They … to Play a Turkish Take on Beckett

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 29 (2017) 375–387

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They … to Play A Turkish Take on Beckett

Burç İdem Dinçel PhD Candidate in Drama, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland [email protected]

Abstract

This paper seeks to present an historical overview of the Studio Players’ Beckett productions in Turkey in the 1990s, with the purpose of discussing the playwright’s role for the director Şahika Tekand during the development of her “performative staging and acting” method. After examining the Studio Players’ OedipusTrilogy (2002/2004/2006), with which the ensemble achieved international recognition, the article will conclude with a focus on a Beckett production—Play (2012)—that Tekand directed in the Istan- bul Municipality Theatre for the Istanbul Theatre Festival, so as to provide an account of the director’s first experience in working with actors outside her company.

Résumé

Cet article vise à présenter un aperçu historique des mises en scène de Beckett que le Studio Players a réalisées enTurquie dans les années 1990 et à expliquer le rôle qu’a joué Beckett dramaturge pour la metteure en scène Şahika Tekand dans le développement de sa méthode de ‘mise en scène et de jeu performatifs’. Après une évocation de l’Oedipus Trilogy (2002/2004/2006) qui a assuré au Studio Players une reconnaissance internationale, l’article se concentrera sur une mise en scène de Play que Tekand à réalisée à l’Istanbul Municipality Theatre lors du Festival de théâtre d’Istanbul en 2012. On donnera ainsi une idée de sa première expérience de travail avec des acteurs n’appartenant pas à sa troupe.

Keywords staging – reception – Beckett – Şahika Tekand – the Studio Players – Turkey

Staging Beckett, Developing a “Method”: The Case of the Studio Players

To say that Beckett is a source of inspiration for many theatre workers would be nothing new. Still, it is worth examining in detail the crucial part that Beckett’s work can play in a director’s career. In this particular respect, Şahika Tekand’s engagement with Beckett’s (meta)theatrical universe provides fertile ground not only to scrutinise how Beckett is staged and restaged in Turkey, but also for an inquiry into the ways in which Beckettian aesthetics form the backbone of a highly individual method that proves to be quite effective in moving a variety of dramatic texts from page to stage. The emergence of this method goes back to 1988 when the first founda- tions of the Studio Players were laid by Tekand and her husband Esat in Istan- bul. Initially founded as the performance group of the “Studio for Actors and Art,” the Studio Players acquired professional status in 1990. And from these early years onwards, “the ensemble adopted the principle of ‘researching and implementing the contemporary’ in performing arts, specifically in the craft of acting” (Ülgen, 47).1 This decade can be seen as one of the most substan- tial phases of this research, since throughout the 1990s, this investigation, and, by extension, its resonances in the practical field of theatre, gradually evolved into what Tekand theorised as a “performative staging and acting method.” For this, the director drew heavily on a “game concept” in which “the actor becomes exposed to the rules of the game” (qtd. in Karaboğa, 174). Within the frame of the method, the rules have a dual function: on the one hand, they provide a way for Tekand to attain the performative; and on the other, they compel both the actors and the director to be creative within the constraints imposed by the demands of the game. Tekand’s notion of the game establishes the necessary grounds to sketch the fundamental features of her method. At the outset, however, it is important to observe that “even if the staging method is based on the game concept, the ‘game’ is not an end in itself; it serves as a means for the art of theatre. The game exists simply to reveal the theatrical itself” (Ülgen, 31). As such, honesty is vital, as in, the actor’s ability to play a game honestly in the performative moment. To a certain degree, this ability hinges on the actors’ willingness to surrender themselves to the rules of the game. Furthermore, once they yield to the rules, the actors rendering the so-called dramatic plots on stage become obliged to cope with the challenges posed by the game. This honesty gives

1 Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are my own.

