BECKETT: HAPPY DAYS, NOT I

EN107, WEEK EIGHT

Reflections on writing•What difficult, what straightforward?• How do you feel about time management? Peer review?• Similarity and difference from HS experience?•What guidance would you like for future papers?

Beckett, Happy Days• Playwright unimaginable without wartime experience•Waiting for Godot (1953): new theatrical idiom

Language

• GO HERE FIRST

• “Close reading”/”practical criticism”• Polyvalence (multiple meanings)• Clarification (single meanings)• Nonsense (meaninglessness)

• Oral presence• Are speeches hard to say out loud?• Do the speeches make you talk in particular ways? • Is there a rhythm to the words, or some other oral ordering?

Embodiment

• Actors• What do stage dramatis personae say about the actors’

bodies?• What race/class presence is called for?

• Who is excluded?

• What do stage directions call on the actors to do• What training is required of actors?• What are actors meant to feel or experience?

• Does this script require preparation, and if so what kinds of preparation?

• Can this script be performed? Is it instead closet drama?

Structure

• How is the play divided?• Discrete, long acts? Shorter scenes? Contextless lines of

dialogue?• Audience focus

• Presentation of information

• How long is the play?• Text: how long does it take to read, and how difficult is it to

read?• Performance: how long would this play take to perform?

• Repetition• What elements are repeated? What does repetition do?

Plot

• Does the play possess a consistent plot?• Is this plot fulfilled?• Sequence• Sequential• Non-sequential• Sequence unclear

Onstage performance

• Ensemble• Why are these characters together?• What characters are on stage at any given moment?• Who understands other characters’ dialogue, and who fails

to?• Are there multiple overlapping worlds onstage?• Characters in multiple times, places, settings

• What juxtapositions are created?

Offstage, in performance

• Mise-en-scene• Where could this play be performed, and where not?• What properties appear onstage?

• Audience• What sort of audience does the play address?• What do they know?

• What do they believe?

“Realism”

• Probably the most difficult term to use

• Is the play realistic?• Term always relational• Is it more realistic than specified other plays?

• Is it realistic in particular aspects: dialogue, setting, content

• Is the play not realistic?• What is the play’s relationship to a specific non-theatrical

reality?• What elements of this reality are heightened, diminished,

promoted, or hidden?

Stage directions

•What are s.d. like in Happy Days? (take a few minutes and have a look, if necessary)•What is space like in Happy Days?• How to approach this question: • Note how the s.d. describe the space of the play• What is onstage, and what is offstage? How are they related?

• Can characters move easily around the stage, or are they somehow restricted?

• Note how characters make use of this space

Storytelling

•What are the gaps or inconsistencies in Jo’s stories? In Helen’s? [This is the older slide—here, Winnie] • What can we make of these?• How are these related to the play’s metatheatrical

elements? I might say specifically: to the elements brought into the play from outside of it?

Beckett, Happy Days (1961) and Not I (1972)• Playwright unimaginable without wartime experience•Waiting for Godot (1953): new theatrical idiom• A “tragicomedy”• Fragments of European civilization: hats, umbrellas, books—

remnant of vaudeville, clowning• Particular importance of theatricality: daily life as performance,

over a void

• Influential over all subsequent C20 playwrights

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LDwfKxr-M