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The Evocation of the Physical, Metaphysical, and Sonic Landscapes in Samuel Beckett's Short Dramatic Works

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The Evocation of the Physical, Metaphysical, and Sonic Landscapes in Samuel Beckett's Short Dramatic Works Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Senior Theses and Projects Student Scholarship Spring 2012 The Evocation of the Physical, Metaphysical, and Sonic Landscapes in Samuel Beckett's Short Dramatic Works Theresa A. Incampo Trinity College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses Part of the Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, Performance Studies Commons, and the Theatre History Commons Recommended Citation Incampo, Theresa A., "The Evocation of the Physical, Metaphysical, and Sonic Landscapes in Samuel Beckett's Short Dramatic Works". Senior Theses, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 2012. Trinity College Digital Repository, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses/209 The Evocation of the Physical, Metaphysical and Sonic Landscapes within the Short Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett Submitted by Theresa A. Incampo May 4, 2012 Trinity College Department of Theater and Dance Hartford, CT 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 I: History Time, Space and Sound in Beckett’s short dramatic works 7 A historical analysis of the playwright’s theatrical spaces including the concept of temporality, which is central to the subsequent elements within the physical, metaphysical and sonic landscapes. These landscapes are constructed from physical space, object, light, and sound, so as to create a finite representation of an expansive, infinite world as it is perceived by Beckett’s characters.. II: Theory Phenomenology and the conscious experience of existence 59 The choice to focus on the philosophy of phenomenology centers on the notion that these short dramatic works present the theatrical landscape as the conscious character perceives it to be. The perceptual experience is explained by Maurice Merleau-Ponty as the relationship between the body and the world and the way as to which the self-limited interior space of the mind interacts with the limitless exterior space that surrounds it. The short dramatic works describe this experience of perception for Beckett’s characters and the desire to, yet ultimate failure to exist peacefully in the expansive world. III: Performance Constructing the theatrical expression of Beckett’s landscapes in the plays Not I and Play 117 Paramount to the success of my production of Beckett’s plays and its aesthetic was making the world feel present and affecting for the performer. This required getting the audience to buy into the world by presenting characters/subjects who are of the landscape while simultaneously grappling with the inescapable reality of their existence in the world: a failed, yet heroic phenomenological experience of conscious perception by both spectator and actor in a theatrical world where the bounds of time and space are blurred as the performance progresses. Appendix Not Catching the Half of it- by Lindsay Walker 169 An essay written by the actor who performed Mouth in my production of Not I, detailing her experience preparing for and performing the role. Bibliography 183 3 4 Acknowledgements Many, many people have contributed to this thesis project over the past year. I thank my advisor, Mitch Polin, for his unwavering support and constructive criticism. His guidance during this process has been extraordinary and I am grateful for all the help and creative opportunities he has extended throughout my undergraduate career. To the faculty of the Theater and Dance department: Katharine Power, Judy Dworin, Lesley Farlow, Michael Preston, Barbara Karger and Michael Burke, for encouraging me to think critically and instructing me on how best to become a better artist and student. Thank you to the entire staff of the Austin Arts Center, particularly James Latzel, Elisa Griego, Ritz Ubides, Vivian Lamb and Pat Kennedy, for their expert advise, humor and good will throughout the production of An Evening of Beckett. Special thanks to Dillard Taylor for his master editing, love, kindness and advice; Jenks Wittenburg for his talented “patch making”; Allison Logan for her photography. To the staff of the Underground Coffeehouse for friendship and understanding during the many hours spent writing this project. The following people have remained constant in their support of my artistic endeavors and I thank them for their assistance and for their camaraderie: Keil Coit, Tierney Nolen, Jamie Wilkinson, Raquel Mendoza, Matthew Piros, Brad DeBiase, Monica Lerch, Caitlin Crombleholme and Lindsay Walker. I extend my deepest gratitude to my performers, Lindsay, Caitlin, and Austin Tewksbury and my incredible stage manager, Morganna Becker, for having given me their time, energy and whole-hearted faith. I could not have asked for better people to breath life into my performance and am lucky to count them as some of my dearest and most caring friends. