Samuel Beckett and the Reception of Harold Pinter's Early
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Theatre of the Absurd: Few Points
ENGA_Semester-6_Dr P. Chattopadhyay Modern European Drama - Theatre of the Absurd- CC-13-PC Theatre of the Absurd: Few points Absurdist theatre responded to the destruction and anxieties of the 20th century by questioning the nature of reality and illusion. Andrew Dickson introduces some of the most important figures in the Theatre of the Absurd, including Eugène Ionesco, Martin Esslin and Samuel Beckett. You could say there’s something inherently absurd about theatre. Thousands of years old though it is, the practice of one set of people impersonating another set of people, performing for a watching audience, offers plenty of opportunity to explore the boundary between illusion and reality – still more so when that performance is conducted behind an invisible ‘fourth wall’. From William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to Tim Crouch’s The Author (2009), countless plays have explored the metatheatrical tensions that surround live drama, its dizzying potential for collapse, and the possibilities it offers to tease and beguile an audience. But in theatre the word ‘absurdism’ is often used more specifically, to refer to primarily European drama written in the 1950s and 1960s by writers including Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter, often grouped together as ‘the theatre of the absurd’, a phrase coined by the critic Martin Esslin. Characterised by a fascination with absurdity in all its forms – philosophical, dramaturgical, existential, emotional – this is a drama form that pushes theatre to extremes, and which asks probing questions about what reality (and unreality) really looks like. Often interpreted as a response to the challenges of living in a 20th-century world that seems devoid of meaning, it is frequently far more nightmarish than funny. -
Fame Attack : the Inflation of Celebrity and Its Consequences
Rojek, Chris. "The Icarus Complex." Fame Attack: The Inflation of Celebrity and Its Consequences. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012. 142–160. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781849661386.ch-009>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 16:03 UTC. Copyright © Chris Rojek 2012. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 9 The Icarus Complex he myth of Icarus is the most powerful Ancient Greek parable of hubris. In a bid to escape exile in Crete, Icarus uses wings made from wax and feathers made by his father, the Athenian master craftsman Daedalus. But the sin of hubris causes him to pay no heed to his father’s warnings. He fl ies too close to the sun, so burning his wings, and falls into the Tsea and drowns. The parable is often used to highlight the perils of pride and the reckless, impulsive behaviour that it fosters. The frontier nature of celebrity culture perpetuates and enlarges narcissistic characteristics in stars and stargazers. Impulsive behaviour and recklessness are commonplace. They fi gure prominently in the entertainment pages and gossip columns of newspapers and magazines, prompting commentators to conjecture about the contagious effects of celebrity culture upon personal health and the social fabric. Do celebrities sometimes get too big for their boots and get involved in social and political issues that are beyond their competence? Can one posit an Icarus complex in some types of celebrity behaviour? This chapter addresses these questions by examining celanthropy and its discontents (notably Madonna’s controversial adoption of two Malawi children); celebrity health advice (Tom Cruise and Scientology); and celebrity pranks (the Sachsgate phone calls involving Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross). -
Theatre of the Absurd : Its Themes and Form
THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD: ITS THEMES AND FORM by LETITIA SKINNER DACE A. B., Sweet Briar College, 1963 A MASTER'S THESIS submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS Department of Speech KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 1967 Approved by: c40teA***u7fQU(( rfi" Major Professor il PREFACE Contemporary dramatic literature is often discussed with the aid of descriptive terms ending in "ism." Anthologies frequently arrange plays under such categories as expressionism, surrealism, realism, and naturalism. Critics use these designations to praise and to condemn, to denote style and to suggest content, to describe a consistent tone in an author's entire ouvre and to dissect diverse tendencies within a single play. Such labels should never be pasted to a play or cemented even to a single scene, since they may thus stifle the creative imagi- nation of the director, actor, or designer, discourage thorough analysis by the thoughtful viewer or reader, and distort the complex impact of the work by suppressing whatever subtleties may seem in conflict with the label. At their worst, these terms confine further investigation of a work of art, or even tempt the critic into a ludicrous attempt to squeeze and squash a rounded play into a square pigeon-hole. But, at their best, such terms help to elucidate theme and illuminate style. Recently the theatre public's attention has been called to a group of avant - garde plays whose philosophical propensities and dramatic conventions have been subsumed under the title "theatre of the absurd." This label describes the profoundly pessimistic world view of play- wrights whose work is frequently hilarious theatre, but who appear to despair at the futility and irrationality of life and the inevitability of death. -
