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102-486: In April 2016 they toured a production of The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco , in translation by Martin Crimp. This was a revival of the company's previous staging of the play in 2014, directed by Maria Oshodi supported by assistant director Julie Osman. For this production, Extant employed two visually-impaired actors in the roles of Old Man and Old Woman, and used live audio description as part of an innovative sound design to create

204-421: A "trilogy", though this is against the author's own explicit wishes—the prose becomes increasingly bare and stripped down. Molloy , for instance, still retains many of the characteristics of a conventional novel (time, place, movement, and plot) and it makes use of the structure of a detective novel . In Malone Dies , movement and plot are largely dispensed with, though there is still some indication of place and

306-512: A blackboard, and then exits leaving only the chairs and sounds of an invisible audience. Ionesco described the play as a "tragic farce". Like Ionesco's earlier play The Bald Soprano (1950), The Chairs belongs to the Theatre of the Absurd , presenting a view of the world as meaningless or without purpose. Ionesco rejected "realistic" theatre as a trick upon the audience, and instead aimed to make

408-544: A career in theatre for its author. Beckett went on to write successful full-length plays, including Fin de partie ( Endgame ) (1957), Krapp's Last Tape (1958, written in English), Happy Days (1961, also written in English), and Play (1963). In 1961, Beckett received the International Publishers' Formentor Prize in recognition of his work, which he shared that year with Jorge Luis Borges . The 1960s were

510-532: A deep dive into Germany's galleries and underground collections. This lasting engagement with the visual arts seeped into his creative process, often shaping his literary output and incentivising him to collaborate with artists such as Joan Mitchell and Geneviève Asse . After the German occupation of France in 1940, Beckett joined the French Resistance , in which he worked as a courier. On several occasions over

612-573: A dynamic, shared experience for visually-impaired and sighted members of its audiences. The show received positive critical reception, twice mentioned in the Guardian's top theatre picks. It toured to venues in Harlow, Birmingham, Manchester and Stratford, London throughout April 2016. As a National Portfolio Organisation, Extant receives Arts Council funding to produce theatre work, and develop nationwide participation opportunities for people in different areas of

714-574: A great message for mankind, and has engaged an orator to deliver it to their guests. When the guests arrive, they are invisible to the audience, yet the couple bring chairs and engage them in conversation. They include the Old Man's former lover and a photographer with whom the Old Woman flirts. The old couple tell them contradictory stories about their past lives. They frantically arrange chairs for more and more invisible guests. The room appears to be packed and

816-444: A hullabaloo, and of course it meant that the theatre was packed every night. Michael Billington included The Chairs as one of his "101 Greatest Plays" on the strength of its central image of "two old people rushing about in a manic frenzy filling the stage with chairs for a set of invisible guests". Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett ( / ˈ b ɛ k ɪ t / ; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989)

918-500: A left-handed batsman and a left-arm medium-pace bowler . Later, he played for Dublin University and played two first-class games against Northamptonshire . As a result, he became the only Nobel literature laureate to have played first-class cricket. Beckett studied French, Italian, and English at Trinity College Dublin from 1923 to 1927 (one of his tutors – not a teaching role in TCD –

1020-522: A moment of stillness in the present. They also deal with the theme of the self-confined and observed, with a voice that either comes from outside into the protagonist's head (as in Eh Joe ) or else another character comments on the protagonist silently, by means of gesture (as in Not I ). Beckett's most politically charged play, Catastrophe (1982), which was dedicated to Václav Havel , deals relatively explicitly with

1122-460: A much-quoted article, the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that Beckett "has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." The play was published in 1952 and premièred in 1953 in Paris; an English translation

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1224-458: A musical frame (taking excerpts from Beethoven and Schubert , respectively) to structure his text and borrows well-known images from art history to create evocative stills that suggest themes of longing, ambiguity, hope, and suffering. Such experimentation with genre, music, and the visual arts, characterises Beckett's work during the 1970s and '80s. Beckett's prose pieces during the late period were not as prolific as his theatre, as suggested by

1326-518: A nurse. His parents were both 35 when he was born, and had married in 1901. Beckett had one older brother named Frank Edward (1902–1954). At the age of five, he attended a local playschool in Dublin, where he started to learn music, and then moved to Earlsfort House School near Harcourt Street in Dublin. The Becketts were members of the Church of Ireland ; raised as an Anglican , Beckett later became agnostic ,