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’huiDownloaded from 29 Brill.com10/01/2021 (2017) 375–387 04:39:48PM via free access they … to play 377 rise to a performative conflict stemming simultaneously from the internal and external actions of the actors in the here and now, which, in turn, make all the risks taken during the performances real and allow room for human error. Amongst many others, the most evident risk in terms of adaptation that the Studio Players take in their productions is the key role attributed to the usage of (spot)lights, to an extent that the light grows into the sole authority within the performances. One can plausibly take this role literally, for the performers operating the (spot)lights are considered as “light-players” and come to be an integral part of each production. Tekand acknowledges that Beckett lies behind this conceptual framework. Her decision to stage Beckett coincides with the early stages of a period of investigation in the 1990s when she was in search of a dramatist who prof- fered the theatrical context best fitted to her staging method. With all his pre- cision, discipline, seemingly strict rules and emphasis on a form that could “accommodate the mess” (qtd. in Driver, 243), Beckett would eventually be that playwright. Tekand was especially struck by the form of Beckett’s work and its implications for performance: “When you start to translate that form into the form of a performance, you face a real challenge and an exploration process; a reversed exploration back to the text itself begins. In fact, the text presents itself as a game” (qtd. in Dinçel 2012, 96). What captures the attention in these words, is Tekand’s association of staging Beckett with the act—or rather, pathos of— translation, thereby bringing the question of fidelity into focus when mounting the author’s works: “You,as the one who stages the play considering it your duty to be aware of the responsibility towards the author, I mean, having a sense of responsibility for staging Beckett and realising at all times that you will be held responsible for staging Beckett, and act accordingly, look for a proper movement and a proper voice, not the word, the meaning, or the plot, only those things as abstract, as movement and voice” (96). Clearly driven by the demands of accountability, this directorial response to Beckett goes hand in hand with the significance attached to honesty in Tekand’s staging and acting method. Looking at the history and theatre praxis of the Studio Players can shed light on the company’s productions in the 1990s as well as the author’s reception in the Turkish theatrical scene. Whilst Jonathan Kalb states that “Beckett’s stage plays actually changed many people’s notions of what can happen, or is supposed to happen, when they enter a theatre” (124), one can hardly extend this assertion to the Turkish theatrical system where the central position is mainly occupied byWaitingforGodot, ever since the first production of the piece by the Little Stage in the 1954–1955 season. Apart from the State Theatres’ productions of Krapp’s Last Tape in the 1961–1962, as well as Happy Days in the 1989–1990 and 1990–1991 seasons respectively, most of the theatre practitioners in Turkey

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 29 (2017) 375–387Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 04:39:48PM via free access 378 dinçel have been inclined to stage Godot; a tendency that hindered the Turkish audience from experiencing what can happen, or is supposed to happen, when (to paraphrase Kalb) they enter into Beckett’s universe. The Studio Players went directly against the grain of this tendency by staging Happy Days (1993), “Five Short Plays” (1994) and Endgame (1998) at the margins of the Turkish theatrical system. Additionally, and maybe more significantly, by “deliberately staying away from Godot”2 (qtd. in Dinçel 2012, 42), Tekand and her ensemble not only provided Turkish spectators with a rare chance to appreciate other parts of Beckett’s theatrical universe, but also derived con- siderable benefit from Beckettian aesthetics in terms of making practical and international progress as an ensemble acting under the auspices of the “performative staging and acting method.” Of these Beckett productions, “Five Short Plays” is particularly noteworthy, owing to the novelty that Tekand introduced when staging the “dramaticules.” Katharine Worth has noted the difficulty of staging these pieces (2001, 161). Worth suggests that Katie Mitchell’s production of a “group of shorts”3 at the Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon (22 October 1997) can be regarded as one probable way of staging these plays (161). Worth’s observation is remarkable in that it demonstrates how the question of present- ing Beckett’s abstract pieces of theatre is an issue that keeps (Western) theatre practitioners quite busy. Then again, three years earlier, Tekand had already proposed a similar solution for staging Beckett’s performative explorations of theatrical minimalism and abstraction. Composed of Act Without Words i, Act WithoutWords ii, Breath, Play and Come and Go, “Five Short Plays” was a crucial step towards introducing Beckett’s short pieces to Turkish theatre-goers. Tekand’s notes on “Five Short Plays” shows the relevance of Beckettian aesthetics to the broader concerns of the director’s practice: “It is important that the stage embodies the parallelism of life/play/stage … Whatever is happening to man [sic] in life and to character in the play is happening to the actor on the stage. ‘Just sit together as we used to in the playground …’ says Flo in Come and Go. And in reality, that is what the actor must do. ‘Just’ sit, ‘just’ go. On and within the stage he/she takes place.” Laying special stress on the performer’s obligation to “undertake the required act in its entire simplicity and through

2 That being said, Tekand seems to have changed her stance towards Waiting for Godot over the course of the years, as she is currently working on Godot for the upcoming Istanbul Theatre Festival in 2016. 3 Comprised of two programmes—“Out of the Dark” and “Over the Years”—the production included the performances of Footfalls, Not I, Rockaby, Embers, A Piece of Monologue and That Time. See the “Staging Beckett” database for the details of the production; https://www .reading.ac.uk/staging-beckett/Persons.aspx?p=party-2713157639 (accessed 23 October 2017).

