Here in Seattle, this past season was truly a wonderfully diverse year in the theatre. One event that stands out for me was the Seattle Beckett Festival, a citywide event that produced many performances and more from over seventeen arts and theatre organizations throughout fall a season long celebration of Samuel Beckett.
I attended local fringe theatre West of Lenin’s contribution to the festival, LIFE=PLAY: An Evening of Short Works and Rarities by Samuel Beckett, and left the theatre feeling reinvigorated, inspired, and simply human. This evening of shorts managed to embrace the weird and strange, the playful, the ugliness of humanity, and the overly dramatic nature of the mundane. Such a wide range of pieces made for an entertaining, thought provoking evening. As a writer, I was struck by how different each piece was in its construction. Each short had its own unmistakable world and set of governing rules.The diverse methods of storytelling really convinced me to reexamine the infinite possibilities in which a story could be told. One of the shorts, Acting Without Words Part I, was a mime piece that explored the rise and downfall of man. We watched man come into existence, use basic tools, fight for survival, invent, dilly dally, fight some more, then concede, leaving us to our own open-ended interpretations. All of this: one actor, simple fly rigs, acting blocks, and a few props. What really inspired me was that this piece exemplified a major writing standard: don’t tell us, show us. There were no words. Just props, a whistle, and the actor. It wasn’t just those realities that made it fascinating to watch, but rather how they interact to tell a compelling story that gives you the feels, a few chuckles and makes you think. Another highlight in the evening was the production of Krapp’s Last Tape, done entirely in French with English subtitles projected on monitors. This piece worked because your experience of the play changes in relation to how your senses interpret what’s happening. As you watch Krapp move and hear him speak french, you get one interpretation. Then you sit with the subtitles on screen, and suddenly your mind processes everything in a completely new manner. New meaning is created in literally every moment. Looking at the construction of Krapp’s, we are fed the play in fragments. It’s a little muddled, but by the play’s conclusion, you see the whole picture, and that is where Beckett is masterful. Even though conventions such as flying objects, projections, and subtitles aren’t by any means new advents, they serve as perfect reminders to us stuck in our head writers of the limitations (or lack thereof) of any space and how to best utilize and smash them, the impact of the human senses on the experience, and also just how darn entertaining it is to watch an actor do battle with physical obstacles. Takeaways: Find a variety of ways to establish the world. Find power in simplicity. And finally, the triumph of the dramatic moment over dialogue. *Article Published in the June 2015 edition of The Dramatist
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AuthorI'm no different from anybody else--just a passionate person with opinions about the world. This is my platform to express them. Archives
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