artigo - choreography of disobedience

L U C I A N O G A T T I

Choreography of Disobedience:Becketts Endgame

Clov Lets stop playing

Hamm Never!

Since its 3 April 1957 opening at the Royal Court Theatre ofLondon under the direction of Roger Blin, Endgames effectivenessin questioning what is understood as theatre remains intact. Therewere many who braved the discomfort provoked by SamuelBecketts second play by assigning a universal, placating meaningto the apparently purposeless routine of four characters confinedto a place laconically described as refuge or shelter. In thefirst reviews of the play that came out, frequent references todespair and hopelessness in a post-apocalyptic world attempted tocharacterize Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nells survival as a terminalsituation.1

Journal of Beckett Studies 23.2 (2014): 222243Edinburgh University PressDOI: 10.3366/jobs.2014.0105 Journal of Beckett Studieswww.euppublishing.com/jobs

Choreography of Disobedience: Becketts Endgame 223

It was not long before Becketts theatre was appropriated byFrench existentialism. This took place at the onset of the 1960sand became an illustration of the senselessness of the humancondition in the Cold War era. Destruction, war, and metaphysicalabsurdity were the keywords for this first reception. It crystallizedand was diffused through Martin Esslins influential study, TheTheatre of the Absurd (1961), in which he considers Beckett as animportant part of the landscape of the new European theatre.In an essay contemporary to Esslins book, Theodor W. Adornosought to emphasize the autonomy of the Beckettian drama in theface of this type of appropriation (Adorno, 1991). The very needto find a revealing meaning behind the dramatic composition isexamined and severely criticized, along with other existentialist,metaphysical assumptions. As with Kafkas prose, also one ofAdornos objects, Endgame was seen as revealing the obsoletenature of any interpretation defined as a redirection of the artisticconfiguration toward a substantive idea of meaning. There wouldbe little underlying meaning to uncover, no world view transmittedby its author, no message to be deciphered by its audience.Endgame hermetically resists both metaphysically-assured meaningand representation of a story beyond what happens onstage; itmay demand another set of criteria for interpretation. This explainsthe need for a critical approach that would leave the historicalor philosophical references more or less arbitrary and exterior tothe play in the background, foregrounding the historicity of thematerial from which it was produced.

Within contemporary theory on the theatre, the Adornianinterpretation enabled reaffirmations of the autonomy of drama or of its vestiges on the post-avant-garde scene, signalling thefailure of avant-garde movement between aesthetics and socialpraxis. As we will discuss later, this is a problem which resonates inworks such as Christoph Menkes theory of tragedy, which clingsstrongly to the notion of the autonomy of aesthetic experience(Menke, 2005). At the opposite end of the spectrum, enjoying ampleinfluence on the current horizon, we encounter the apology oftheatrical situation, as defended by Hans-Thies Lehmanns post-dramatic theatre theory (Lehmann, 2003). Looking at a number ofdevelopments which, since the 1960s, have moved theatre closerto performance, happenings and the visual arts, the author presents

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an argument that situates drama as an outmoded historical form.For these purposes, he employs a circumscribed notion of drama,marked by the stylized intersubjective conflict in the dialogue thedramatic collision and by its economy of textual presentation.Thus, the importance of significant changes in dramatic formthroughout the twentieth century is naturally eclipsed. This is thecase whether one is referring to the introduction of epic elementsinto drama (not only by Brechtian theatre), to the variety oftraditions that produce reflections on theatrical performance oreven to the epic characteristics of the plays that nourish his theory.Ultimately, such theory aims to discard concepts such as mimesisand representation in order to assert a theatre of the real which makesthe terms reality and representation quite indistinguishable.

The present essay seeks to situate Endgame within this debateby sustaining a particular hypothesis: that Becketts work as astager made another equation for drama and staging possible,one which may consider an important contribution to the theoryof contemporary theatre. The organization of drama around atotalizing principle, or the equation of dramatic composition andthe materiality of the stage, are issues within the current debatewhich run through all of Becketts activities as playwright andstager. In this context, the notes to his montage of Endgame atthe Schiller Theater in Berlin in 1967 take on a decisive role,demonstrating a highly conscious and advanced use of stagingmechanisms meant to problematize issues such as meaning andrepresentation. Thus, it is not a matter of constructing a dichotomybetween autonomy of representation and reality of performance,but of showing Becketts contradictory approach to these issues,which he does in such a way that this conflict becomes the veryraison dtre of theatrical experience.

