Abstract
This chapter outlines how the project will propose a new method for research situated at the borders of performance and philosophy, the theatre and performance theory. Beginning with an account of Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe, it argues that Beckett’s theatrical practices are guided by a desire to create encounters with an indeterminate and unthinkable chaos which is opposed to the very possibility of meaning. It also argues that Gilles Deleuze’s conception of philosophical practice offers tools for pursuing this aspect of Beckett’s theatre. Having provided a brief history of the field of Beckett studies oriented around this question, it then offers an introduction to Deleuze’s accounts of difference, immanence and the unthinkable. Finally, it presents an account of Catastrophe generated with these concerns in mind.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout this study, the terms “theatre” and “performance” will largely appear interchangeable. While our approaches to Beckett’s theatrical texts will be made with a “traditional” theatrical space in mind, it is to be hoped that the concepts we develop will be of use to those working in a performance setting. Indeed, we will see how Beckett’s instructions for how his stage is to be constructed trouble the already difficult to sustain distinction between performance and theatre. As Hans-Thies Lehmann writes: ‘Time and again, especially when the discussion turns to the (impossible) unambiguous differentiation between theatre and performance, the idea comes up that we can oppose performance as a “real” action to the theatre as a realm of fiction’ (Lehmann 2006: 180). Throughout this study, we will see how the ‘relentless literality’ of Beckett’s theatre questions this distinction (Barry 2006: 15). While there is doubtless much critical mileage to be found in asking how terms like “theatre”, “performance”, “drama” and “performance art” could be applied to or interrogated through Beckett’s work, such investigation lies beyond our current concerns.
- 2.
We will not discuss Dolan’s Utopia in Performance further and it is worth noting why this decision has been made. Dolan characterises the theatrical encounters we are pursuing as ‘utopian performatives’ that provide ‘rehearsals for revolution’ (Dolan 205: 7; 168). For Dolan, the utopian performative does not become revolutionary through the prescription of any precise political programme but by creating a collective empathy which permits an audience to sense something of ‘what humanism could really mean, of how powerful might be a world where our commonalities hail us over our differences’ (8). While performance might well achieve this, there is a danger that this approach would obscure the encounters with difference and with the unthought that our study is intended to theorise.
- 3.
Leland de la Durantaye’s translation (Durantaye 2016: 2).
- 4.
For a more thorough discussion of the problem of applying philosophical concepts to performance, see David Kornhaber’s introduction to a 2013 edition of Modern Drama dedicated to a renewed interest in research situated at the borders of performance and philosophy (2013) and Cull Ó Maoilearca’s essay ‘Performance and Philosophy: Responding to the Problem of “Application”’ (2012b). It is also worth noting that a range of research strategies have already been employed in order to combat this trend. For example, Puchner’s The Drama of Ideas (2010) explores how the intertwined histories of theatre and philosophy might renew our understandings of both disciplines and Simon Bayly’s The Pathognomy of Performance undertakes what he calls a ‘theatre-philosophy’ in which theatrical events are examined through a range of philosophical thinkers, aiming not for the rigour of philosophical systematisation but a reimagining of both theatrical and philosophical thought (Bayly 2011). Further, while Cull Ó Maoilearca’s Theatres of Immanence (2012a) and Bojana Cvejic’s Choreographing Problems (2015) are both inspired by Deleuze’s thought, they deploy methods intended, in part, to avoid application. While Cvejic draws on aspects of Deleuze’s philosophical practice in order to ask how contemporary choreography can be analysed as posing problems through their creative processes, Cull Ó Maoilearca aims for a series of ‘mutually transformative encounters’ between Deleuze and performance (Cull 2012a: 15).
- 5.
For a riposte to Feldman’s position, see Garin Dowd’s essay ‘Prolegomena to a Critique of Excavatory Reason: Reply to Matthew Feldman’ (2008).
- 6.
- 7.
In addition to the work discussed here, other academic events and publications testify to this growing interest in thinking Beckett and Deleuze together. For example, in 2006 Cardiff University hosted an international conference, Beckett’s Proust /Deleuze’s Proust , which led to the publication of an edited collection of the same name (Bryden and Topping 2009). In 2011, the first annual Samuel Beckett Summer School took Deleuze and Beckett as its theme. Meanwhile, Wilmer has edited a special edition of the Deleuze Studies journal dedicated to Beckett (Wilmer: 2012) and, with Audrone Žukauskaitė, also has an edited collection Deleuze and Beckett (Wilmer and Žukauskaitė 2015). We should also note Colin Gardner’s Beckett, Deleuze and the Televisual Event (2012), which explores Beckett’s work for television through concepts drawn from Deleuze’s cinematic studies.
- 8.
In this regard, Dowd argues that Anti-Oedipus was to some degree dependent on Deleuze and Guattari’s own encounters with Beckett’s Trilogy (Dowd 2007: 263).
- 9.
In Deleuze’s Cinema 1: The Movement Image, Beckett’s Film is discussed in a section headed: ‘The Reverse Proof: How to Extinguish the Three Varieties’ (C1 : 68–72). In brief, Deleuze argues that the movement-image is composed of three components: perception-images, action-images and affection-images. Film sees Beckett ‘extinguishing’ action and perception in order to leave us with a grasp of pure affection—or perception of ‘self by self’ (70)—before ending on a black screen which implies that even the affection-image has given out. Beckett’s Film is important to Deleuze because, by depriving the movement-image of each of its components in turn, it helps thought grasp what elements the movement-image is ordinarily composed of .
- 10.
We should also note that Deleuze makes frequent references to Beckett’s importance to his own development throughout L’Abécédaire, the series of interviews Deleuze recorded for French television in 1988–89. Further, Beckett’s Watt plays a key role in Deleuze’s essay ‘He Stuttered’ (ECC: 107–14), and reference to the exhaustion of Beckett’s figures is made during a key passage of Deleuze’s study of Francis Bacon (FB: 29).
- 11.
Deleuze was, however, clearly familiar with Beckett’s theatrical work. For instance, in The Exhausted, Deleuze reads Beckett’s work as being geared towards the production of images and describes this project as ‘passing through’ the theatre with reference to Beckett’s Happy Days , Act Without Words 1 and Catastrophe (ECC: 159). Nevertheless, Deleuze pays no real attention to these works and offers no discussion of the theatrical experience of them.
- 12.
Along with monographs by Cull Ó Maoilearca (2012a) and Cvejic (2015), Deleuze has been a key figure in the development of Performance Philosophy. Another range of approaches to the question of Deleuze’s relevance to performance can be found in Deleuze and Performance, edited by Cull Ó Maoilearca (2009).
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Koczy, D. (2018). Introduction: Theatrical Encounters. In: Beckett, Deleuze and Performance. Performance Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95618-3_1
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