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’huiDownloaded from 29 Brill.com10/01/2021 (2017) 375–387 04:39:48PM via free access they … to play 379 his/her total sincerity,” this approach is likely to bring about a (meta)theatrical expression, where this apparently simple “parallelism of life/play/stage” in the present tense culminates in the depiction of a constant conflict between human willpower and some form of authority. Whether this authority is sym- bolised by the whistle and the point as in Beckett’s ActWithoutWordsi and ii, or the light in Play, or is signified by the rules of each particular game that Tekand devises for each performance, it is the aesthetic motor behind the productions of the Studio Players.

Oedipus Trilogy

The Studio Players’ production of Endgame in 1998 would be the last Beckett piece that Tekand directed with her own troupe. Nevertheless, it can plausibly be argued that Beckettian aesthetics continued to shape Tekand’s theatre practice over the course of her directorial career. While for Tekand the common ground between her theatrical aesthetics and those of Beckett resides in “cre- ating rules as well as calling forth a grammar which expresses the same things for spectators and performers at the same time” (qtd. in Dinçel 2012, 42–43), beneath this syntax there is also a connection with Ancient Greek tragedy. To be able to flesh out this ontological link between Beckett and the idea of the tragic, the following discussion shifts from the practical field of theatre to the metaphysical aspects of Attic tragedies. Were it not for Katharine Worth’s foresight, this link would almost go unno- ticed within Beckett Studies. In a perceptive article that appeared in a volume dedicated to the reception of Ancient Greek tragedies,4 Worth argues that “Beckett is the modern playwright above all others who has recreated (in his own terms) not only much of the theatrical stylization—scenic, musi- cal, poetic—of the ancient Greek theatre, but also something of its spirit. He has restored to theatre a metaphysical dimension through situations that might seem to deny its existence” (2004, 265–266). Worth delves into a selec- tion of intersections between Beckett and the Ancient Greek tradition for the remaining part of her study. She points to “severe physical restraints” (Win- nie as a distant echo of Prometheus), “messengers” (the boys in Waiting for Godot and Ghost Trio), “music and dance” (Music as a stage figure in Words

4 It is important to note that Beckett was the only modern playwright whose works were discussed in relation to the reception of Ancient Greek tragedies in this volume, edited by such renowned classicists as Fiona Macintosh and Edith Hall.

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 29 (2017) 375–387Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 04:39:48PM via free access 380 dinçel and Music and Lucky’s “dance” in Godot), “mask-like effects” (the appearance of Mouth in Not I) and the “chorus” (used in Play). Although Worth does not go into the details of this metaphysical dimension, the analogies she draws between Ancient Greek theatre and Beckett demonstrates that the bond is there. George Steiner’s notion of “absolute tragedy” helps tease out the metaphysical facet of this bond: “absolute tragedy exists only where substantive truth is assigned to the Sophoclean statement that ‘it is best never to have been born’” (1996, xi). Birth merges with death over and over again in Ancient Greek tragedy: so much so that the correlation between the two concepts proves to be an established benchmark in the afterlife of the idea of the tragic. Hence for Steiner, the roots of the tragic absolute lie precisely in the “original sin” which “implies that men and women’s presence on this earth is fundamen- tally absurd or unwelcome, that our lives are not a gift or a natural unfolding, but self-punishing anomaly” (1998, 536).Within this context, “absolute tragedy” amounts to an aesthetic articulation of an ontological human condition that is itself tragic in the first place. It is important to keep in mind that Steiner’s reflections on tragedy span a period of almost fifty years and as early as the publication of The Death of Tragedy in 1961, he was responsive to Beckett’s art and its connotations for his conception of “absolute tragedy.” Yet, through the course of these years Steiner regularly shifted his critical grounds as regards to Beckett’s “admittance” to this canon of “absolute tragedy.”5 Nonetheless, he finally admitted the tragic vein inherent in Beckett in his last piece on the subject in 2008: “the necessary and sufficient premise, the axiomatic constant in tragedy is that of an ontological homelessness—witness this motif in Beckett” (30). Steiner’s meditations on tragedy resonate with Beckett’s work in two ways. The first one is at the textual level. In his grasp of the nature of the human condition, Beckett stands closer to Attic tragedians than any other translator does; almost two and a half thousand years after Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, he would strike exactly the same tragic notes in his oeuvre. Take, for example, the basic premise of A Piece of Monologue: “Birth was the death of him. Again. Words are few. Dying too. Birth was the death of him” (Beckett 1984, 265). Or, even more pertinently, consider the root proposition of the fourth “Fizzle”: “I gave up before birth, it is not possible otherwise, but birth there had to be”