1428-828: A perspective which informed his writing. Beckett's family home, Cooldrinagh, was a large house and garden complete with a tennis court built in 1903 by Beckett's father. The house and garden, its surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse , the Foxrock railway station, and Harcourt Street station would all feature in his prose and plays. Around 1919 or 1920, he went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen , which Oscar Wilde had also attended. He left in 1923 and entered Trinity College Dublin , where he studied modern literature and Romance languages, and received his bachelor's degree in 1927. A natural athlete, he excelled at cricket as

1530-447: A pivotal moment in his entire career". Beckett fictionalised the experience in his play Krapp's Last Tape (1958). While listening to a tape he made earlier in his life, Krapp hears his younger self say "clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most...", at which point Krapp fast-forwards the tape (before the audience can hear the complete revelation). Beckett later explained to Knowlson that

1632-435: A poet and close confidant of Beckett who also worked there. This meeting had a profound effect on the young man. Beckett assisted Joyce in various ways, one of which was research towards the book that became Finnegans Wake . In 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay titled "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce". The essay defends Joyce's work and method, chiefly from allegations of wanton obscurity and dimness, and

1734-524: A preliminary hearing, Beckett asked his attacker for the motive behind the stabbing. Prudent replied: "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur. Je m'excuse" ["I do not know, sir. I apologise"]. Beckett eventually dropped the charges against his attacker – partially to avoid further formalities, partly because he found Prudent likeable and well-mannered. After his own near-fatal stabbing in 2022, author Salman Rushdie referenced Beckett's example when talking about his reasons for not interviewing his attacker. For Beckett,

1836-842: A production at the Royal Exchange, Manchester starring Gwen Nelson and Frank Thornton . In 1989 a revival by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center was directed by Andrei Belgrader with Tresa Hughes , Roberts Blossom and Rodney Scott Hudson. In 1995 and 2007 the play was produced in Mumbai, India, at the Prithvi Theatre . In 1997 a revival at the Royal Court Theatre in London by Théâtre de Complicité

1938-681: A relationship that was to last, in parallel with that with Suzanne, for the rest of his life." Bray died in Edinburgh on 25 February 2010. In 1969 the avant-garde filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim shot an experimental short film portrait about Beckett, which he named after the writer. In October 1969 while on holiday in Tunis with Suzanne, Beckett heard that he had won the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature . Anticipating that her intensely private husband would be saddled with fame from that moment on, Suzanne called

2040-591: A revival by the Extant Theatre Company , directed by Maria Oshodi , toured the United Kingdom. The play starred Heather Gilmore and Tim Gebbels, both of whom are visually impaired actors. In 2022 a revival at the Almeida Thetre , directed by Omar Elerian (who also produced a new translation), starred Kathryn Hunter and her husband Marcello Magni. The role of Orator, restyled as "an intrusive stage-hand"

2142-462: A theme echoing Beckett's earlier work, though possibly amplified by the sickness he experienced late in life. Jack MacGowran was the first actor to perform a one-man show based on the works of Beckett. He debuted End of Day in Dublin in 1962, revising it as Beginning To End (1965). The show went through further revisions before Beckett directed it in Paris in 1970; MacGowran won the 1970–1971 Obie for Best Performance By an Actor when he performed

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2244-451: A time of change for Beckett, both on a personal level and as a writer. In 1961, he married Suzanne in a secret civil ceremony in England (its secrecy due to reasons relating to French inheritance law). The success of his plays led to invitations to attend rehearsals and productions around the world, leading eventually to a new career as a theatre director. In 1957, he had his first commission from

2346-399: A will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more." Beckett's outstanding achievements in prose during the period were the three novels Molloy (1951), Malone meurt (1951; Malone Dies ) and L'innommable (1953: The Unnamable ). In these novels—sometimes referred to as

2448-488: A work of art has nothing to do with doctrine and saying that a critic's job was to look at it and decide whether it was true to its own nature. Devine wrote defending his author's conception of theatre as an art and Orson Welles joined in on Tynan's side, saying "an artist must confirm the values of his society; as he must challenge them". The correspondence grew larger as half of London's artistic and literary community battled it out... I found it exciting to be involved in such

2550-477: A writer can be roughly divided into three periods: his early works, up until the end of World War II in 1945; his middle period, stretching from 1945 until the early 1960s, during which he wrote what are probably his best-known works; and his late period, from the early 1960s until Beckett's death in 1989, during which his works tended to become shorter and his style more minimalist . Beckett's earliest works are generally considered to have been strongly influenced by

2652-427: Is a favourite: it is not only performed frequently but has globally inspired playwrights to emulate it. This is the sole play the manuscript of which Beckett never sold, donated or gave away. He refused to allow the play to be translated into film but did allow it to be played on television. During this time in the 1950s, Beckett became one of several adults who sometimes drove local children to school; one such child

