, this short, or dramaticule, was hailed by critics as Beckett's political drama (Libera, Catastrophe).3 Catastrophe might be Beckett's political drama. But my contention

MORE TRAN "JUST PLAY": The Creation of 'Fabulous History' in Beckett's Plays

MORE TRAN "JUST PLAY": The Creation of 'Fabulous History' in Beckett's Plays

Bridges, Cross-Currents: Moments of Poetry in Beckett's Prose and Drama

Bridges, Cross-Currents: Moments of Poetry in Beckett's Prose and Drama

Bridges, Cross-Currents: Moments of Poetry in Beckett's Prose and Drama

Bridges, Cross-Currents: Moments of Poetry in Beckett's Prose and Drama

Power, Self, and Other: The Absurd in Boesman and Lena

As the substantive body of criticism about Samuel Beckett's theatre attests, it is difficult not to impose a variety of contexts onto his work.(1) Athol Fugard's theatre, alternatively, restricts and focuses one's perceptions so that it is difficult to see more than a single context. More simply put, an audience reads its world into Waiting for Godot, while it reads another world out of and Lena. The authors' respective uses of absurdity have led to this state of affairs. and Lena is as explicit a title as Waiting for Godot. In the latter title, as numerous others have pointed out, unidentified individuals are for God. Control of the individual's fate is placed outside his/her hands into those of a deity; human responsibility is diminished. Others have offered less useful biographical interpretations: Godot is named after a French cyclist, or is the French slang word for boot (Bair 382). While offering an additional dimension to the punning that Beckett indulges in, these latter correlations are not particularly useful for those seeking to explicate the play. Beckett has insisted that the meaning of the title is unimportant (Bair 382). Flippancy, mischievousness, or authorial right may be invoked to explain or support Beckett's position, but the play is an act of communication, a dramatic utterance, which begins with a statement of import. The gerund waiting in Beckett's title alerts the reader/audience to the fact that if the communicative act is to mean anything, if grammar means anything, the state of is both subject and action of Beckett's play. What does it mean to wait; what is it like to wait? The prepositional phrase that completes the title specifies whom (or what) one is for. It clarifies the subject and the act. and Lena is simply the names of two characters in a play inhabited by three. Obviously the lack of identification of the third individual gives these two more importance than the unnamed African. More specifically, Lena's song illustrates that is not merely a name, it is also a label and an identification of one's culture: Boesman is 'n / Maar hy dra 'n Hotnot hoed [Boesman is a / But he wears a Hottentot's hat] (184).(2) Bushman is a political label, for the Afrikaners use it as a general term of abuse against the Africans and coloureds. That wears a Hottentot's hat should not go unnoticed because a is considered less civilized, and so lower on the social scale, than a Hottentot. Boesman, therefore, can be said to spurn his identity and falsely attempt to assume another to (re)gain a sense of dignity, albeit in the discourse and practices prevalent in the white scale of values, not his own. Lena, on the other hand, seeks a definition of her being: the questions she poses in this regard link her to him, and he to her, as inextricably as does the simple coordinating conjunction of the title. Where seeks validation of his assumed identity through Lena, Lena craves a witness to her existence through Boesman. An important final point on the titles is the remaining abstraction in Beckett's because neither spatial nor temporal concerns come into play. Fugard's title is more spatially specific, as the assessment of the name indicates. Lena's exclamation of Mud! Swartkops! (143) fixes the location further--they are in the barren Swartkops region of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Temporally, and Lena are at one stage in a long cycle of walks: Redhouse to Missionvale . . . Missionvale to Bethelsdorp. Back again to Redhouse . . . Then to Kleinskool. Kleinskool to Veeplaas. Veeplaas to here. First time. After that, Redhouse . . . Bethelsdorp, Korsten, Veeplaas, back here the second time. Then Missionvale again, Veeplaas, Korsten, and then here, now. (196) It is the walking, not the temporary stops in the towns, that is most important. The absurdity of their condition is found in this incessant, pointless, repetitive cycle of walks. …

A catch in the breath: Language and Consciousness in Samuel Beckett's ... but the clouds ...

In the latter part of his career, Samuel Beckett was increasingly attracted to television as a medium where he could realize certain dramatic ideas with a control and precision not possible in the theatre...In them he has ... Taken as a whole, Beckett's television drama does reveal an increasing concentration on the communicative force of the visual images. Yet in the teleplay, ... but the clouds. . ., the "pure coalescence of material and form" is achieved through a delicate and precise interaction between word and image. By alluding to W. B. Yeats's poem "The Tower" in both the verbal and visual levels of the play, Beckett shapes a fleeting moment of unified consciousness, making this play unique in Beckett's drama.

Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yeats, and Jack Yeats: Images and Words

In contrast to the many critics who consider W. B. Yeats a dominant influence on Beckett's drama, this study demonstrates that the two are almost diametrically opposed in their theater and that the real bridge to Beckett's art is to be found in the narrative and pictorial creations of the younger Yeats brother, Jack.