Questions on Godot

1) What is the temporal context for this play? At one point in the beginning of the play, Didi says, "We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties."

2) Going off of question 1, how can a production reflect this temporal context and space through scenery, music, cues, etc?

3) What can we make of the various and resounding Biblical messages throughout the play? Another way of asking this is: How can we allow our audience, who may not be informed of the Biblical implications, to understand them?

4) I'm increasingly interested in Beckett's stage directions. As Erin pointed out last class, how can we take Beckett's directions in light of all the renditions of this production? In particular, Didi, Gogo, and Pozzo's reactions to Lucky's monologue is detailed and even tracked throughout the course of the speech. What if this doesn't fit into the context of one particular interpretation?

5) In relation to question 5, how can we interpret/manage the physicality of this play? Although the play is historically credited to "not much happening" there seems to be a plethora of physical motion, abuse, and self-expression through movement. (See the stage direction on page 82 - With sudden fury VLADIMIR starts kicking LUCKY, hurling abuse at him as he does so. But he hurts his foot and moves away limping and groaning. LUCKY stirs. Also, this is particularly interesting to think about in terms of Laurel and Hardy's "The Music Box")

6) After all the profound meaning that can be gleaned from this play, why does Beckett choose to end it on Estragon's dropped trousers? What can we make of this?

[7) This question relates to both Godot and "The Music Box." Based my presentation last class that brought up points about bourgeois society and power relations, I'm interested in how both Didi and Gogo - and to this extent Laurel and Hardy - play the roles of the lower classes that are subservient to the bourgeois. Do we find humor in their service or in the ridiculousness in the upper class systems? How do these power relationships color these two productions?]

For Production Histories

Choose one of these landmark productions of GODOT to report on to the group. (Check the COMENTS section below to see if any productions have already been claimed. 

Note: I'm afraid that "landmark" productions may be famous for their oversimplifications of the play's themes. So: while you should certainly report on your production's singular qualities, I'd encourage you to also pay attention to ways that the production deals with the play that any team would need to/want to address.

If you run across a production that isn't listed, but about which you feel passionately, email me and see if it's a good substitute.

There will be some sources for each of these productions online, but the internet is not the only place or way to do research. Reference librarians are your friends.

Susan Sontag (dir.), Sarjevo 1993

Classic Theater of Harlem, 2006--

San Quentin, 1957/Wuppertal Prison, 1954-56

French premiere, dir. Roget Blin (Paris, 1953)

Beckett’s German language production, Berlin,1974-75

American premiere (dir. Alan Schneider) and TV version (dir. Alan Schneider)

Walter Asmus, 1978 BAM (and other productions of WFG directed by him)

Mike Nichols, 1988 LCT

Peter Hall, 1955

New York, 1956

When you have selected the production you want to present on, claim it in the COMMENTS section below, so that there will be no more than one presentation on each production.

A quick response to our last dicussion of physics vs. reality: I am interested in the way that Beckettian landscapes shift and re-shift in an almost hallucinatory way. Throughout these novels names and characters interchange and replace one another almost seamlessly, and the landscape itself transforms joltingly. These transformations depict our narrators' mental landscapes (heightened sanity or insanity?)

On another note I am working with stones for my project. valuable possessions in the Beckettian world include stones, pencils, paper, old hats, and other small possessions. At one point these objects become invaluable, like lovers, but are then discarded in order to make room for another. These objects are then missed and grieved over. I wonder if this sequence references the characters' profound loneliness or whether Beckett is doing more with these seemingly inconsequential objects. Anything has sentimental value when one cares for it long enough. The object becomes curiously tied with the person's history and trajectory.

Just a thought on affirmations and negations (in reference to my last post) in Malone Dies: "But my notes have a curious tendency, as I realize at last, to annihilate all they purport to record" (252).

 I realize this post is quite choppy and all over the place.

Recursion

I reckon there's something to be said for recursion.

Dictionaries say this:

Recursive -
[Computing] relating to or involving a program or routine of which a part requires the application of the whole, so that its explicit interpretation requires in general many successive executions.