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to my parents, sister and nephew who have always supported my artistic and intellectual pursuits, whether it was putting on impromptu plays in our family garage or studying clowning in Italy. I offer this project as a token of appreciation for their unending love. 5 6 Part I: History Time, Space and Sound in Beckett’s short dramatic works The following chapter is an articulation of the theatrical landscapes of Samuel Beckett’s short dramatic works. Temporality: “That double-headed monster of damnation and salvation- Time.” - Samuel Beckett (Proust)1 In the theatrical worlds written by Samuel Beckett, time does not follow the Aristotelian model, which supposes a defined beginning, middle and end to the dramatic narrative. There is, only, the present: here and now. Existential philosophy hypothesizes that there is no perceivable end to existence. The characters in Beckett’s work attempt to come to grips with the present but are thwarted by the elusive and perpetual present shifting into the past and are unable to verify an imaginary future. They simply “are,” left to fill their endless existence with habitual actions and memories of past moments used to stave off the fear of the infinite void of time and space. They try, uselessly, to employ the recollection of the past to capture the present. Beckett constructed artistic representations of time and space to convey his idea that nothing, not even art, can deliver man from his inescapably infinite existence. His dramatic works express, as the action of the play, the failure of the human conscious to exist, completely and presently, in the 1 Proust, New York, Grove Press, 1957, 1. 7 expansive universe of time and space while positioning an audience in a theatrical world that they cannot fully inhabit by virtue of the alien, indeterminable physical landscapes and soundscapes and so the spectators experience a failure of presence along with the dramatic subject. The play is not saving the viewer by making the situation visible. It instead pushes them to face the truth of their existence outside of worldly time and familiar space. Sense of time: the absence of worldly “reality” Beckett’s plays call for an extinguishing of worldly time. This worldly time is posited in reference to “real time”, which is structured through years, hours, minutes, and seconds: the past, the present and the future. “Most of us at least implicitly tend to believe in the normalcy and solidity of time and space…”2 Beckett, however, in his writing, distrusted this solid experience of time. He suggests that “real time” is concrete and limits existence to the trivial markings of a calendar or clock. “All that is enveloped in time and space is endowed with what might be described as an abstract, idea and absolute impermeability.”3 Because “real time” maintains this solid structure it cannot account for the unparalleled capabilities and unknown limits of the human mind. “Real time” is not omnipresent although is often perceived as such. “The world of time and space at times gives us half-truths; 2 Rabinovitz, Rubin. "Time, Space and Verisimilitude in Samuel Beckett's Fiction." Ed. James Knowlson. Journal of Beckett Studies 2 (1977). The English Department at Florida State University. The English Department at Florida State University, 2000. Web. 06 Nov. 2011. <http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num02/jobs02.htm>. 3 Beckett, Proust, 41 8 it is therefore a most deceitful sort of world, one which is inconsistent even in its mendacity.”4 It is evident in his early, fictional literature that Beckett gravitated towards the fluctuous and unstable qualities of inner-time: that which exists in the space of the mind. “The purely mental world seems unreliable and unpredictable.”5 His characters Watt in Watt and Murphy from Murphy sought to break through to another, unexplored arena of time’s phenomena: one which is solely internalized and unable to know time through the act of simple counting. However, they are disappointed by the volatility of the inner world. “… the inner world can be gloomy, labyrinthine and perilous; the early cockiness of Beckett’s heroes usual gives way to despair.”6 The boundlessness of temporality: “Moments of time cannot add up to infinity; they can only stretch on and on in finity.”7 Like the inner worlds of Watt and Murphy, the characters of the short plays exist in an unsolvable labyrinth of despair, never able to reach a destination. The inability to reach an end is due to the infinitude of the time-based landscape. Time and the bodies/objects occupying it are moving towards an un-seeable point that, itself, is in motion. “(Something) is moving relentlessly towards some tenuously receding end. It has been likened to the curve mathematicians call asymptotic: all 4 Rabinovitz 5 “ “ 6 “ “ 7 Cohn, Ruby. Just Play: Beckett's Theater. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980. Print. Pg. 42 9 the time approximating but never reaching the graph’s bottom line.”8 The all- encompassing temporality in which the characters exist is never ending. Its perimeter is the receding horizon, stretching on and on with no concrete end in sight.
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