Theatre Essays Samuel Beckett

Theatre Essays Samuel BeckettDiscuss Samuel Becketts handling of identity element element in his plays judgment of conviction lag for Godot and expert age.The campaign of Samuel Beckett can be incurn to span both the Modernist and postmodernistist paradigms (Bradbury and McFarlane, 1991 fountain and LeBihan, 1996), on the one hand being influenced by such(prenominal) ratified Modernist writers as throng Joyce and Luigi Pirandello (Knowlson, 1996) and on the other relying heavily on postmodern opinions such as the transgression of the body, the performative identity and the trouble of grand narratives such as language and truth. This point is made by Richard Begam in his champaign Samuel Beckett and the End of Modernity (1996)Becketts conception of his undertaking, w get into we would now c both his postmodernism, recognized t chapeau an arrogant shock with the past, a complete supersession of what had gone before, was it ego the product of a teleological or modern fo rm of thinking. Proust and Joyce therefore became not figures to be replaced or surmounted but telling points of reference in an current dialogue between past and present. (Begam, 1996 14)Becketts position as a liminal writer, spanning two unmistakablely different but obviously connected noetic regimes, al ruggeds us to examine not only his lap but the big context of critical and surgical operation theory. With this in sagaciousness, in this turn out I would like to tone at two main areas of Becketts work that are both metonymous with changes in post-War theatre (and perhaps literature) as a whole. Firstly I would like to concentrate on the notion of postmodernistism as it relates to motion, looking at leitmotifs and tropes as they appear in Waiting for Godot (1955) and blessed Days (1961), and secondly I would like to go on to look at the whole notion of identity and its dissolution in these same texts before drawing conclusions as to what this treatment says somewhat the place of motion in contemporary theatre and, perhaps, the wider context of society itself.First of all, still and as a foundation for my later exposition, I would like to provide a brief summary of postmodernism.Postmodernism, as Fredric Jameson points out, can be take up understood through its relationship and difference to contemporaneousness, a philosophical and fine concept that had it roots in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century (Bradbury and McFarlane, 1991). In an tasty sense, the Modernist work was characterised by experiment and a rejection of the Romantic essential self. Works such as T.S. Eliots The Waste Land (1989) and James Joyces Ulysses (1977) exemplify both the Modernist propensity for innovation and the removed authorial voice and we can for sure see this in many, if not all of Becketts theatrical works.Postmodernism, as Jean Francois Lyotard declared in his essay The Postmodern Condition (1991) reflected the breakd have got and disillusionmen t felt by the failure of the really foundations of Modernism foundations that included such hitherto accepted givens as truth, the self, the homogeneity of Literature and the Arts and many of the other systems of thought that Lyotard termed the metanarratives (Lyotard, 1991 36). Whereas Modernism sought newness and innovation, Postmodernism resulted in the adoption of style over content (Robertson, 1996 3), the quizzical of accepted constructs of knowledge (Foucault, 1989) and the language (Derrida, 2004) and, as we shall see with Beckett the exposure of the artistic machinery.This last point, I think, is crucial to an understanding of Becketts place as both a Modernist and a Postmodern writer. As I hire already stated, we can recognise certain Modernist images and leitmotifs in Becketts work (Eagleton, 1992 186) the starkly bare characterisation, the dour vision of humanity that we to a fault visualize in Eliot and Woolf and the conscious effort to experiment and innovate but, underneath this, we also detect a distinctly Postmodern sensibility one that delights in the deliberate exposure of the performative nature of both the theatre and life.In Waiting for Godot, for instance, there is a constant comic antagonism created between instrumentalist and reference, as ideas and lines of narrative are picked up and abandoned without the usual spectacular sense of resolution (Schechner, 1988). In the first playact for example, estragon begins a joke that is neer finishedestragon Tell it tome Vladimir Ah, stop it tarragon An Englishman having drunk a little more than usual goes to a brothel. The kept woman asks him if he wants a fair one, a dark one, or a red-haired one. Go on. Vladimir Stop it (Beckett, 1955 16) The antagonism and frustration engendered by this un-ended joke is more than a mere literary device it is also a performance device that sets up a tagly different performer/audience relationship. Unlike, say, classical Aristotelian outstanding theory that asserts the imperative of the incentive outcome (Hartley and Ladu, 1948 14) the rising action (Hartley and Ladu, 1948 14) and the resolution, here Beckett (as indeed he does throughout the play) creates a deliberate anti-climax that immediately calls in to question the binary between mankind and performance.The same also could be said about much of the dramatic structure of blissful Days, as the workings of the