5 In addition to such Attic tragedies as Oedipus Tyrannus and the Bacchae, Steiner also allows room for works such as Racine’s Phèdre, Shakespeare’sTimonof Athens and Büchner’sWoyzeck in his canon, yet not for an instant renouncing the argument that the examples of “absolute tragedy” are rare.

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(Beckett 1995, 234). Secondly, a closer look at one of the rare instances where Beckett comments on the notion of tragedy is of utmost importance: “Tragedy is not concerned with human justice. Tragedy is the statement of an expiation, but not the expiation of a codified breach of local arrangement, organized by the knaves for the fools.The tragic figure represents the expiation of the original sin, of the original and eternal sin of him and all his ‘soci malorum,’ the sin of having been born” (Beckett 1965, 49). This link between Beckett and Ancient Greek tragedy is visible in the Stu- dio Players’ Oedipus Trilogy (2002/2004/2006). As was hinted at previously, along with providing Tekand with the most suitable theatrical context for her staging approach, Beckett also supplied the director with a tragic dramaturgical mechanism that “coerce[d] the actor to body forth only the necessary corporeal action, instead of playing to the audience” (Dinçel 2011, 339). Once concretised on stage, moreover, the absolute tragic vein intrinsic to Beckett would scarcely escape the attention of the spectators. This of course is a mere assumption, since, as Steiner in The Death of Tragedy cautions, “the translation of the pure tragic axiom into a performative act is infrequent” (1998, 537). Seen in this light, Tekand’s distinct rewritings of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyran- nus, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone as Where is Oedipus?, Oedipus in Exile and Eurydice’s Cry respectively, gain additional significance in the sense that they furnish an occasion for monitoring the performative allusions of this act of translation. Oedipus Trilogy as a whole problematizes the relation between contemporary human beings and the dominant systems they inhabit by posing two questions—“who?” and “why?” in Where is Oedipus? and Oedipus in Exile— and the keyword “enough” in Eurydice’s Cry—within the framework of singular games (puzzle, interrogation, and sets of limited physical actions) conceived for each individual tragedy. Whilst Where is Oedipus? and Oedipus in Exile are performed in a set of twelve boxes situated across three levels of a large two- storey structure, in Eurydice’s Cry the edifice is ruined and remains in the back- ground. Tekand’s notes on Oedipus in Exile show the performative dynamics of the trilogy: “The truth behind what Oedipus had done and what he had gone through is reached by a game of trial, which takes its tenseness from the restrictiveness of the game spaces and the interrogative quality of the light.The audience watches the story of exiled Oedipus’ acceptance to Colonus, while at the same time practically expects the answer which the actor is obliged to give when the light in his cell is on.” In view of the director’s explanation, therefore, it becomes possible to pinpoint the persistent trait that the company uses to embody the constant conflict between modern man and the system: light. The director’s notes on Eurydice’s Cry are more telling in this regard: “For the player,

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 29 (2017) 375–387Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 04:39:48PM via free access 382 dinçel all of the risks on stage are for real as they were on the previous plays. The players are directed by light. In this play, the players are also subject to an obligation which works by hinging on the game rule [sic] that comes about through the relationship among the restrictiveness and order of the movement system and the key words.” As such, the light itself turns out to be the ultimate manifesta- tion of authority by prompting performers to (re)act whenever it interrogates them in the palpability of the present time.