As a director of his own plays, Beckett aimed to preservethe independence of the staging from interpretations that wouldclose the semantic field that the theatrical situation opens up.The spectator should not be induced to extract a meaning fromevents presented in a realistic manner, nor should he forget thathe finds himself in an auditorium, but confront the very eventof the theatrical experience. Beckett was not the only one to givesuch importance to stage composition. His specificity, in the face ofother experiences of transformation of the theatre in the twentieth


century, such as that of Brecht or Artaud, lies in the fact thathe distances the stage from the audience, which is traditionallya reference to the theatre of illusionistic purport. It is thus that,during 1967 rehearsals in Berlin, he makes a rather surprisingrecommendation to his actors: the play is to be acted as thoughthere were a fourth wall where the footlights are (McMillan andFehsenfeld, 1988, 204).

The fourth wall may be seen as the quintessence of illusionistictheatre, at least since Diderots Discourse on Dramatic Poetry. Theunequivocal separation of stage and audience would be the mostefficient way to involve the spectators in the presentation, makingthem forget that they are in a theatre and convincing them of theauthenticity of the scene. This is precisely where Diderots proposaltakes us. He states that a plays perfection consists of imitating anaction so precisely that the spectator, repeatedly deceived, imaginesthat he is watching the action itself. Such naturalness is built onstage, but offered to the spectator as if it were nature itself, to whichhuman conflicts are equalized on the illusionistic stage. This is thenrevealed as an invitation to oblivion: the spectators must forgetthey are at the theatre, effectively taking what is simulated on stageas life itself while author, director and actors must concentrate theirinterest in the characters, isolating themselves from the presence ofthe audience, beyond the stage lights, for whom they act. In thisway, Diderot recommends, whether composing or acting, the actorsshould not think of the spectator, but imagine a great wall at theproscenium, separating them from the audience, and act as if thecurtain had never gone up.

The illusionism of the fourth wall may seem to be a strangearrival point for a drama that has apparently turned against itsown representational vocation. Would Becketts play be at risk ofbeing regarded a step backward in relation to the greatest effortsin twentieth-century theatre? Critics of illusionism and naturalismin theatrical presentation as diverse as Brecht and Artaud soughtthe transformation of theatrical experience through the demolitionof the fourth wall, and consequently, through the critical andphysical involvement of the spectator. Beckett, however, prefersto go in the opposite direction by distancing his audience. Thus,one of the difficulties in his drama is to understand how suchdistancing becomes a condition that allows theatre to appear as


an autonomous situation, one that cannot be reduced to mererepresentation of actions previously configured within a text.

The controversy surrounding the fourth wall makes it possibleto situate Becketts drama not only in relation to decisiveexperiences of twentieth-century European drama, but alsoto recent debates around post-dramatic theatre, to employthe terminology coined through the publication of Lehmannshomonymous book in 1999. It is in this context that one mustunderstand Christoph Menkes interpretation of Becketts referenceto the fourth wall as a step back in relation to the expectationsof avant-garde theatre, sacrificed in favour of the beauty thatthe symmetrical organization of the play provides. Menkesinterpretation is structured around his explanation of why Clovcannot reach freedom by the end of the play, that is, why he cannotescape from Hamms domain and leave the refuge. According toMenke, this is linked to a form of dialogue that is symmetricallyorganized in two poles: the construction of meaning throughHamms narrative impulse and the sabotage of that meaning byClovs lines. As one pole presupposes the other, the conflict isnot resolved through the freeing of either of them; rather, thestatements of one presuppose those of the other. The ending merelysuspends the conflict in an image that, in its symmetry, evokesthe beginning of the play. In this way, the aesthetic experienceprovided by Becketts theatre cannot aspire to that mediationbetween aesthetics and practical life that avant-garde theatre of thebeginning of the twentieth century provided, but renders an imageof the failure of such mediation. The result is a drama that shutsitself down as an object of distanced contemplation. Its beauty itsaesthetic success is the price paid for such practical failure:

Becketts theatre rebuilds the fourth wall and makes an objectof distanced contemplation out of the dramatic course. Thus, itcongeals into a tableau, the structure organizes itself accordingto symmetries, analogies and repetitions (which Beckett treatsin such a decisive way in his choreographic staging of theplay), the circle between beginning and end closes itself. Butin the mathematical-musical beauty of his order, Beckettsplay can only appear because the action that it presents was


suspended. The failure in action: the failure of every attemptto change is the condition for the aesthetic success of theplay. In Endgame, aesthetic success and practical success donot correspond as the modern model for tragedy promised orexpected, but they repel one another strongly. Clovs failure isthe price that Beckett was willing to pay for the beauty of hisplay. (Menke, 2005, 2012)2