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
PROSCENIUM Waiting For Godot By Samuel Beckett Waiting For Godot For Waiting Wednesday 16th January to Saturday 19th January 2008 Compass Theatre, Ickenham PROSCENIUM Waiting For Godot By Samuel Beckett Waiting For Godot For Waiting Wednesday 16th January to Saturday 19th January 2008 Compass Theatre, Ickenham WAITING FOR GODOT The Author 1906 Born on Good Friday, April 13th, at Foxrock, near Dublin, son of a quantity surveyor. Both parents were Protestants. BY SAMUEL BECKETT 1920-3 Educated at Portora Royal School, Ulster. 1923-7 Trinity College, Dublin. In BA examinations placed first in first class in Modern Literature (French and Italian). Summer 1926: first contact with France, a bicycle tour of the chateaux of the Loire. 1927-8 Taught for two terms at Campbell College, Belfast. CAST: 1928-30 Exchange lecturer in Paris. Meets James Joyce. 1930 First separately published work, a poem Whoroscope. Four terms as assistant lecturer in French, Trinity College, Dublin. Estragon.....................................................................................................Duncan Sykes Helped translate Joyce’s Anna Livia Plurabella into French. 1931 Performance of first dramatic work, Le Kid, a parody sketch Vladimir ................................................................................................ Mark Sutherland after Corneille. Proust, his only major piece of literary criticism, Pozzo .............................................................................................................. Robert Ewen published. -
Fawlty Towers - Episode Guide
Performances October 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15 Three episodes of the classic TV series are brought to life on stage. Written by John Cleese & Connie Booth. Music by Dennis Wilson By Special Arrangement With Samuel French and Origin Theatrical Auditions Saturday June 18, Sunday June 19 Thurgoona Community Centre 10 Kosciuszko Road, Thurgoona NSW 2640 Director: Alex 0410 933 582 FAWLTY TOWERS - EPISODE GUIDE ACT ONE – THE GERMANS Sybil is in hospital for her ingrowing toenail. “Perhaps they'll have it mounted for me,” mutters Basil as he tries to cope during her absence. The fire-drill ends in chaos with Basil knocked out by the moose’s head in the lobby. The deranged host then encounters the Germans and tells them the “truth” about their Fatherland… ACT TWO – COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS It’s not a wise man who entrusts his furtive winnings on the horses to an absent-minded geriatric Major, but Basil was never known for that quality. Parting with those ill-gotten gains was Basil’s first mistake; his second was to tangle with the intermittently deaf Mrs Richards. ACT THREE – WALDORF SALAD Mine host's penny-pinching catches up with him as an American guest demands the quality of service not normally associated with the “Torquay Riviera”, as Basil calls his neck of the woods. A Waldorf Salad is not part of Fawlty Towers' standard culinary repertoire, nor is a Screwdriver to be found on the hotel's drinks list… FAWLTY TOWERS – THE REGULARS BASIL FAWLTY (John Cleese) The hotel manager from hell, Basil seems convinced that Fawlty Towers would be a top-rate establishment, if only he didn't have to bother with the guests. -
Donald Roy – Interview Transcript
THEATRE ARCHIVE PROJECT http://sounds.bl.uk Donald Roy – interview transcript Interviewer: Ewan Jeffrey 22 April 2005 Professor of Drama and theatregoer in the fifties and sixties. Revival of Music Hall after the war; detailed descriptions of Music Hall routines; Christopher Fry; response to premiere of Look Back in Anger; Waiting for Godot; the American Musical. EJ: First of all, can you give me some general background of your experience of theatre and theatregoing DR: Well, I had a provincial background. If you regard Wales as part of the English Provinces - which I don't of course, it's a separate country, it wasn't then but it is now! It took a long time to recover from being conquered by England back in the Middle Ages. Anyway, that's beside the point. I was brought up in Cardiff where there were two regular theatres, in my days there. One was straight theatre, the Prince of Wales, and the other was a touring date for... well, they were both touring theatres, but the second theatre, the new theatre, which until fairly recently was the home of the Welsh National Opera Company was in those days a first class date for touring variety shows, of which there were quite a few in the immediate aftermath of the Second War. I think this had come about largely because of the war itself, when there were so many entertainers in the armed forces, that either because they saw their... or because they were persuaded by their agents. Quite a lot of old musical hall artists came out of retirement and they appeared on radio, performed on radio frequently during the war in variety contexts, magazine programmes, that sort of thing. -
