The Space of Play in L'Impromptu d' Ohio

The Space of Play in L'Impromptu d' Ohio AUDREY MCMULLAN But it's to me this evening something has to happen, to my body as in myth and metamorphosis, this old body to which nothing everhappened, or so little, which never met with anything. J oved anything, wished for anything, in its tarnished universe, except for the mirrors to shaner, the plane, the curved, the magnifying, the minifying, and to vanish in the havoc of its images. I One of the most innovative aspects of Beckett's dramatic practice is his sculptural and semantic use ofspace. The "framing" ofindividual forms against the space of the stage, of sounds against silence, emphasizes their visual or aural materiality, and highlights the "gestalt" between form and space, figure and ground. The rigourous dramatic structure provides a framework within which each element is juxtaposed with other scenic or verbal elements, creating a continual interplay and questioning of levels of interpretation, while expanding and extending the play of associations or implications. Instead of a linear unfolding of plot, there is a juxtaposition of presented or represented "images of being" throughout the space and time of the performance, emphasizing the Derridean lack of a stable centre of meaning, or indeed of being, at the heart of the formal structure. L'lmpromptu d'Ohio was originally written in English for an international symposium at Ohio State University during May 1981 , on "Samuel Beckett: Humanistic Perspectives.,,2 The title links the play to a theatrical tradition of Impromptus, including Moliere's Impromptu de Versailles, Giraudoux's Impromptu de Paris, and Ionesco's Impromptu de l'Alma. These, according to Pierre Astier, "deal to a large extent with problems of play-acting or play-writing through the acting or the writing of a play that turns out to be the very one performed before our eyes...3 The work therefore announces itselfas a play about creation and the artistic practice of its author. However, rather than incorporating a personal apologia into the text, Beckett sets up a dialogue 24 AUDREY MCMULLAN between the different levels or languages of the play, in particular, between the scenic and the verbal, so that each comments upon the other, and together they constitute an "auto-critique" of the author's work. The piece continually refers to and plays upon the conditions of its dramatic performance, and will be considered within this context.4 In Beckett's later plays, the visual image is largely static, while the spoken text is usually in the form of monologue, or, in L'Impromptu d' Ohio, narrative, read from a book by one of the figures on stage. These two levels ofrepresentation , the scenic and the verbal, are therefore deliberately differentiated, to produce ajuxtaposition of narrative and visual image. In L'Impromptu d'Ohio, the narrative tells of a loved one lost, and subsequently regained, while the scenic level focusses on t~e reading and reception of the narrative, and its relation to the two figures on stage. It can therefore be seen as a metaphor for the origins and creation of fiction, and its relation to self: in particular, the relationships between self, fictional self, and self as creator of fiction (or fictional selves). Pierre Astier has seen the book in front of the Lecteur not only as the record of a life, but as constituting: "a writer's lifework, a whole oeuvre representing in this case, I think, that of Beckett himself in the form of a make-believe compilation of all his writings so far.'" Martin Esslin has seen the use of visual image and narrative as characteristic of Beckett's dual approach to the representation of being, though he sees in the later work a turning away from the narrator's use of internal monologue, and a growing reliance on the visual image. which condenses "l'experience individuelle de l'Etre, I'experience existentielle, en une seule metaphore visuelle: une puissante image aux profondeurs multiples.,,6 There does seem to be a move away from the desperate search for the self in and through the internal monologue, to the presentation of "images of being." The text of the later fiction and most of...