Play

More than being a muse, therefore, for Tekand, Beckett played a key role for the director over the entire course of her journey with the Studio Players. Enoch Brater’s discussion of Play, for instance, could be a discussion of the Oedipus Trilogy:

In Play, where three characters involved in a sordid love triangle are literally ‘potted’ in large urns on a darkened set, Beckett seems as much concerned with the movement of his spotlight as he is with anything else. Technology with a stage personality is the real hero of this dramatic ren- dition, making Play a quartet rather than a trio. The privileged spotlight initiates the action, and controls it as well. Players recite their lines only when their privacy has been invaded by this luminous source of energy. 28

Or, to make the point even more strongly, as Anna McMullan puts it: “Each figure speaks only when the spotlight prompts him/her, not in interaction with the others, of whom each appears to be oblivious. The ‘story’ told by the text is therefore uttered only in fragments. There is no chronological order in the figures’ ‘discourse’ or relation of the narrative, so that the text shifts backwards and forwards in time, as well as from a narrative point of view, making it very difficult to piece together into a ‘whole’” (21–22). The fact that McMullan’s discussion of Play is (sub)titled “Theatre on Trial” can be deemed as a minor, yet decisive detail that makes her observation especially relevant to the theatre praxis of the Studio Players, in that conventional performing habits of the actors are put to test against the uncompromising demands of the “performative staging and acting method.” In this particular context, Tekand’s (re)interpretation of Beckett’s Play at Istanbul Municipality Theatre for the 18th Istanbul Theatre Festival in 2012 deserves particular consideration. As opposed to her approach to Beckett with

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’huiDownloaded from 29 Brill.com10/01/2021 (2017) 375–387 04:39:48PM via free access they … to play 383 the Studio Players,6 in this production Tekand chose to intervene radically in the staging of the text by multiplying the number of characters. Hence the cast of ten female and four male performers from the Municipality Theatre, in addition to two “light-players” and one male performer from the Studio Players. Tekand’s choice to include her “light-players” and one performer as a security blanket in this specific production indicates that she did not want to leave things to luck when collaborating with actors who are not accustomed to working within such parameters. All the same, this decision is likely to be read as a serious measure taken by the director against the nasty surprises that might occur during the performance, diminishing the reality of the risks taken on stage, as Tekand herself would probably admit. Nevertheless, entrust- ing the most performative aspect of the production above all to the hands of the Studio Players’ “light-players” is indicative of how distinctive Tekand’s staging approach has become through the years; it turns out to be difficult for the director to channel the method in its entirety into the body of another theatrical institution without the assistance of performers from her own ensemble. On that note, it is worth mentioning Esat Tekand’s impressive stage design; a gigantic construction which is in tune with the director’s multiplication of the figures from Beckett’s text (see Figure 1). The precedents of this striking design can easily be located in Where is Oedipus? and Oedipus in Exile and this staging approach shows Tekand’s endeavour to transplant her method to the Municipality Theatre. Perhaps the best way to scrutinise the outcomes of this effort would be to look at the performative dynamics of the production. The most apparent liberty that Tekand takes with Beckett’s text is her incorporation of the author’s stage directions into the performance. In the text, Beckett establishes the rules of the game to be played: “The transfer of light from one face to another is immediate.Noblackout,i.e.returntoalmostcompletedarknessof opening,except where indicated. The response to light is immediate. Faces impassive throughout. Voices toneless except where an expression is indicated” (1984, 147). In so doing, Beckett not only seizes upon the mobility of the actors who are going to perform his Play, but also constrains their most essential instruments, such as gestures and voices. Nonetheless, in Tekand’s Play, inside (and at various times outside of) the so-called confines of the performing space allocated to the actors, the performers are free to use their bodies, gestures, voices, and so on. This freedom, in turn, results in a performance that is the direct opposite of

