This thesis has been approved by The Honors Tutorial College and the School of Theater ——————————————— Dr. Matthew Cornish Director of Studies, Theater ——————————————— Shelley Delaney Former Professor, Theater Thesis Advisor Krapp’s Last Tape Under Quarantine: A Contemporary Adaptation ——————————————————— A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University ——————————————————— In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater ——————————————————— by Seth Eggenschwiller May 2021 Table of Contents: —————————————————————— Introduction 1 Reexamining Beckett 2 Seeing Beckett 4 Contemporizing Beckett 7 Reagan’s Endgame 8 Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo 11 Waiting for Godot in New Orleans 14 Krapp’s Last Tape Under Quarantine 18 Rehearsal Journal 21 Conclusion 26 Production Photos 29 Works Cited 32 Eggenschwiller 1 Krapp’s Last Tape Under Quarantine: A Contemporary Adaptation Introduction Samuel Beckett, in his lifetime (1906-1989), avoided political theater to the best of his ability. He strived to make his plays timeless and universal rather than actionable and contemporary. He also avidly resisted productions that adapted his plays. Even now, many years after his death, Beckett’s estate maintains a tight grip on how theaters stage his work, enforcing compliance with each stage direction. Despite Beckett and his estate’s stubborn guidelines, theatermakers often perceive his plays as undeniably contemporary. The plays contain strong images of catastrophe, war, desolation, loneliness, and numerous other bleak themes. These images, to some, feel unmistakably modern in certain despairing contexts. In the midst of the Siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990’s, Susan Sontag produced Beckett’s most popular play, W aiting for Godot. After Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans in 2005, Paul Chan also mounted a production of Waiting for Godot, set in the city’s streets. Beckett himself chided Joanne Akalaitis’s production of Endgame , performed under Reagan’s brutal neglect of homeless Americans. Opposing analyses of Beckett’s work, traditionalist and contemporary, have collided in multiple legal battles between bold theater companies and Beckett’s estate. Hartley Alexander recalls these legal battles in his essay, “Beckett’s Legal Scuffles and the Interpretation of the Plays.” Alexander writes, “Beckett's legal scuffles have taken several forms: court action, the withdrawal of already-granted performance rights, a refusal to renew them , compromises forced by the threat of litigation” (Alexander). But despite Beckett’s objections, particularizing the settings of his plays to contemporary Eggenschwiller 2 environments enhances the dramatic themes within them and deepens their impact on the community they are performed in, as seen by three challenging productions that have inspired this thesis project: a timely adaptation of Krapp’ s Last Tape. In this paper I argue for the importance of reexamining revered figures in the theatrical canon by critically investigating Beckett’s personal life alongside his work, and I analyze three modernized productions of Beckett’s plays. I then explain how these productions inspired my thesis production, and detail my unique design concept for Krapp’s Last Tape. Also, I include a detailed journal of my experiences producing the play safely and in-person during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reexamining Beckett Beckett is a widely celebrated writer, known not only for his plays, but also his novels, poems, and short stories. He could be considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Naturally, numerous critics and scholars have written at length about his unique style of work. 1 Beckett’s dramas, particularly, are unparalleled by other playwrights. The barren and desolate settings, bizarre and mysterious characters, and absence of overarching plot or narrative create an unprecedented type of theater. Martin Esslin called it the Theater of the Absurd, and attributed Beckett as one of its creators. In his book, The Theater of the Absurd , Esslin explains how absurdism surfaced in the theater after World War II: “the certitudes and unshakable basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, they have been tested and found wanting, they have been discredited as cheap and somewhat childish illusions. The decline of religious faith was 1 Ruby Cohn and S. E. Gontarski are two notable scholars of Beckett’s work. Additionally, the Journal of Beckett Studies , edited for many years by Gontarski, continues to publish writing on Beckett biannually since 1979. Eggenschwiller 3 masked until the end of the Second World War by the substitute religions of faith in progress, nationalism, and various