2754-415: Is a one-act play by Eugène Ionesco , described as an absurdist " tragic farce ". It was first performed in Paris in 1952. A high tower surrounded by water. An old married couple are alone waiting for guests to arrive. The Old Man tells a favourite story from their past, and the Old Woman, who seems to be both wife and mother, says he could have been much more in life than a caretaker . He says he has

2856-426: Is an intrinsic manifestation of the absurd." "For the purpose of demonstrating in dramatic terms the absurdity of language, Ionesco’s favourite weapon is the platitude." To reveal their absurdity, Ionesco's platitudes contradict each other, garble themselves, maintain sound but discard sense. Words seem to promise everything, but the promise in unfulfilled. The inarticulate orator takes this idea to its extreme. In

2958-503: Is concerned with innovating access for audiences and engages in the creative development of audio description . The experimental nature of Extant's work was previously developed in the 2015 project 'Flatland: an adventure in many dimensions', working with researchers at Yale and the Open University to create an immersive theatrical experience using haptic technology . The Chairs The Chairs ( French : Les Chaises )

3060-627: Is considered one of the last modernist writers, and a key figure in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd . A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, Beckett wrote in both French and English. During the Second World War , Beckett was a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH ( Réseau Gloria ) and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1949. He received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for

3162-472: Is impossible; and went on to chastise those who championed the playwright's evocative escape from realism. He warned that it must not be held up for emulation as the gateway to the theatre of the future. This sparked off a vigorous controversy on the merits of the Romanian-born author, and escalated into a debate on the role of the artist in society. Ionesco wrote to The Observer in his own defence, claiming

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3264-406: Is in itself a meaningful – the only meaningful - act." Yet the Old Man and the Old Woman are lonely where they have no right to be: in a social situation. They are trapped, and death is their only escape route. One of Ionesco's favourite devices is to begin with an empty stage and fill it with proliferating objects. The chairs symbolise the couple's alienation from the world and their escape from

3366-401: Is nothingness, or the ontological void. The last moment of the play expresses this, according to Ionesco: The chairs remain empty because there’s no one there. And at the end, the curtain falls to the accompanying noises of a crowd, while all there is on the stage is empty chairs, curtains fluttering in the wind, etc... and there's nothing. The world doesn't really exist. The subject of the play

3468-424: Is often falsely labelled as an existentialist (this is based on the assumption that Camus was an existentialist, though he in fact broke off from the existentialist movement and founded his own philosophy ). Though many of the themes are similar, Beckett had little affinity for existentialism as a whole. Broadly speaking, the plays deal with the subject of despair and the will to survive in spite of that despair, in

3570-582: The BBC Third Programme for a radio play, All That Fall . He continued writing sporadically for radio and extended his scope to include cinema and television. He began to write in English again, although he also wrote in French until the end of his life. He bought some land in 1953 near a hamlet about 60 kilometres (40 mi) northeast of Paris and built a cottage for himself with the help of some locals. From

3672-479: The Nazi savagery that was overtaking the country. Returning to Ireland briefly in 1937, he oversaw the publication of Murphy (1938), which he translated into French the following year. He fell out with his mother, which contributed to his decision to settle permanently in Paris. Beckett remained in Paris following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, preferring, in his own words, "France at war to Ireland at peace". His

3774-500: The Toulouse poet Jean du Chas, founder of a movement called le Concentrisme . It was a literary parody, for Beckett had in fact invented the poet and his movement that claimed to be "at odds with all that is clear and distinct in Descartes ". Beckett later insisted that he had not intended to fool his audience. When Beckett resigned from Trinity at the end of 1931, his brief academic career

3876-413: The poioumenon "trilogy" of novels: Molloy (1951); Malone meurt (1951), Malone Dies (1958); L'innommable (1953), The Unnamable (1960). Despite being a native English speaker, Beckett wrote in French because, as he himself claimed, it was easier for him thus to write "without style". Waiting for Godot , like most of his works after 1947, was first written in French. Beckett worked on

3978-628: The "revelation" experienced in his mother's room in Dublin—in which he realised that his art must be subjective and drawn wholly from his own inner world—that would result in the works for which Beckett is best remembered today. During the 15 years following the war, Beckett produced four major full-length stage plays: En attendant Godot (written 1948–1949; Waiting for Godot ), Fin de partie (1955–1957; Endgame ), Krapp's Last Tape (1958), and Happy Days (1961). These plays—which are often considered, rightly or wrongly, to have been instrumental in

