Internet2 paper:
vtheatre files : virtual theatre = film + theatre + web
pre-production film
concept theatre
dramaturg page in SHOWS directory :
WebPages:
* horizontal structure:
Cast
Crew
Students (cyber community)
* vertical structure:
Themes
Images * Godot pix Tara
Ideas
Showcases: from 3 Sisters to Godot? ("100 & 50" = Beckett & Godot aniversary)
Mainz International Performance Studies paper (* Translating Culture
Seventh Performance Studies International Conference
Translation, Transition, Transformation at the University of Mainz, 29 March-1 April 2001) PSi #11
Presentation:
Comedy, Tragedy, Drama (genre breakdown) -- selection of titles? (slideshow?)
[ handout ]
Paper in Research Directory? Powerpoint?
+ waiting-godot enotes
DG: I have never seen females portray these roles!
VO: We wanted Vladimir and Estragon, played by Ory, to be female to tell the story in our own way. When Beckett was alive it was impossible to do such an interpretation because he did not want any alterations to the script. I discovered that without making any alterations to the text, I could tell the story of two people waiting to be saved in a different way. It displays that everyone is waiting for something, but from a female perspective. *
Post-Beckett:
In Beckett's work, too, we are aware of how the imagery (everything from plot to character to dialogue to set) is characteristically stripped to bare essences. His plays take on an abstract quality which many compare to a kind of abstract expressionism for the theater.
So we come back around to the question: why are these artists so unconventional? Why be abstract? Why not tell a story in the traditional way? Martin Esslin takes up this question in Absurd Drama (Penguin, 1965):
"Why should the emphasis in drama have shifted away from traditional forms towards images which, complex and suggestive as they may be, must necessarily lack the final clarity of definition, the neat resolutions we have been used to expect? Clearly because the playwrights concerned no longer believe in the possibility of such neatness of resolution. They are indeed chiefly concerned with expressing a sense of wonder, of incomprehension, and at times of despair, at the lack of cohesion and meaning that they find in the world. If they could believe in clearly defined motivations, acceptable solutions, settlements of conflict in tidily tied up endings, these dramatists would certainly not eschew them. But, quite obviously, they have no faith in the existence of so rational and well ordered a universe. The "well-made play" can thus be seen as conditioned by clear and comforting beliefs, a stable scale of values, an ethical system in full working condition. The system of values, the world-view behind the well-made play may be a religious one or a political one; it may be an implicit belief in the goodness and perfectibility of men (as in Shaw or Ibsen) or it may be a mere unthinking acceptance of the moral and political status quo (as in most drawing-room comedy). But whatever it is, the basis of the well-made play is the implicit assumption that the world does make sense, that reality is solid and secure, all outlines clear, all ends apparent. The plays that we have classed under the label of the Theatre of the Absurd, on the other hand, express a sense of shock at the absence, the loss of any such clear and well-defined systems of beliefs or values."
*