totalitarian fallacies. All this was shattered by the war” (Esslin xviii-xix). Uniting beliefs of morality, truth, and purpose were put into question after the horrors of World War II, which led to a theater without any purpose at all. Beckett was arguably the primary playwright behind this movement. Many absurd plays, like those of Harold Pinter, are static; they lack action and any sense of plot. This tactic appears in Beckett plays often, leaving the meaning of his drama ambiguous, ultimately allowing the reader or viewer to interpret the purpose of the plays. In The Cambridge Companion to Beckett , Michael Worton writes, “This abdication of authorial power and this appeal to the creative intervention of readers mark Beckett out as one of the founding fathers of…our Post-Modern condition” (Worton 85). Worton attributes Beckett with the beginning of an artistic movement, much like Esslin in The Theater of the Absurd. Some scholars go so far as revering Beckett as an almost inhuman entity. In The Cambridge Companion to Beckett , P. J. Murphy writes, “Beckett studies, despite a phenomenal growth over the last three decades or so, has only just begun to articulate clearly and fully the essential ‘differences’ … with which it is engaged” (Murphy 222). By differences, he means the essential philosophies that surface in the plays. Murphy implies here that Beckett’s canon contains such complexity that decades of critical thought have barely scratched the surface. What each of these scholarly examinations of Beckett lack, though, is the consideration of Beckett’s personal character and identity. While I respect the significance of Beckett’s writing, regarding him as a philosophical master risks denying the defining mundane and political qualities about his Eggenschwiller 4 life, and therefore misinterpreting his plays. James Gourley closely tracks critical reception of Beckett plays throughout Beckett’s playwriting career in Samuel Beckett in Context . Gourley explains that the critical reception of Beckett’s work grew rapidly from general indifference during the early stages of Beckett’s career, to worldwide adoration in his mid-career. Gourley goes on to say, “Beckett’s critical reception and literary success culminated in an emerging view of his work, beginning in the late 1950s, which seeks to understand the Beckettian oeuvre as somehow reflective of all ” (Gourley 403). Critics regard Beckett so highly that, Gourley explains, Beckett’s plays transcend drama and become something almost biblical. Here is the problem: Beckett is not “reflective of all .” His work reflects his perspective as a white, cisgender, and heterosexual man. Beckett’s writing cannot be universal. Whiteness is not a lack of race, and maleness is not a lack of gender, and, whatsmore, these aspects of Beckett’s identity are evident in his plays. More contemporary writers, especially those highlighted in Palgrave Macmillan’s scholarly series “New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century,” have found more grounded ways to criticize Beckett’s work, seeing it as the product of the white, heterosexual, and cisgender man Beckett was, rather than the scriptures of a philosophical demigod. Seeing Beckett Many writers have been critical of Beckett’s drama, particularly in his early career, but third-wave feminism especially began to look at his work with a more condemning eye. Beckett’s idolic status in the literary canon could not shield him from the undeniable presence of his own politics in his work. We live in an age now where we Eggenschwiller 5 know political affiliations to be unavoidable. Masculinity is political. Ambivalence is political. Even though political ambivalence permeates Beckett’s drama, he himself was not ambivalent. Emilie Morin’s book Beckett’s Political Imagination tracks Beckett’s concrete political beliefs. Morin starts her book by saying that “Beckett’s texts, with their numerous portrayals of violence, torture, dispossession, internment and subjugation, harbour a real political immediacy, while his notebooks, manuscripts and correspondence reveal a fine and astute observer of political symbols, attuned to the long history of political myths in the Irish Free State, Nazi Germany and France in the aftermath of the Second World War and during the Algerian War of Independence” (Morin 1). Beckett was anti-war, anti-fascist, and an advocate for human rights; he considered “helping writers working in less favourable circumstances…a duty” (Morin 247). In examining Beckett’s personal life, clear political affiliations emerge, which influence his drama. Unlike some other revered philosophical minds, like those from the Renaissance or Ancient Greece, the specifics of Beckett’s life are studyable. His character and his actions