4080-579: The 1930s was a decade of artistic exploration. He started to take a serious interest in art history, frequenting Ireland's National Gallery , studying a range of painters and movements (specifically the Dutch Golden Age ), and even visiting private collections. In 1933 Beckett applied for the position of assistant curator at London's National Gallery . Later, in the winter of 1936–37, having sailed from Cobh in East Cork to Hamburg on 26 September 1936, he took

4182-432: The 1960s and into the 1970s, Beckett's works exhibited an increasing tendency—already evident in much of his work of the 1950s—towards compactness. This has led to his work sometimes being described as minimalist . The extreme example of this, among his dramatic works, is the 1969 piece Breath , which lasts for only 35 seconds and has no characters (though it was likely intended to offer ironic comment on Oh! Calcutta! ,

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4284-663: The Dublin literary periodical Envoy . After the war, he returned to France in 1946 where he worked as a stores manager at the Irish Red Cross Hospital based in Saint-Lô . Beckett described his experiences in an untransmitted radio script, " The Capital of the Ruins ". In 1945, Beckett returned to Dublin for a brief visit. During his stay, he had a revelation in his mother's room: his entire future direction in literature appeared to him. Beckett had felt that he would remain forever in

4386-643: The Old Man "scratches his head like Stan Laurel ". However, the play's meaninglessness only becomes meaningful if frivolity is "given a dimension of seriousness and farce one of tragedy". The play was first produced in Paris on 22 April 1952 at the Théâtre Lancry directed by Sylvain Dhomme with Paul Chevalier and Tsilla Chelton . The budget was so low that, in the hours before the premiere, Ionesco and his producer "were still trying to collect together, by appeals to friendly café-proprietors, thirty-five matching chairs of

4488-406: The Old Man loved his mother. "If we cannot agree about our experience, Ionesco asks, what hope do we have of understanding the world beyond us?" One thing the couple share is a memory of arriving at a gate into a garden, possibly Paris itself. They have tried to express it every night for 75 years. This "dream of luminosity" may represent Ionesco's idea that "the lucid perception of meaninglessness

4590-406: The Old Woman is both wife and mother; her husband is both old man and baby. Ionesco's aim is "to create a living version of ‘reality’, sufficiently broad to encompass rational and irrational at the same time". Like Beckett , Ionesco wrote in French but was not a native French speaker. This slight alienation of thought and language developed into a primary element in his philosophy. "Language itself

4692-544: The UK, often partnering with other sight loss charities. Workshops are run by visually-impaired facilitators predominantly in London and the Midlands (Birmingham and Manchester). They span from grass-roots level drama skills to further training for emerging and professional artists with visual impairment. Previous projects have included a diverse range of theatre, dance, creative writing and inter-generational sharing activities. The company

4794-458: The actor Jack MacGowran , is animated by a camera that steadily closes into a tight focus upon the face of the title character. The play Not I (1972) consists almost solely of, in Beckett's words, "a moving mouth with the rest of the stage in darkness". Following from Krapp's Last Tape , many of these later plays explore memory, often in the form of a forced recollection of haunting past events in

4896-629: The award a "catastrophe". While Beckett did not devote much time to interviews, he sometimes met the artists, scholars, and admirers who sought him out in the anonymous lobby of the Hotel PLM Saint-Jacques in Paris – where he arranged his appointments and often had lunch – near his Montparnasse home. Although Beckett was an intensely private man, a review of the second volume of his letters by Roy Foster on 15 December 2011 issue of The New Republic reveals Beckett to be not only unexpectedly amiable but frequently prepared to talk about his work and

4998-469: The carefully constructed illusion of human logic crumbles in contradiction. "Nothing is left but an endless series of causeless and unrelated phenomena: a world of infinite coincidence". The Old Woman has been told the same story every night for 75 years, but forgets and starts again each evening with a fresh mind. Dramatically, this amnesia "implies the total disintegration of the classical concept of character". Relationships evolve in strange permutations:

5100-452: The confined and observed self, as well as with the positioning of bodies in space, as the opening phrases of Company make clear: "A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine." "To one on his back in the dark. This he can tell by the pressure on his hind parts and by how the dark changes when he shuts his eyes and again when he opens them again. Only a small part of what is said can be verified. As for example when he hears, You are on your back in

5202-511: The couple act as ushers . They are very excited when the Emperor arrives, also invisible. The Old Man talks with increasing grandiosity about his life and the message that he hopes will save mankind. When the Orator arrives (a real person), the old couple leap from separate windows to their deaths. The Orator tries to speak but only makes the guttural sound of a deaf-mute . He writes a few jumbled words on