Underlying that ill-succeeded mediation between stage andreality is the diagnosis of the failure of historical avant-gardemovements, and consequently, the post-avant-gardist re-statementof the autonomy of drama against praxis. The object of post-avant-gardist theatre, in its turn, would be precisely that failure, whichis raised to the condition of a theme. As such the final tableau inEndgame the impossibility for Clov to reach his freedom definesit as meta-tragedy: Beckett stages the tragedy of the game, thatis, the failure of the passage between game and praxis.3 Thisinterpretation is conceived in the context of a controversy againstone of the central components of the conception of post-dramatictheatre, namely, the pretension of theatre flooding into life. Menketries to give sharpness to the limits between art and reality,explaining the autonomy of drama from a double gaze, attentiveto dramatic conflict as well as to its character as dramatic game.Drama acquires awareness of its own theatricality,4 providing thespectator with an ironic and distanced view. In this perspective,the moments of caesura of scenic illusionism (Hlderlin, Brechtand Benjamin are recovered here) reveal the staging of failure inthe passages between the seriousness of praxis and the beautyof the game as the very suspension of the domination of theaesthetic.

In a debate with Menke, Lehmanns response consisted ofrestating that this self-reflectiveness of drama leaves the theatricalsituation untouched, crystallized in the very well-marked domainsseparating the spectator in the audience and the representation offictional action onstage. His objection goes beyond the observationthat the currently generalized imperative of aesthetic shatteringhas to a great extent neutralized the de-stabilizing potential ofinterruption. The latter may again be taken up, without great


difficulty, through conventional forms that re-direct the spectator tocontinuity after the caesura. The central point to his argument is inthe greater interpenetration between the domains of aesthetic andpractical life. The theatre cannot be content to offer a reflection thatdestabilizes the serene and ironic position of the spectator. Rather,it must go against reality, says Lehmann, confounding game,seriousness, responsibility, innocence, real praxis and aestheticgame, without losing awareness that such differentiation maynot be renounced. Against the rigorous autonomy defended byMenke, Lehmann proposes that theatre may be more than thethematization of the tension between praxis and presentation(Spiel): it is a form of real-corporeal praxis that maintains the doublecharacter of real life process (praxis) and aesthetic fiction (game) ineach of its elements, showing that there are no clear boundariesaround aesthetic and extra-aesthetic domains (Lehmann, 2007,2214).

To situate Endgame within this discussion may be a usefulway to evaluate its current relevance. The Beckettian stage hasnever been a negative reference to its own exterior, but only onestaging space. By turning theatre against its own representativevocation, Endgame approaches the contemporary valuation thetheory of post-dramatic theatre of the here and now of theatricalsituation. But to move from this play to dismissing representationin favour of the pure act of showing as if freed from all objects isan excessively hurried solution for the struggle Beckett initiatedbetween the vestiges of dramatic meaning and the materialityof the stage. Likewise, if the same play is considered to bebased on the theatrical nature of the conflict between Clov andHamm as reinforced by Becketts 1967 staging to analyze itexclusively as drama, as done by Menke, has too high a price: itdisregards the potential opening up of meaning that is proper totheatrical situation, a key element for rethinking the problem of therelationship between art and social praxis.

Becketts directorial work at the Schiller Theatre demonstratesthat Endgame was conceived through conscious and advanced useof staging resources. It is not just the conflict between Hammand Clov that is only fulfilled by means of its staging, but thetext as well is constantly altered so as to make it inseparablefrom the place and the way in which it is pronounced. Beckett


himself emphasized well before this staging that the conceptionof Endgame was already much closer to the theatrical experiencethan his previous play, Waiting for Godot. The physical limitationsof the characters in Endgame, beyond the characterization of each,must also be seen as distinguished forms of relation with the scenicspace. In Endgame, the title itself is revealing of such closeness to thetheatrical environment. The game refers to staging as a domain initself, comprised of the mobilization of the resources necessary to atheatrical presentation. The English, French and German versions,all of which Beckett worked on, reinforce the non-dissociability ofplaying and enacting (play, jouer, spielen). The end, in turn, refersto the effort of bringing this process to an end, as well as tothe depletion of the resources needed to do so. The confrontationbetween Hamm and Clov in Becketts staging, the centre of theplay does not develop with a common aim in sight, but as adispute over different positions regarding an open end.