I fancy our sensory experience of existence, beyond which there is arguably nothing else (for ever and ever, Amen), gets a wee bit more engrossing and attractive when one has ready access to varying levels of awareness of this experience.  If I were bold I'd say "To exist to exist wholly [holy?] necessitates an intuitive or deliberate perception of an infinite series of perceptive levels beginning [perhaps] at the level of physical phenomena."

Slugs.

A slug, slugs along. 
A [lucky] slug has slug-sex and eats slug-food. 
This slug-sex and slug-food is probably damn good if you're a slug.  [Maybe there's bad slug-sex and food too]. 
There is also the off chance, if you lead a slug-existance that some punk-kid will empty the contents of Papa's table shakers all over your glorious-slimy slug anatomy, sending you into a world of biblical-level suffering. 

The ability to step outside of our immediate experience of pleasant and unpleasant, visceral attraction and aversion to environmental and psychological stimuli adds another layer of cognition to our dealings with the sensuous world.  Claiming the agency to decide [intuitively or intentionally] to sense one's sensing or appreciate one's appreciation of intense attraction, aversion, boredom, pride, elation, etc., I'd say, fosters a depth of perception which, when enjoyed in moderation can be very appealing.  

Once one adds the first layer of recursive appreciation, there logically (whatever that means) is no clear end to the number of layers one might add:

One could feasibly appreciate the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation ...
[ad nauseum]. 

Whether this be a logical asymptote with little to no appreciable significance in your daily experience, or the intersection of Earth St. & Nirvana Blvd., the Truth is, its curious as all hell to ponder 'bout. 
I dig it. 

I read [allusions to] something of this [maybe] in Beckett. 

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?

Symmetry and Ambiguity in Molloy

Beckett seems to be obsessed with affirmations and negations that directly follow one another. Molloy, for example, lives in a liminal space between opposites. He states a fact or observation only to immediately negate it. The identities of those around him are not fixed, and he makes a point of consistently changing their names throughout the narrative in order to emphasize their shifting nature.

This structure made me have to choose my own reality in the story--the places, the names, etc, but even after having made a choice I found myself flopping back and forth between one reality and another. For instance: Was it raining or not? Was it midnight or not? After thinking that I had made a choice for raining and midnight (since Beckett had already planted these images in my head) I could not comfortably imagine the scene since the negations kept popping up in my head. I found myself in a doubtful state reminiscent of Molloy's confusion.

Two quotes I found particularly interesting: "I always had a mania for symmetry" (79), and "But I would rather not affirm anything on this subject" (59). Molloy's mania for symmetry may partly explain his inability of providing a conclusive fact, since he must also provide an opposite in order to balance the symmetry.

Beckett also plays with the ambiguity surrounding the identity of Molloy--is he Moran at a different time? Did Moran make him up as a symbol of his decaying sanity?

Decay of the body

As I've been reading Molloy, I've been thinking about Beckett's relationship to the body. In the limited scope of things I've read, Beckett seems fixated on bodily functions. His characters' excretions and cruder urges interrupt (or penetrate, yuk yuk) the text for me: from nowhere, Hamm will need to piss or start pissing; Molloy will recall his May-December deflowering; Malone is voiding his son's sparse excrement. He takes a childish delight in these interruptions, like he's saying, "Tee hee, poop, tee hee."

But he's also obsessed with how bodies fall apart and fail us. There's always some kind of difficulty or dysfunction with Beckett's bodily functions. Thus far, no one ever poops correctly or pees with ease, not to mention sleep. The most pronounced failure for me is the decay of mobility. Malloy goes through a complete breakdown of mobility as he wanders through the forest: in a sort of reverse Sphinx's riddle, he goes from one good leg, one bad; to two bad legs; to no legs, walking with his hands and tools. Still, though, he moves with an intense purpose. No matter how difficult his mobility is, he sets into it with... not a passion, but with a drive. He drags himself across the forest floor, grunting, "Mother," along the way. But he doesn't seem particularly happy when he gets closer to his goal.

Does anybody have crutches I can borrow and play with? I'm thinking about trying to mimic or work through Malloy's decay. I'm worried I don't have the upper body strength for his trek through the forest, though, so if worse comes to worst I'll play with Malone's "touch of neuralgia" after he's left home. In either case, I think Beckett's relationship to the body (his body?) is something I'm interested in exploring further.