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5304-421: The dark" Following this work, it was almost another decade before Beckett produced a work of non-dramatic prose. How It Is is generally considered to mark the end of his middle period as a writer. time she stopped sitting at her window quiet at her window only window facing other windows other only windows all eyes all sides high and low time she stopped From Rockaby (1980) Throughout

5406-493: The dark. Then he must acknowledge the truth of what is said." Themes of aloneness and the doomed desire to successfully connect with other human beings are expressed in several late pieces, including Company and Rockaby . In the hospital and nursing home where he spent his final days, Beckett wrote his last work, the 1988 poem "What is the Word" ("Comment dire"). The poem grapples with an inability to find words to express oneself,

5508-459: The face of an uncomprehending and incomprehensible world. The words of Nell—one of the two characters in Endgame who are trapped in ashbins, from which they occasionally peek their heads to speak—can best summarise the themes of the plays of Beckett's middle period: "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. ... Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with

5610-426: The idea of dictatorship. After a long period of inactivity, Beckett's poetry experienced a revival during this period in the ultra-terse French poems of mirlitonnades , with some as short as six words. These defied Beckett's usual scrupulous concern to translate his work from its original into the other of his two languages; several writers, including Derek Mahon , have attempted translations, but no complete version of

5712-444: The late 1950s until his death, Beckett had a relationship with Barbara Bray , a widow who worked as a script editor for the BBC . Knowlson wrote of them: "She was small and attractive, but, above all, keenly intelligent and well-read. Beckett seems to have been immediately attracted by her and she to him. Their encounter was highly significant for them both, for it represented the beginning of

5814-470: The late 1950s, however, he created one of his most radical prose works, Comment c'est (1961; How It Is ). An early variant version of Comment c'est , L'Image , was published in the British arts review, X: A Quarterly Review (1959), and is the first appearance of the novel in any form. This work relates the adventures of an unnamed narrator crawling through the mud while dragging a sack of canned food. It

5916-465: The medium of another language, was in process of simplifying his style, a change also evidenced in Watt . who may tell the tale of the old man? weigh absence in a scale? mete want with a span? the sum assess of the world's woes? nothingness in words enclose? From Watt (1953) After World War II, Beckett turned definitively to the French language as a vehicle. It was this, together with

6018-440: The missing words on the tape are "precious ally". In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre 's magazine Les Temps modernes published the first part of Beckett's short story " Suite " (later to be called " La Fin ", or "The End"), not realising that Beckett had only submitted the first half of the story; co-editor Simone de Beauvoir refused to publish the second part. Beckett also began to write his fourth novel, Mercier et Camier , which

6120-771: The next two years he was nearly caught by the Gestapo . In August 1942, his unit was betrayed and he and Suzanne fled south on foot to the safety of the small village of Roussillon , in the Vaucluse département in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur . During the two years that Beckett stayed in Roussillon he indirectly helped the Maquis sabotage the German army in the Vaucluse mountains, though he rarely spoke about his wartime work in later life. He

6222-472: The novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1961 he shared the inaugural Prix International with Jorge Luis Borges . He was the first person to be elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock on 13 April 1906, the son of William Frank Beckett (1871–1933), a quantity surveyor of Huguenot descent, and Maria Jones Roe,

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6324-399: The novels of this period, is essentially pessimistic, the will to live seems to win out in the end; witness, for instance, the famous final phrase of The Unnamable : "you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on". After these three novels, Beckett struggled for many years to produce a sustained work of prose, a struggle evidenced by the brief "stories" later collected as Texts for Nothing . In

6426-479: The passage of time; the "action" of the book takes the form of an interior monologue . Finally, in The Unnamable , almost all sense of place and time are abolished, and the essential theme seems to be the conflict between the voice's drive to continue speaking so as to continue existing, and its almost equally strong urge towards silence and oblivion. Despite the widely held view that Beckett's work, as exemplified by

6528-405: The physical inactivity of the character Belacqua; the character's immersion in his own head and thoughts; the somewhat irreverent comedy of the final sentence. Similar elements are present in Beckett's first published novel, Murphy (1938), which also explores the themes of insanity and chess (both of which would be recurrent elements in Beckett's later works). The novel's opening sentence hints at

6630-423: The play between October 1948 and January 1949. His partner, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil , was integral to its success. Dechevaux-Dumesnil became his agent and sent the manuscript to multiple producers until they met Roger Blin , the soon-to-be director of the play. Blin's knowledge of French theatre and vision, alongside Beckett's knowing what he wanted the play to represent, contributed greatly to its success. In

