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BECKETT's TELEVISION PLAYS and KAFKA's LATE STORIES Hans H

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BECKETT's TELEVISION PLAYS and KAFKA's LATE STORIES Hans H BECKETT'S TELEVISION PLAYS AND KAFKA'S LATE STORIES Hans H. Hiebel Stage Plays and Television Plays Beckett's late plays have a tendency to turn into television plays; even those works which were produced in theatres and were not broadcast at all, seem to be television-plays. Hasn't "Footfalls", though produced on stage, the character of a quiet piece for television? "Not I" and "What Where" were performed on stage before and after they were broadcast, but are they not "imaginations" for television? "Eh Joe" is subtitled "A Piece for Television", "Ghost Trio" and " ... but the clouds ... " are subtitled "a play for television". "Nacht und Traume", which has no subtitle, is undoubtedly a work for television: The duplication of a person into a "dreamer (A)" and "his dreamt self (B)"l is possible only in television, that is, in the field of electronic video-technique which allows electronic montage (it was recorded with two cameras). "Nacht und Traume" records pure images, pure visual elements; it is a sort of 'painting on the screen' ,2 a silent painting - in slow motion. These pieces also recall real paintings on which Beckett based his visions. 3 "What Where", though first produced as a stage play, was in a way right from the beginning made for television, as the Suttgart production shows: Bim, Bern and Born are imaginations of Bam, they are "dreamt selves" of Bam, which can most adequately be represented by images on the screen, by electronic 'apparitions'. Bam's face is blown-up like the "dreamt self" in "Nacht und Traume" and placed next to the faces of the other characters by electronic montage. The faces are illuminated and disappear again in darkness like candles that are extinguished. Bam's words "I switch on" make it clear that the faces shown (as well as the voices) are pure imaginations. On the other hand, the television plays can - if desired - be produced on stage ("Eh Joe", "Ghost Trio", " ... but the clouds ... ", "Nacht und Traume"): some have indeed been produced on stage ("Quad/Quadrat", "What Where", "Not I", even "Nacht und Traume").4 The producer has only got to introduce a voice off/ voice­ over (Le. a voice from off-stage), to use the on and off of spotlights (and not so much the actor's movements coming on stage or going oft), and to mark one of the characters as the "dreamer" - by immobilizing him or presenting him with head inclined in front of the stage (" ... but the clouds ... ", "What Where"). But does that not mean that we are 313 introducing the means of television on the stage? This is even true literally: Robert Scanlan could not do without a screen when staging "Nacht und Traume".5 In his first work for television, Eh Joe, Beckett began to separate character and voice, actor and voice; he used a possibility which the medium of television offered him. The result is that we get the impression of having insight into the character's mind. Another effect of this technique of dissociation is the deconstruction of any form of naturalism. Beckett resumed this technique in "Ghost Trio" and" ... but the clouds ... ". In Eh Joe the male voice (voice-over) represents parts of an imaginary dialogue; in "Ghost Trio" a sort of female narrator gives her comments; in " ... but the clouds ... " there is a mixture of an imaginary interior monologue and pieces of narration. In "Nacht und Traume" the place of the voice is taken over by the presentation of a silent dream, voice is replaced by image. (The separation of dreamer and dreamt self, of reality and imagination, of real voice and voice­ over, of presence and remembered past has its source in "Krapp's Last Tape"; we can see that the idea of this separation originates in reflections on the possibilities of a medium - the tape-recorder as a storage medium.) In " ... but the clouds ... ", "What Where" and especially "Nacht und Traume" the images are more important than the voice (Beckett mistrusted words more and more); in all three plays Beckett introduced - according to Film-semiotics - a person dreaming or imagining (head inclined in " ... but the clouds ... " and "Nacht und Traume", head upright in "What Where"); pure images occur in silence, for instance the blown-up face of the woman in " ... but the clouds ... ", the 'switched on' faces in "What Where", the "dreamt self' in "Nacht und Traume" (together with the consoling hand offering a chalice and a cloth); "Nacht und Traume", Beckett's most silent and motionless 'motion picture', even dispenses with the voice: its deep silence is interrupted only by a few bars of Schubert's song. (The line "Kehret wieder hoI de Traume" is later echoed by the line "I switch on" in "What Where"; both initiation formulas are followed by imaginations or recollections (think also of the "knock" in "Ohio Impromptu", the word "more" in Rockaby, the line "let us now run through it again" in " ... but the clouds ... " and the spotlights in Play and That Time; all of these devices go back to the use of a prompter in Eleutheria. 6 The face as the most adequate object for the medium of television has become the main object of representation. "Not I" and "Quadrat" differ from the plays mentioned: In "Not I" character and voice, "mouth" and voice, as it were, are linked together 314 .
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