Harold Pinter's Transmedial Histories
Introduction: Harold Pinter’s transmedial histories Article Published Version Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) Open Access Bignell, J. and Davies, W. (2020) Introduction: Harold Pinter’s transmedial histories. Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television, 40. pp. 481-498. ISSN 1465-3451 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2020.1778314 Available at http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/89961/ It is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from the work. See Guidance on citing . To link to this article DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2020.1778314 Publisher: Taylor & Francis All outputs in CentAUR are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including copyright law. Copyright and IPR is retained by the creators or other copyright holders. Terms and conditions for use of this material are defined in the End User Agreement . www.reading.ac.uk/centaur CentAUR Central Archive at the University of Reading Reading’s research outputs online Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television ISSN: 0143-9685 (Print) 1465-3451 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/chjf20 Introduction: Harold Pinter’s Transmedial Histories Jonathan Bignell & William Davies To cite this article: Jonathan Bignell & William Davies (2020): Introduction: Harold Pinter’s Transmedial Histories, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2020.1778314 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 18 Jun 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=chjf20 Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2020.1778314 INTRODUCTION: HAROLD PINTER’S TRANSMEDIAL HISTORIES Jonathan Bignell and William Davies This article introduces the special issue by exploring the transmediality of Harold Pinter's work. -
Keffiyeh-Clad Heirs of Streicher
VOLUME 2 No. 9 SEPTEMBER 2002 Keffiyeh-clad heirs of Streicher Ihe atrocities of September 11 drew less slaughter gentile children to make matzos '^nan a unanimous reaction from across the for Passover. Cairo, the intellectual capital *orld. The West was divided between a of the entire Muslim cosmos, boasts Ein horror-struck majority and a minority who Shams University. Here Dr Adel Sadeq, deplored the deed but felt they could President of the Arab Psychiatrists 'understand' the perpetrators. The East Association, recently intoned this paean of •displayed a different sort of division. Some praise to suicide bombers: "As a Muslims, exemplified by the ululating professional psychiatrist, I say that the Women caught on camera in the West height of bliss comes with the end of the "3nk, rejoiced, while others professed to countdown: ten, nine, eight, seven, six, "^tect the hand of the Israeli intelligence September 11 Ground Zero five, four, three, two, one. When the service Mossad behind the atrocity. As martyr reaches 'one' and he explodes, he June 28. The article, permed by ex-editor P''oof, they cited the Saudi-manufactured has a sense of himself flying, because he Harold Evans, talked of a "dehumanisation °^ega-lie that 4,000 Jewish employees of knows for certain that he is not dead. It is a of all Jews manufactured and propagated the World Trade Center were absent from transition to another, more beautiful, throughout the Middle East and south *ork on September 11 because they had world. None in the Western world Asia on a scale and intensity that is utterly •^een tipped off. -
That Fall by Samuel Beckett
Wednesday, November 9, 2016 at 7:00 pm Thursday–Friday, November 10–11, 2016 at 7:00 and 9:00 pm Saturday, November 12, 2016 at 3:00, 7:00, and 9:00 pm All That Fall By Samuel Beckett Pan Pan Theatre Gavin Quinn , Director Aedín Cosgrove , Set and Lighting Designer Jimmy Eadie , Sound Designer VOICES Áine Ní Mhuirí , Mrs. Rooney Phelim Drew , Christy Daniel Reardon , Mr. Tyler David Pearse , Mr. Slocum Robbie O’Connor , Tommy John Kavanagh , Mr. Barrell Judith Roddy , Miss Fitt Nell Klemen čič, Dolly Andrew Bennett , Mr. Rooney Joey O’Sullivan , Jerry This performance is approximately 70 minutes long and will be performed without intermission. These performances are made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. The Duke on 42nd Street Please make certain all your electronic devices aNEW42ND STREET ® proje ct are switched off. WhiteLightFestival.org MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center. UPCOMING WHITE LIGHT FESTIVAL EVENTS: Artist Catering provided by Zabar’s and Zabars.com Thursday–Saturday, November 10–12 at 8:00 pm at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater American Airlines is the Official Airline of Lincoln (T)here to (T)here (World premiere) Center Liz Gerring Dance Company Liz Gerring , choreographer Nespresso is the Official Coffee of Lincoln Center In collaboration with Kay Rosen Dancers: Brandon Collwes, Joseph Giordano, Pierre NewYork-Presbyterian is the Official Hospital of Guilbault, Julia Jurgilewicz, Claire Westby Lincoln Center Post-performance discussion with Liz Gerring on November 11 Co-presented by Lincoln Center’s White Light “All That Fall” by Samuel Beckett is presented Festival and Baryshnikov Arts Center through special arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc. -