6732-718: The play, somewhat adapted and re-written by Gordon to the extent allowed by the Ionesco estate. This version of The Chairs was presented in London, at the Barbican Center , in Seattle, Washington , and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. In 2006 a revival at the Gate Theatre in London was directed by Thea Sharrock , starring Susan Brown and Nicholas Woodeson . In 2016

6834-694: The play, the Old Man calls the Old Woman Semiramis , the name of a semi-mythical ancient Assyrian queen. This may refer to her association with the Tower of Babel . "The basic tone of The Chairs is that of bathos . The accelerating rhythm with which the guests arrive creates a sense of expectation that is deflated by the Orator’s muteness and the incomprehensibility of his written message." The play contains many comic elements. For example, while trying to "imitate February", Ionesco's stage directions indicate that

6936-405: The process behind it. Suzanne died on 17 July 1989. Confined to a nursing home and suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson's disease , Beckett died on 22 December 1989. The two were interred together in the cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris and share a simple granite gravestone that follows Beckett's directive that it should be "any colour, so long as it's grey". Beckett's career as

7038-533: The production followed the text with "painstaking literalness". Professional writers, by contrast, defended the work. Jacques Audiberti described the play as "a masterpiece". Its opening in London in 1957 was controversial, arriving soon after the realist drama Look Back in Anger , which had been praised by Kenneth Tynan , as recalled by its leading actress Joan Plowright : Tynan expressed his dislike of Ionesco's nihilistic view that communication between human beings

7140-426: The realities of old age and loneliness into a fantasy world of lies, illusions and fabrications. When the Old Woman turns into an usher, Ionesco is pointing out that theatre is also a type of illusion, and hence that "we all live in illusion". " The Chairs may also be viewed as a self-conscious work, dealing with the situation of the dramatist and the nature of the theatrical experience itself." In Ionesco's world,

7242-579: The right size and appearance". The production was revived in 1956 at the Studio des Champs-Élysées, directed by Jacques Mauclair. The first performance in London was in May 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre directed by Tony Richardson starring George Devine and Joan Plowright . It transferred to the Phoenix Theatre off-Broadway in 1958, with Eli Wallach playing the Old Man. In 1980 Richard Negri directed

7344-462: The sequence has been published in English. Beckett's late style saw him experiment with technology to create increasingly transdisciplinary works. This sampling of a range of artistic mediums and styles – classical music, painting, sculpture, television, and literature – to create a new and original form, or genre, is evident in his television plays. In works like Ghost Trio (broadcast in 1977) and Nacht und Träume (broadcast in 1983) Beckett uses

7446-425: The shadow of Joyce, certain to never beat him at his own game. His revelation prompted him to change direction and acknowledge both his own stupidity and his interest in ignorance and impotence: "I realised that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way

7548-414: The so-called " Theatre of the Absurd "—deal in a darkly humorous way with themes similar to those of the roughly contemporary existentialist thinkers . The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was coined by Martin Esslin in a book of the same name; Beckett and Godot were centrepieces of the book. Esslin argued these plays were the fulfilment of Albert Camus 's concept of "the absurd"; this is one reason Beckett

7650-504: The somewhat pessimistic undertones and black humour that animate many of Beckett's works: "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new". Watt , written while Beckett was in hiding in Roussillon during World War II, is similar in terms of themes but less exuberant in its style. It explores human movement as if it were a mathematical permutation , presaging Beckett's later preoccupation—in both his novels and dramatic works—with precise movement. Beckett's 1930 essay Proust

7752-426: The spectator "participate in an act of imagination which his reason told him was 'absurd'", but which contained all the "nightmarish and contradictory absurdity" of reality. The play addresses the philosophical idea of "the Absurd" , referring to the conflict between the human tendency to seek meaning in life and the inability to find it. Ionesco suggests that "life is essentially meaningless, progress an illusion and

7854-406: The theatrical revue for which it served as an introductory piece). In his theatre of the late period, Beckett's characters—already few in number in the earlier plays—are whittled down to essential elements. The ironically titled Play (1962), for instance, consists of three characters immersed up to their necks in large funeral urns. The television drama Eh Joe (1963), which was written for

7956-526: The title of the 1976 collection of short prose texts Fizzles (which the American artist Jasper Johns illustrated). Beckett experienced something of a renaissance with the novella Company (1980), which continued with Ill Seen Ill Said (1982) and Worstward Ho (1983), later collected in Nohow On . In these three " 'closed space' stories," Beckett continued his pre-occupation with memory and its effect on

