Pure and Theatrical Optical-Sound Situations: Automation and the Image in Beckett’s Play

Abstract

This chapter examines Beckett’s theatrical development through a range of concepts drawn from Deleuze’s studies of the cinema. While Deleuze argues that theatre and performance cannot achieve the kinds of automation that defines film, it argues that Beckett’s Play does indeed automate its spectators’ perception and encloses them within a pure and theatrical optical-sound situation. Developing this concept, it looks at the metatheatricality of Happy Days and Waiting for Godot, and asks why Beckett felt a need to severely limit and diminish his stage. It also provides a reading of Deleuze’s cinema books which explore the differences between movement- and time-images, Deleuze’s conception of cliché and the idea of a spiritual automatism.