': the Making and Mauling of Churchill's People (BBC1, 1974-75)
Williams J, Greaves I. ‘Must We Wait 'til Doomsday?’: The Making and Mauling of Churchill's People (BBC1, 1974-75). Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 2017, 37(1), 82-95 Copyright: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television on 19th April 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01439685.2016.1272804 DOI link to article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2016.1272804 Date deposited: 31/12/2016 Embargo release date: 19 October 2018 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence Newcastle University ePrints - eprint.ncl.ac.uk ‘MUST WE WAIT 'TIL DOOMSDAY?’: THE MAKING AND MAULING OF CHURCHILL’S PEOPLE (BBC1, 1974-75) Ian Greaves and John Williams Correspondence: John Williams, 12 Queens Road, Whitley Bay NE26 3BJ, UK. E-mail: [email protected] In 1974, the lofty ambition of a BBC drama producer to manufacture a ‘prestige’ international hit along the lines of Elizabeth R (BBC2, 1971) came unstuck. In this case study, the authors consider the plight of Churchill’s People (BBC1, 1974-75) during a time of economic strife in the UK and industrial unrest at the BBC, and ask how a series which combined so many skilled writers, directors and actors could result in such a poorly-received end product. Churchill’s People is also placed in a wider context to assess its ‘neglected’ status, the authors drawing parallels with other historical drama of the era. The series’ qualification for being ‘forgotten’ is considered in relation to its struggle in the ratings against strong competition, the ‘blacking out’ by unions of production at the BBC for eight weeks and the subsequent pressures on transmission times, prompting the authors’ consideration of a more qualified definition of ‘lost’ drama, i.e. -
British Radio Drama and the Avant-Garde in the 1950S
British radio drama and the avant-garde in the 1950s Hugh Chignell 1 Bournemouth University, UK Correspondence: Professor Hugh Chignell, Faculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset, BH12 5BB, UK. +44 (0)1202 961393 Email: [email protected] 1 British radio drama and the avant-garde in the 1950s Abstract The BBC in the 1950s was a conservative and cautious institution. British theatre was at the same time largely commercial and offered a glamorous distraction from wider social and political realities. During the decade, however, new avant-garde approaches to drama emerged, both on the stage and on radio. The avant-garde was particularly vibrant in Paris where Samuel Beckett was beginning to challenge theatrical orthodoxies. Initially, managers and producers in BBC radio rejected a radio version of Beckett’s, Waiting for Godot and other experimental work was viewed with distaste but eventually Beckett was accepted and commissioned to write All That Fall (1957), a masterpiece of radio drama. Other Beckett broadcasts followed, including more writing for radio, extracts from his novels and radio versions of his stage plays as well as plays by the experimental radio dramatist, Giles Cooper. This article examines the different change agents which enabled an initially reluctant BBC to convert enthusiastically to the avant-garde. A networked group of younger producers, men and women, played a vital role in the acceptance of Beckett as did the striking pragmatism of senior radio managers. A willingness to accept the transnational cultural flow from Paris to London was also an important factor. The attempt to reinvent radio drama using ‘radiophonic’ sound effects (pioneered in Paris) was another factor for change and this was encouraged by growing competition from television drama on the BBC and ITV. -
“I Will Never Play the Dane”: Shakespeare and the Performer's Failure
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by MURAL - Maynooth University Research Archive Library DOI: 10.1111/lic3.12470 ARTICLE “I will never play the Dane”: Shakespeare and the performer's failure Richard O'Brien University of Birmingham Abstract Correspondence Richard O'Brien, Department of Film and The cultural prestige accorded to Shakespeare's great roles Creative Writing, University of Birmingham, has made them high watermarks for ‘great acting’ in general. Birmingham, UK. Email: [email protected] They are therefore also uniquely capable of channelling a performer's sense of his own failure. The 1987 film Withnail &Ifamously ends with its title character, an out‐of‐work actor and self‐destructive alcoholic, delivering Hamlet's “What a piece of work is a man” to an audience of unre- sponsive wolves. And in 2014's The Trip to Italy, Steve Coogan plays a fictionalised version of himself: a comedian who fears he will never be remembered as a serious artist. On a visit to Pompeii, Coogan's delivery of Hamlet's speech to Yorick's skull similarly becomes a way of channelling the series's wider reflections on fame, mortality, and the value of the actor's art. Drawing on Marvin Carlson's argument that the role of Hamlet is unusually densely ghosted by its previous occupants, this article will explore how these two contemporary depictions of struggling performers evoke the received idea of the great Shakespearean role as the pinnacle of the actor's art to respond to the dilemma of how to cope with creative failure.