Action and Play in Beckett's Theater

ACTION AND PLAY IN BECKETT'S THEATER COMEDY WAS GESTURE BEFORE EVER IT WAS WORDS. In all ages the movements and gestures of the actors have been of prime importance in the theater, especially in the popular theater. From the banal mountebank and juggler of the public square, to the rigid, conventional action of the Peking opera, the theatrical phenomenon has always been characterized by an important active element. Clownery, in particular, is a dramatic form that is at once very popular and immediately comprehensible. The clown has only to appear for a child to burst into laughter; after this first elementary apparition, the ritual gestures, carefully rehearsed in advance, carry the spectator's hilarity to its paroxysm. The contrast between the latter's glee and the clown's seriousness is striking: the spectator is lost in delight and the clown is concentrating on accomplishing correctly the falls and "accidents" he has prepared so minutely. For his is a difficult art, since it seeks to reproduce voluntarily the clumsy and absurd actions that others commit involuntarily. Like Shakespeare 's wise fools, he is ridiculous by trade, imitating to the point of caricature (but not quite) what makes men silly, to such a degree that he becomes a kind of laughter-provoking mechanism; and like all mechanisms, he works best when in proper trim. The clown, in fact, instinctively follows Bergson's dictum: "the attitudes, gestures and movements of the human body are laughable in direct proportion to the degree in which this body reminds us of a simple machine." Music hall is another popular form, and an essentially varied one, consisting of comic turns interspersed with song. The typical music hall comedian tells his jokes and ends his turn with a sentimental song. Sometimes he is joined by a partner, and they indulge in cross-talk; one of the men will embody "common sense," and the other obtuseness . Their misunderstandings give rise to laughter. This, too, requires careful rehearsal if the comedians are to attain the rapidity of reflex which most closely imitates the spontaneity of absurdity in everyday life. Here again, therefore, seriousness on the part of the actors is the necessary condition of laughter on the part of the spectators ; and here again, it is the mechanical that provokes hilarity, but whereas clownery is mostly action, music hall comedy is mostly words. A third popular form is mime. This has been a vital element in drama ever since the Greeks. An action as simple as that of tearing 242 1966 ACTION AND PLAY 243 at one's hair and raising one's eyes to the sky is fully sufficient to convey the idea of grief and despair. The possibilities of universallyunderstood gestures are exploited in grand opera, for instance, and mime can exist as an art form in its own right in the hands of a performer like Marcel Marceau, who is able, without recourse to words, to render a remarkably wide range of emotion, and tell a surprisingly large number of stories. The three basic forms of action: circus clownery, music hall crosstalk , and dramatic mime, are all found in Beckett's theater, and serve to enrich it. This is appropriate, since his drama illustrates man's many attempts to fill life's emptiness, and so accords an important role to action in its varied forms. The Beckettian hero is a sort of clown who uses words and performs gestures that are intended to be amusing, in order to pass the time. But unlike a real clown, he seeks not to amuse others, but to cheat his own boredom; he is acting, but for himself. Of all Beckett's plays, it is in Waiting for Godot that circus games are the most in evidence. Estragon, for example, pulls and tugs demonstratively at his boot; inadvertently lets his trousers drop about his feet when untying the string that serves as his belt, and fails to understand at once his companion's admonition to pull them up again; and drops off to sleep, only to wake up again a moment later with a start. As for Vladimir, he walks with his legs wide apart, because of his affiiction, and...