Act without words II
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| Title: | Act without words II |
| Original title: | Acte sans paroles II |
| Original language: | French |
| Author: | Samuel Beckett |
| Publishing year: | 1959 |
| Place of premiere: | Oxford, Calderon Press Institute |
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Act without words II ( Acte sans parole II ) is a short pantomime piece by the Irish writer Samuel Beckett , his second pantomime (after Act without words I ). Like many of his works, Beckett originally wrote the piece in French and then translated it into English himself. Written in the late 1950s, the play was first performed at the Calderon Press Institute in Oxford , directed by John McGrath . It was first printed in New Departures 1 in the summer of 1959.
It was made on July 2nd, 1964 at the Aldwych Theater in London, with Freddie Jones interpreting A and Geoffrey Hinsliff B.
action
Two sacks and a small pile of carefully folded clothes lie on a low, "violently lit" platform in the background of the stage. A man is hidden in every sack: A on the right, B on the left.
A sharp goad penetrates the field of vision from the right, stabs A's sack, wakes him up for his daily routine, and disappears again. After taking a second stitch, A finally slips out of his sack. He's slow and awkward. He takes pills, prays, bites off a piece of a carrot and "spits it out in disgust". “He's a gloomy dreamer, a hypochondriac dreamer, maybe a poet.” His main activity is to carry away the still full sack and crawl back into his own sack, so that the sack from B is now exposed to the stings of the sting.
The sting reappears, this time a wheel becomes visible on which the sting is guided. The sting sticks into the other sack and disappears as before. B crawls out of his sack. He is precise, efficient, and eager. It only takes one prick to wake him up. The things that he presumably had folded up are now scattered - clear evidence that someone must still be there. But he doesn't react to it in any way, he just goes to work. He knows how to dress and takes care of his clothes. He also pays more attention to himself than A (he brushes his teeth and does morning exercise), is better organized (he checks his watch 11 times in total, and consults a map and compass before he starts closing the bags move), but his work shift is just as pointless. Beckett stage directions require B to do his routine more quickly, so that although he has more to do than A, it takes about the same amount of time as this. After moving the sacks, he strips and, instead of throwing them in a pile, puts his clothes in a pile before crawling back into his sack. The sting appears again (so far that a second wheel is now visible) and wakes A. Again, two stitches are required. A begins to play his previous pantomime again, but this time is interrupted by the blackout, with which the short piece ends.
The spectrum of the first reviews ranged from "confused to negative". The play didn't fare much better in the US, although Beckett wrote to Thomas MacGreevy, “I've never had such good reviews.” Director Alan Schneider believed, “Critics don't seem to be able to comment on what's in front of them without themselves to relate to the older pieces and rationalize their earlier reactions. "
interpretation
“The piece only begins to speak when the mechanical figures are humanized in some way. If there is consolation, it is because people share their vain and constant hardships with one another, even if they do not have direct contact with one another. ”The two men work together to address whatever external or elementary power may be to withdraw, which is hidden behind the sting and works against it with more and more wheels. It seems logical that at some point A and B will be a safe distance out of reach of the stinger, but what then? Will they remain huddled in their sacks without the sting that drives them? Is that death?
Eugene Webb takes a different perspective. He thinks that “the sting represents man's inner compulsion to work. If man can no longer rely on anything outside of himself, is there anything else that proves the value of his hope and trust? What Act Without Words II has to say about it is that man is driven by an obsessive force that never allows him to withdraw into inactivity for long. "
The nameless one ends with the famous pair of sentences: “I can't go on, I will go on.” (“I can't go on, I'll go on.”) The sting represents what happens between these two sentences. There is some similarity between characters A and B and the main characters in Beckett's Waiting for Godot , Vladimir and Estragon, who spend their lives in much the same way, engaging in non-objective tasks to distract themselves and kill time, and do it at the same time yet never bring anything of importance. Seen in this way, B is more like a businessman, “a kind of Pozzo [from waiting for Godot ] […] in a grotesquely efficient way, a workaholic, a healthy lunatic.” They present a “composite picture of the human being”: B is independent and on his own initiative, A prefers to believe in an external God.
“ Act Without Words II shows that life has to be endured if it is not understood. There are no triumphs, no dissolution […]. There is no control of the process ”, not recognizing the“ bigger picture ”. "A noticed Neither B, that each of them to the other on his back (or that there ever another 's ), [...] they take their load for granted", as Molloy in the novel Beckett. The plot can take place for a day or two, or maybe every day of their life. The movement to the left is reminiscent of "the path of Dante and Virgil in the Inferno ."
“While reading The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus , Beckett discovered a symbol of the futility, frustration and absurdity of all human labor: Sisyphus - one of the great sinners in Greek mythology - suffered eternal punishment by constantly placing a large stone on top of one Hill had to roll just to see it roll back down again. To be born to carry out and endure an eternal cycle of awakening-activity-rest without any meaningful progress being made, that is what afflicts A and B.