8058-524: The totality of our experience nothing but a piece of incomprehensible gobbledegook.". The one fundamental proposition held in common by Sartre on the one hand, and by Beckett, Genet, Arrabal and Ionesco on the other, is that, at the root of consciousness, and indeed of all Being, there is a Void – un Néant – and that this Void is the point of departure for all lucidity, all experience, all 'personality' and all truth. The most fundamental concern in The Chairs

8160-548: The work of MacGreevy, Brian Coffey , Denis Devlin and Blanaid Salkeld , despite their slender achievements at the time, comparing them favourably with their Celtic Revival contemporaries and invoking Ezra Pound , T. S. Eliot , and the French symbolists as their precursors. In describing these poets as forming "the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland", Beckett was tracing the outlines of an Irish poetic modernist canon. In 1935 –

8262-453: The work of his friend James Joyce . They are erudite and seem to display the author's learning merely for its own sake, resulting in several obscure passages. The opening phrases of the short-story collection More Pricks than Kicks (1934) afford a representative sample of this style: It was morning and Belacqua was stuck in the first of the canti in the moon. He was so bogged that he could move neither backward nor forward. Blissful Beatrice

8364-525: The year that he successfully published a book of his poetry, Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates – Beckett worked on his novel Murphy . In May, he wrote to MacGreevy that he had been reading about film and wished to go to Moscow to study with Sergei Eisenstein at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography . In mid-1936 he wrote to Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin to offer himself as their apprentice. Nothing came of this, however, as Beckett's letter

8466-506: Was André Roussimoff, who would later become a famous professional wrestler under the name André the Giant . They had a surprising amount of common ground and bonded over their love of cricket, with Roussimoff later recalling that the two rarely talked about anything else. Beckett translated all of his works into English himself, with the exception of Molloy , for which he collaborated with Patrick Bowles. The success of Waiting for Godot opened up

8568-466: Was Beckett's contribution to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (a book of essays on Joyce which also included contributions by Eugene Jolas , Robert McAlmon , and William Carlos Williams ). Beckett's close relationship with Joyce and his family cooled, however, when he rejected the advances of Joyce's daughter Lucia . Beckett's first short story, "Assumption",

8670-439: Was an Irish-born existentialist writer of novels, plays, short stories and poems. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense . His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference . He

8772-963: Was at an end. He commemorated it with the poem "Gnome", which was inspired by his reading of Johann Wolfgang Goethe 's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and eventually published in The Dublin Magazine in 1934: Spend the years of learning squandering Courage for the years of wandering Through a world politely turning From the loutishness of learning Beckett travelled throughout Europe. He spent some time in London, where in 1931 he published Proust , his critical study of French author Marcel Proust . Two years later, following his father's death, he began two years' treatment with Tavistock Clinic psychoanalyst Dr. Wilfred Bion . Aspects of it became evident in Beckett's later works, such as Watt and Waiting for Godot . In 1932, he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women , but after many rejections from publishers decided to abandon it (it

8874-577: Was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Resistance Medal by the French government for his efforts in fighting the German occupation; to the end of his life, however, Beckett would refer to his work with the French Resistance as "boy scout stuff". While in hiding in Roussillon, Beckett continued work on the novel Watt . He started the novel in 1941 and completed it in 1945, but it was not published until 1953; however, an extract had appeared in

8976-470: Was directed by Simon McBurney , starring Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan . It transferred to the John Golden Theatre on Broadway in 1998. In 2002, Cesear's Forum, Cleveland's small minimalist theatre at Kennedy's Down Under, Playhouse Square , OH, presented the play. In 2004, director/choreographer David Gordon and his wife, dancer/actress Valda Setterfield , appeared in a version of

9078-557: Was eventually published in 1992). Despite his inability to get it published, however, the novel served as a source for many of Beckett's early poems, as well as for his first full-length book, the 1933 short-story collection More Pricks Than Kicks . Beckett published essays and reviews, including "Recent Irish Poetry" (in The Bookman , August 1934) and "Humanistic Quietism", a review of his friend Thomas MacGreevy's Poems (in The Dublin Magazine , July–September 1934). They focused on

9180-490: Was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding." Knowlson argues that "Beckett was rejecting the Joycean principle that knowing more was a way of creatively understanding the world and controlling it ... In future, his work would focus on poverty, failure, exile and loss – as he put it, on man as a 'non-knower' and as a 'non-can-er. ' " The revelation "has rightly been regarded as