The conflict between text and its staging appears at the verymoment when Clov and Hamm come onstage. Each in his ownway resorts to mechanisms of theatrical representation that aremeant to estrange it. The beginning of Endgame is marked by thefading of that magic instant in which the boundaries betweenthe material composition of the stage and representation propercan be perceived. From the very beginning, Clov sets out toexamine the stage. The use of techniques of slapstick humourin the characters movements is not meant to make the scenehumorous but to disrupt the continuity between the finality ofan action (looking through the window) and the movement thatit requires (positioning the ladder under the window). Finalityand movement, dissociated by the ladder which is always turnedto the back of the stage, evoke and suspend the premise of apurpose for what the character is doing onstage. In that sequence,when Clov removes the sheets that cover Hamm in his chair andthe cans where Nagg and Nell lie, he alludes to the theatricalpractice of keeping scenery covered between show days, explicitlytaking responsibility for the plays organization. Through theseinitial movements, not only does he announce the moment wheneverything is ready to start, but he also disturbs the evocative senseof the end in his first line, just before he withdraws to his kitchenand leaves the stage to Hamm:


Clov: [Fixed gaze, tonelessly.] Finished, its finished, nearlyfinished, it must be nearly finished. [Pause.] Grain upon grain,one by one, and one day, suddenly, theres a heap, a little heap,the impossible heap. (Beckett, 1990, 93)

The text points to the indistinctness of the ending andits approach. Reference to the Zeno paradox reinforces thehypothetical or even impossible character of their convergence.From the point of view of stage preparation, explicated by Clovssilent movements, the line refers to the plays temporal limits aswell: this preparation is the condition for both the beginning and,remotely, the conclusion, which would return the scenery to itsoriginal, sheet-covered place. In the indications that were providedfor the 1980 Riverside Studios staging, Beckett highlighted Clovsperplexity at that initial moment: All seemingly in order, yet achange (Gontarski, 1995, 478). It is that order put into effect thatseems to separate him from the end, as manifested in a later line:

Clov: [Straightening up.] I love order. Its my dream. A worldwhere all would be silent and still and each thing in its lastplace, under the last dust. (Beckett, 1990, 120)

Clov is not announcing his desire to escape the bunker andHamms domination. The end he aspires to is the return of thescenic space to a state of repose or suspension. In the face of thisgoal, his initial line explains the paradox of concluding the stagesthat prepare for this end, as if the course of the play were nothingmore than a cumbersome but necessary crossing over toward it. Hisline is thus a prelude to the opening of the curtains, a moment thatcomes before the play, which is then absorbed by the dynamics ofthe drama itself, marking the contact point between the theatricalapparatus and the plays beginning.

For Hamm as well, the beginning of the play is marked by thatcontact. Under Clovs sheet, he awaits the beginning of the game,his face covered by an old rag which he ritualistically folds afterClov leaves, alternating his first line with the movement of tuckingit into his pocket:

Hamm: Me [he yawns] to play. [He holds the handkerchiefspread out before him.] Old stancher! (Beckett, 1990, 93).


It is reasonable to suppose that Hamms handkerchief evokes thecurtain at the proscenium arch which Beckett had suppressed. Thetraditional resource of illusionist content is dismissed by the authorand transferred to the interior of the play. The line evinces yetanother convention, presented here also as a chess game metaphor:the alternation of the movements of each player as a referenceto the alternation of the characters in the dialogue, the engine ofaction in its dramatic form. Clovs initial line presumes both hisexistence prior to the play as well as his awareness of belongingto a theatrical process. When he verbalizes his turn to play, heis also announcing his turn onstage, conflating action with thevery process of enactment. Hamm describes the function of adramatic role: the actor onstage is supposed to start acting. Butinstead of playing just any character, he explains the functionof an actor at the beginning of a play. This explanation is not,however, carried out previously by the actor. It is not the actorrepresenting this first line, but Hamm himself, pointing to a definitedistinctive mark of Becketts theatre. The consciousness or theexplanation that it is theatre and not representation of a possibleaction its theatricality that is at issue does not originate in thedistance between actor and character, as in Brechts epic theatre,for example, but is a prerogative of the character himself.

All of this allows for some considerations on the specificityof the Beckettian character. At least in his first plays, such asEndgame and Happy Days, the character is not only that absentinstance presented by the actor but also a performer working withhis position onstage. This form of theatricality problematizes therelationship between what is real and what is fictional, countering aconception of theatre as representation with another, characterizedby the passages between representation and situation. It is not theactor who demolishes the fourth wall in order to call the audiencesattention to the fictitious nature of the character, but the latter whois aware that he is doing theatre and exposes his own theatricality.