performance are eer exposed to the gaze of the audience. Here, for instance, realisenie second guesses the thoughts of the audience members as she talks to a passer-byWinnieWhats she doing? He says Whats the idea? He says stuck up to her diddies in the bleeding ground coarse fellow What does it mean? He says whats it meant to mean and so on. (Beckett, 1961 32)Here Beckett deconstructs the very essence of the performance itself, exposing the bewildered reaction of the audience to his own drama. In a Postmodern dissolution of identity boundaries, the perf ormer here becomes playwright, audience, character and factor as not only are the thoughts of the character exposed but so too the thoughts of the audience. This is not the only deconstruction of performance Beckett employs in the play. We see, for instance, the quizzical of dramatic convention gifted Days is, for all intents, a soliloquy but it features two characters, it is about the drift of era but, ironically, the main actor is static throughout and although it is primarily a play about dustup and not actions it is peppered with pauses and space. All factors that point to both plays as being as much rooted in Postmodernism as Modernism.We have touched upon it already but the overriding sense in both Waiting for Godot and Happy Days is the seek and engagement for identity and this also, as we shall see, has a marked impact on the performance of the play and what it means regarding the audience/actor dialectic.The social thornground to Happy Days was described, in an aff ective track by Harold Clurman in an early reviewBeckett is the poet of a morally standing(prenominal) society. In this society fear, dismay and a sort of a stun absent-mindedness prevail in the dark of our consciousness, while a flashy, noisy, bumptious, thick-headed complacency flourishes in the open. (Clurman, 1998 235)It is against this buttdrop that the characters in the play struggle to maintain their scant identities. regular(a) before the action begins we are made witness to the difficulties in establishing an separate existence as the characters, names, Winnie and Willie, straightway blur their respective personal boundaries. We see this also to a greater extent in Waiting for Godot, as Gogo, Pozzo and Godot, combine to form a linguistic homogeneity that suggests a free radical rather than an individual identity.The mise en scene of Happy Days is place Eliotesque wastelandExpanse of scorched grass rising centre to low mound. Gentle slopes downto front and either of stage. Back an abrupter fall to stage aim (Beckett, 1961 9)part Postmodern irony, as the backdrop reveals itself to be a self conscious trompe-loeil that represents unbroken plain and sky receding to meet in far distance. (Beckett, 1961 9). Within this, Winnie literally stands as part of the scenery, only half(prenominal) visible that is, in itself, a symbolic representation of both time passing and the extent that she has already lost a great have sex of her personal identity.As I have already hinted at, Winnie deconstructs the notion of movement and stasis on a psychological level she moves quickly between multiplication as in this passage where she and us are taken back into her personal history prompted by the news of a death of a friendWinnie Charlie Hunter (Pause) I close my eyes (she takes off specs and does s, hot in one hand, spectacles in other, Willie turns page) and am sit down on his knees again, in the back garden at Borough Green, under the horse-beech. (Becket t, 1961 14)physically however she is literally trapped, unable to move or stop the flow rate of time swallowing her completely. Her identity becomes fashioned by her memories as at first, in the initial Act, they form a reasonable homogeneity and then, in Act Two become more and more diffuse, more and more fractured until by the end of the play she exists as merely snapshots of a life that has beenWinnie Win (pause)Oh this is a happy daytimes, this will have been another happy day (Pause) After all (Pause) So far. Pause. She hums tentatively beginning of song, then sings softly, musical comedy box tune. (Beckett, 1961 47) As John Pilling suggests in his study of Samuel Beckett (1976 85), the playwright jibe the enormity of the search for identity in an alienating world with the minutiae of workaday living, as Winnie spends a great deal of the plays time conducting worthless searches for toothbrushes, or lipsticks or many of the other incidental objects of existence.Ultimately, her search for a personal identity is proved fruitless as she becomes subsumed in that which surrounds her, perhaps a particularly twentieth century vision of the struggle of the personal psychology in the face of the modern city. Waiting for Godot, I think, concerns itself with similar themes and similar characters.Martin Esslin characterised Becketts Waiting for Godot as concerned with the want of salvation through the workings of grace (Esslin, 1968 55) and we can see that is certainly a major thread in the play. However, we can also utterance that it concerns itself not with a general salvation but with a very a personal one, with each character desperately searching for their own identity amid the alienation and ennui of the surrounding environment. Most of the plays linguistic rhythm arises out of the characters attempt to assert their own identity in the face of the othersVladimir