Film adaptations
The Goad
In 1965, Paul Joyce made a touching film of the play called The Goad, starring Freddy Jones and Geoffrey Hinscliff. It was produced in a limited edition (500 pieces) by Nothing Doing in London [No. 1] (London: Anthony Barnett, 1966).
NBC film adaptation
NBC aired an Alan Schneider-directed version of Act Without Words II in 1966 .
Beckett on film
In the project Beckett on Film ("Beckett on Film") the piece was filmed as a 20s silent film in black and white.
Because Beckett had stated that "[t] his pantomime [...] should be played on a low, [...] narrow platform in the background of the stage" ("the mime should be played on a low narrow platform at the back of [the] stage, violently lit in its entire length ”), the director Enda Hughes decided to set the piece on a film that runs through a film projector. Instead of the black, A's action is canceled by turning off the projector. The action takes place over three frames and thus fulfills the " frieze effect" that Beckett was striving for.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett states that the work was written in 1958 (p. 4), Eugene Webb in The Plays of Samuel Beckett says it was 1959 (pp. 86-90), whereas Deirdre Bair, in Samuel Beckett: A Biography (p. 500) states he has worked on it since 1956
- ^ Bernice Schran, William W. Demastes: Irish playwrights, 1880-1995: a research and production sourcebook . Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997, ISBN 0-313-28805-4 ( Accessed June 20, 2009).
- ^ Redrawing of the drawing on page 211 by Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works. Faber & Faber, 2006.
- ^ Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett. Faber and Faber, London 1984, p. 49.
- ↑ a b Samuel Beckett: Act without words II. Translated from the French by Elmar Tophoven. In: Samuel Beckett: Night and Dreams. Collected short pieces. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006, pp. 55-59.
- ↑ Lamont, RC, 'To Speak the Words of “The Tribe”: The Wordlessness of Samuel Beckett's Metaphysical Clowns' in Burkman, KH, (Ed.): Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett (London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987), p. 63: “He is a moper, a hypochondriacal dreamer, perhaps a poet.”
- ↑ Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p. 545: “from puzzled to disapproving”
- ^ Samuel Beckett, letter to Thomas McGreevy, February 9th, 1960: "I have never had such good notices."
- ↑ Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p. 546: “Critics can't seem to comment on what's before them without dragging in the older plays and rationalizing their previous reactions.”
- ↑ Ackerley, CJ and Gontarski, SE, (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett , (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 4: “The play is compelling only if the mechanical figures are somehow humanized. If comfort exists it is because the plight of humanity if futile or repetitive is at least shared, even if no intercourse exists. "
- ↑ Webb, E., Two Mimes: Act Without Words I and Act Without Words II ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in The Plays of Samuel Beckett (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1974), pp 86-90: “the goad, represent [s] man's inner compulsion to activity. If one cannot rely on anything outside himself, is there anything inside him, which might prove worthy of his hope and trust? What Act Without Words II has to say about this is that man is driven by a compulsive force that will never let him withdraw for long into inaction. "
- ^ Beckett, Trilogy (London: Calder Publications, 1994), p. 418
- ↑ Lamont, RC 1987 p. 63: “a kind of Pozzo … grotesquely efficient, a workaholic , a health nut.”
- ↑ Webb, E. 1974 pp. 86-90: “a composite picture of man”
- ↑ Lamont, RC 1987 p. 57: “ Act Without Words II shows that life must be endured, if not understood. There are no triumphs, no resolution… There is no control over the process ”
- ↑ Lamont, RC 1987 p. 63: "[N] either A or B appears to realize that each one of them carries the other on his back [or that there even is an other] ... they take their burden for granted."
- ↑ From an unpublished personal letter from Samuel Beckett to the Polish critic and translator Antoni Libera, quoted in Lamont, RC, 'To Speak the Words of “The Tribe”: The Wordlessness of Samuel Beckett's Metaphysical Clowns' in Burkman, KH, (ed .): Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett (London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987), p. 70, n. 28: “the walk of Dante and Virgil in the Inferno.”
- ^ Act Without Words 2 in Beckett on Film Project : "In his reading of Le mythe de Sisyphe by Albert Camus, Beckett discovered a symbol for the futility, frustration and absurdity of all man's labor. Sisyphus - one of classical mythology's great sinners - suffered eternal punishment, having to perpetually roll a great stone to the top of a hill, only to see it roll back down again. Being born to enact and endure [an] eternal cycle of arousal-activity-rest, without any meaningful progress being achieved, is the sin that afflicts AB.
- ↑ Beckett, p. 1984 p. 49:
- ↑ Beckett, p. 1984 p. 49: “Frieze effect”