6 With the Studio Players, the only playwright whose texts Tekand staged with almost no intervention was Beckett.

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figure 1 Play, directed by Şahika Tekand, stage design by Esat Tekand, Muhsin Ertuğrul Theatre, Istanbul, 2012. that which Beckett so meticulously prescribes in his stage directions. As such, each time Beckett’s stage directions are uttered on stage, the actors, in a way, affirm that, rather than performing that play, they are performing another play. And there is no harm in that. After all, the relative success of a given theatre production does in no way depend on the “literal” translation of what is written on the page into the language of the stage. Yet, when it comes to staging Beck- ett’s (meta)theatrical pieces, one can barely take this emancipatory approach for granted. Amongst others, one of the dramaturgical hallmarks of Beckett’s theatrical pieces is the unique way in which he devises them as mechanisms whose function on stage is to embody his “machines”—Peter Brook does not call Beckett’s characters “theatre machines” (1996, 69) without reason. As such, even the slightest interference with the author’s text would immediately affect the mechanism itself. Once the dynamics of the mechanism are altered, the piece in question thus becomes liable to be transformed into another work entirely, even if the production goes under the name of Beckett. These critical remarks, however, by no means detract from the merits of Tekand’s Play; the director shows that she could have staged the piece in a manner that would comply with Beckett’s mechanism, without necessarily “potting” the actors in large urns, since the “light-players” are skilled enough to command the performance by reducing the characters to mere heads in darkness. Instead,Tekand opts to translate Beckett’s universe into the dynamics of the performance during the intervals of the play. It is precisely in these intervals where the actors’ acts without words and the sudden appearance of

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Hamm with his bloodstained handkerchief might evoke a Beckettian note for the spectators. Throughout the intervals, these intertextual references abound to such an extent that after a certain point, the sole thing left for the audience members sensitive to Beckett is to articulate Hamm’s opening lines—“Me … to play”—in their imagination, so as to feel at home with the author in the production, no matter how the production bends towards an aesthetic that is simultaneously Beckettian and a far cry from what Beckett composed. Despite the peril, this staging approach bestows upon the production an extra (meta)theatrical dimension where the mute cries of the actors in the intervals of Play resound with Beckett’s universe as a whole. To conclude this account of Tekand’s Play, and, by extension, her aesthetic relationship with Beckett, a note on the acting styles observed in the production: that Tekand staged Play within the Istanbul Municipality Theatre for the Istanbul Theatre Festival provided her with the opportunity to try her hand at conveying her highly Beckettian “performative staging and acting method” to another theatrical institution. Be that as it may, each time the play repeated itself, the actors staggered more and more between their conventional habits of performing and the demands of the director’s method, yet managed to deliver a relatively remarkable performance. Tekand’s reworking of Beckett’s Play at Istanbul Municipality Theatre is significant in that it allows one to grasp the evolution of the director’s performance ethos. Tekand’s “game concept” and the ideas of honesty and accountability in performance took her straight to Beckett’s oeuvre: “I saw that Beckett’s literature supported what I had in mind,” says Tekand, “I perceived that what he had accomplished on paper had a certain rationality to it, akin to what I wanted to realise on stage. There is nothing nonsensical in these texts; the limits of responsibility clearly defined, the grammar to it apparent, each level obvious. That’s why I find it rather hard to think Beckett as a field of experimentation. I want to state this in relation to what I said at the beginning: you should have responsibility for the fact that you are experimenting on that certain text” (qtd. in Dinçel 2012, 115). At first glance, the liberties that Tekand takes with Beckett’s Play might give the contradictory impression that the director is “experimenting on that certain text” in her initial experience in working with actors outside the Studio Players. Still, her comments on her interpretation of the piece suggest otherwise: “I remained very faithful to Beckett but there in the production is a bit of Şahika as well” (qtd. in Özbay). Actually, Tekand’s aesthetic concerns in her production of Play over- ride the specific mechanism that Beckett devised. Even so, it is exactly these liberties that fling the spectators into Beckett’s world by extending the notion of theatre beyond the text itself. The fact that Tekand assumes full responsibility for each and every liberty that she takes with Beckett’s Play by justifying all

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 29 (2017) 375–387Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 04:39:48PM via free access 386 dinçel of them through extra-textual references to the author’s universe is what gives the production real weight.

Works Cited

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Ülgen, Tuluğ, “Stüdyo Oyuncuları ve Oedipus Üçlemesi,” in Tiyatro Eleştirmenliği ve Dramaturji Bölümü Dergisi vol. 11 (Istanbul: Istanbul up, 2007), 25–51. Worth, Katharine, Samuel Beckett’s Theatre: Life Journeys (Oxford: Oxford up, 2001). Worth, Katharine, “Greek Notes in Samuel Beckett’s Theatre Art,” in Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh and Amanda Wrigley eds., Dionysus since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millenium, (Oxford: Oxford up, 2004), 265–283.

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