Charming evening were having. estragon Unforgettable. Vladimir And its not over. Estragon App arently not. Vladimir Its only beginning. Estragon Its awful. Vladimir Its worse than being in the theatre. (Beckett, 1955 34)The tooing and froing of the dialogue here is a perfect example of this point, with neither Vladimir nor Estragon willing to surrender themselves to the other. The same can be seen in a more graphic sense with the Pozzo/Lucky relationship that is, at its ticker a Hegelian dialectic of the master and slave, with each party attempting (and failing) to break away from the other.In the comic scene towards the end of the play that depicts Vladimir and Estragon exchanging symbolic identities in the form of their hats (Beckett, 1961 71-72) we can keep Becketts card on the ironies of Postmodern lifeVladimir takes puts on Luckys hat in place of his own which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes Vladimirs hat. Vladimir adjusts Luckys hat on his head. Estragon hands Vladimirs hat back to Vladimir who takes it and hands it back to Estragon who takes it and hands it ba ck to Vladimir who takes it and throws it down. (Beckett, 1955 72) The absurdity of this scene arises from the fact that each hat is the same, or at least very similar, so that it makes very little difference which hat ends up on which head. This is, I think, symbolic of the larger treatment of identity within the play with the playwright suggesting the absurdity of the search for personal individuation. are not identities much like hats, asks Beckett, remarkably the same?If Happy Days is a study of the search for identity under the crushing burden of time passing, Waiting for Godot is the search for identity within the lightness of forgetfulness. condemnation in the latter is meaningless, it passes with no affect in fact Estragon can not even remember the events of the day before. Within this, the characters desperately cling to the remnants of their identities whether that be in the form of an oppressive relationship to another, an occurrence of clothing or the feint hope of s omeone who will never arrive.We can see then that the treatment of identity within Becketts two major plays mirrors the questions arising out of Postmodernism, questions that concern the nature of identity and the Self. For Postmodern theorists like Judith Butler (1999) and Michel Foucault (1990) the Self is a performative construct, both given to us by society and adopted as a mask and we note some of this sense in Beckett. Ultimately, then, Becketts work deconstructs the very notion of a theatrical performance, suggesting that this is merely one of a number of performances that occurs at any one time.The relationship, then, between the audience and the actor changes from one of passiveness to one of dialogue as the former is exposed as relying as much on performance as the latter. This can be seen to be a reflection of Antonin Artauds assertions on the Theatre of Cruelty in his second manifestojust as there are to be no empty spatial areas, there must be no let up, no vacuum in t he audiences mind or sensitivity. That is to say there will be no distinct divisions, no gap between life and theatre. (Artaud, 1985 84)Becketts work says as much about the identities of the audience as the characters and as much about the performative nature of the wider society as the performance of the theatre.ReferencesArtaud, Antonin (1985), The Theatre and its Double, (London John Calder) Beckett, Samuel (1961), Happy Days, (London Faber and Faber) Beckett, Samuel (1955), Waiting for Godot, (London Faber and Faber) Begam, Richard (1996), Samuel Beckett and the End of Modernity, (Stanford Stanford University Press) Bradbury, Malcolm and McFarlane, James (eds) (1991), Modernism A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930, (London Penguin) Butler, Judith (1999), Gender Trouble, (London Taylor and Francis) Cormier, Ramona and Pallister, Janis (1998), En Attendent Godot Tragedy or prank?, promulgated in Culotta Andonian, Cathleen (ed), The Critical Responses to Samuel Beckett, (Londo n Greenwood Press) Clurman, Harold (1998), Happy Days Review, published in Culotta Andonian, Cathleen (ed), The Critical Responses to Samuel Beckett, (London Greenwood Press) Eagleton, Terry (1992), Literary Theory An Introduction, (London Blackwell) Esslin, Martin (1968), The Theatre of the Absurd, (London Pelican) Foucault, Michel (1990), The taradiddle of Sexuality Volume 1, (London Penguin) Green, Keith and LeBihan (1996), Critical Theory and Practice A Coursebook, (London Routledge) Hartley, Lodwick and Ladu, Arthur (1948), Patterns in Modern Drama, (London Prentice Hill) Jameson, Fredric (1991), Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (London Duke University) Kenner, Hugh (1973), A Readers Guide to Samuel Beckett, (London Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) Knowlson, James (1996), Dammed to Fame The Life of Samuel Beckett, (London Bloomsbury) Lyotard, Jean Francois (1991), The Postmodern Condition, published in Jenkins, Keith (ed), The Postmodern History Reader, (Lon don Routledge) Pilling, John (1976), Samuel Beckett, (London Routledge and Kegan Paul) Robertson, Pamela (1996), criminal Pleasures Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna, (London Duke University) Schechner, Richard (1988), Performance Theory, (London Routledge)