9282-627: Was lost owing to Eisenstein's quarantine during the smallpox outbreak, as well as his focus on a script re-write of his postponed film production. In 1936, a friend had suggested he look up the works of Arnold Geulincx , which Beckett did and he took many notes. The philosopher's name is mentioned in Murphy and the reading apparently left a strong impression. Murphy was finished in 1936 and Beckett departed for extensive travel around Germany, during which time he filled several notebooks with lists of noteworthy artwork that he had seen and noted his distaste for

9384-429: Was not published until 1970. The novel preceded his most famous work, the play En attendant Godot ( Waiting for Godot ) , which was written not long afterwards. More importantly, Mercier and Camier was Beckett's first long work written in French, the language of most of his subsequent works which were strongly supported by Jérôme Lindon, director of his Parisian publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit , including

9486-658: Was nothingness, not failure. It was total absence, chairs without people. The world does not exist because in the future it will stop being, everything dies, you know. One of the central motifs of the play is the couple. Ionesco explained: The couple is the world itself, it's man and woman, Adam and Eve, the two halves of humanity who love one another, find one another, who are sick and tired of loving one another; who, in spite of everything, cannot not love one another, who cannot exist except together. The couple are bound together by 75 years of marriage, but still disagree about simple facts such as whether they had children and whether

9588-578: Was performed by Toby Sedgwick . In 2023 a revival was staged at the Old Fitz in Sydney, directed by Gale Edwards with Paul Capsis as the Old Woman and iOTA as the old Man. The orator was performed on a video screen by a Max Headroom -like character When The Chairs opened in Paris in 1952, critical reaction was less positive than to Ionesco's other early plays, perhaps because the critics expected "more wit, more verbal fireworks and less pathos", or because

9690-553: Was performed two years later. The play was a critical, popular, and controversial success in Paris. It opened in London in 1955 to mainly negative reviews, but the tide turned with positive reactions from Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times and, later, Kenneth Tynan . After the showing in Miami, the play became extremely popular, with highly successful performances in the US and Germany. The play

9792-528: Was published in Jolas's periodical transition . The next year he won a small literary prize for his hastily composed poem "Whoroscope", which draws on a biography of René Descartes that Beckett happened to be reading when he was encouraged to submit. In 1930, Beckett returned to Trinity College as a lecturer. In November 1930, he presented a paper in French to the Modern Languages Society of Trinity on

9894-474: Was soon a known face in and around Left Bank cafés, where he strengthened his allegiance with Joyce and forged new ones with artists Alberto Giacometti and Marcel Duchamp , with whom he regularly played chess . Sometime around December 1937, Beckett had a brief affair with Peggy Guggenheim , who nicknamed him "Oblomov" (after the character in Ivan Goncharov 's novel ). In January 1938 in Paris, Beckett

9996-413: Was stabbed in the chest and nearly killed when he refused the solicitations of a notorious pimp (who went by the name of Prudent). Joyce arranged a private room for Beckett at the hospital. The publicity surrounding the stabbing attracted the attention of Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil , who knew Beckett slightly from his first stay in Paris. This time, however, the two would begin a lifelong companionship. At

10098-489: Was strongly influenced by Schopenhauer 's pessimism and laudatory descriptions of saintly asceticism. At this time Beckett began to write creatively in the French language. In the late 1930s, he wrote a number of short poems in that language and their sparseness—in contrast to the density of his English poems of roughly the same period, collected in Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates (1935)—seems to show that Beckett, albeit through

10200-606: Was the Berkeley scholar A. A. Luce , who introduced him to the work of Henri Bergson ). He was elected a Scholar in Modern Languages in 1926. Beckett graduated with a BA and, after teaching briefly at Campbell College in Belfast , took up the post of lecteur d'anglais at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris from November 1928 to 1930. While there, he was introduced to renowned Irish author James Joyce by Thomas MacGreevy ,

10302-426: Was there, Dante also, and she explained the spots on the moon to him. She shewed him in the first place where he was at fault, then she put up her own explanation. She had it from God, therefore he could rely on its being accurate in every particular. The passage makes reference to Dante 's Commedia , which can serve to confuse readers not familiar with that work. It also anticipates aspects of Beckett's later work:

10404-409: Was written as a sequence of unpunctuated paragraphs in a style approaching telegraphese : "You are there somewhere alive somewhere vast stretch of time then it's over you are there no more alive no more than again you are there again alive again it wasn't over an error you begin again all over more or less in the same place or in another as when another image above in the light you come to in hospital in

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