Students in Mark Lord's 2013 ENDGAMES course share resources and thinking here.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Triumvirate of the Senses

As I'm nearing the end of Malone Dies and about the embark on our third Beckett story, I'm thinking about how the narrative of Malone Dies can alter my performance. In my last version, based solely on Molloy, I attempted to explore the use of senses in the story; Molloy emphasizes a lot of sound and smell in his narrative. This time around, I'm looking into the latter as a part of my performance to accentuate this duality. Additionally, with the inclusion of Malone Dies, I'm bringing in another sense: touch. As Malone says, "My sight and hearing are very bad, on the vast main no light but reflected gleams," I was interested in how Malone explores his other senses to detect his surroundings. He does talk about sound (how cumulatively the sounds of make up a kind of "buzzing"), but I was struck by his relationship to his belongings through the sense of touch. As they seem to anchor Malone to the outside world and preserve part of his humanity, his sensitivity to them, and how they work as a stimuli, is very significant to his character. I'm hoping to include this aspect of the senses in my performance. Finally, after reading The Unnamable, I'm hoping to channel another part of the senses to make up some sort of reigning triumvirate - one that can embody a written narrative through other sensory mediums.

One thing I did want to bring a part from my performance is a passage on page 232 (in my blue-cover version): "Incommoded by the rain pouring into his hat through the crack, Macmann took it off and laid it on his temple, that is to say turned his head and pressed his cheek to the ground.." This whole section I believed really linked itself nicely to Molloy, and really reminded my of Tania's performance. I think the two could be married, or synthesized, through performance really nicely. Thoughts?

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