In Endgame, Clov and Hamm show awareness of the theatricalcharacter of their lines and movements by the distance orstrangeness they confer on them, which does not arise from thatmomentary distinction between actor and character that interruptsboth the course of action and illusionist effect. Such interruptionswould be but an assimilated form of theatricality, running up


against the audiences expectations. When applied to Beckett,such interpretative techniques are mediocre, leading to a mockingsense of humour that is characteristic of badly-staged productions.Laughter in theatre is an immediate mode of communication,founded on some form of empathy, whether with the stagedscene, the form of representation or the playwrights stance.Endgame distances itself from this type of effect by a withdrawalthat is able to annul the basis for mutual recognition betweenaudience and staging. A good production may cause discomfortand disorientation, but not laughter (Simon, 1986, 75; Kalb,1989, 24).

Adorno believed that humour lost its function in Endgame,breaking the link between joke and laughter. Its premises wereemptied out: a canon of laughable things and a position ofreconciliation from which one might laugh (Adorno, 1997, 257).Beyond this argument, one should be reminded that the difficultyof laughter is the result of the distance caused when Beckett raisesagain the fourth wall. The audience gets involved in the playyet not spontaneously in an authentic scene; rather, through adisorientation that verges on malaise. Becketts anti-illusionismemerges from a radical distance between stage and audience,which becomes most evident in the attitude of the Beckettian actor.The actor playing Clov, like Winnie in Happy Days, never seesthe audience, unlike the Brechtian actor who looks the audiencestraight in the eyes. The distance between stage and audiencedoes not arise from passages between illusion and reality. It is thecharacter who operates within different registers, without givingprimacy to any of them, making the play autonomous in relationto any other fictitious representation; it is taken as an autonomoussituation and not an artifice destined to represent, explain orcriticize another text, whether literary or social. The result is not,however, the erasure of the differences between theatre and theempirical world, as a more simplistic vision of the post-dramatictheatre would intend, but the construction of a space in which thisdifference is exposed.

Beckett makes this theatricality indiscernible from the way inwhich the question of the end permeates the relationship betweenClov and Hamm. It is possible to argue that Hamm relates in amore intimate way with this theme when he seeks fulfilment as


the narrator of a novel whose fragments are relayed to Clov aswell as to his parents. If the theme of the end also characterizes hisconcern for physical existence, suggesting a convergence betweendeath and the end, it is only configured as the fundamental themeof his lines when it is projected onto the conclusion of a chroniclethat is in progress:

Hamm: Ive got on with my story. [Pause.] Ive got on with itwell. [Pause. Irritably.] Ask me where Ive got to.

Clov: Oh, by the way, your story?

Hamm: [Surprised.] What story?

Clov: The one youve been telling yourself all your . . . days.

Hamm: Ah you mean my chronicle?

Clov: Thats the one.

[. . . ]

Hamm: Ill tell you how it goes. He comes crawling on hisbelly [. . . ]. Crawling on his belly, whining for bread for hisbrat. Hes offered a job as gardener. [. . . ] I continue then. Beforeaccepting with gratitude he asks if he may have his little boywith him. (Beckett, 1990, 1212)

These lines characterize Hamm as a producer of meaning. Hisstorytelling, which does not seem to distinguish memory frominvention, aims to organize his experience. Crowned by the endwhich connects the whole and the parts, its narrative intelligibilitybecomes an effective counterpoint to the alleged purposelessnessof his existence in the shelter. As Christoph Menke points out:

Hamms literary condensation of language deals with theformation of meaning. His law is completion; his novel, hisstory can only be finished when all reckoning is over. In aneffort to reach it, he is driven to replicate the experience thatNagg points to in his joke about the tailor who, through hiswork of art a pair of trousers seeks to confront the worldsimperfection, but fails. Thus, all meaning making refers back to


an exterior that it must be capable of bringing in but is nevertruly able to. In the narrative in which Hamm tells his story,it is the uncontrollable exterior of his own memories (Menke,2005, 195).

His chronicle thus seeks to integrate Clov into his own story. Thetale about a man who begs for bread for his sick child and gets anoffer to work as a gardener and care for his child could very well bethe story of Clovs entrance into Hamms domain. The chronicleattributes the role of son to Clov, reinforcing his subordination. Italso gives a meaningful purpose to their relationship in the shelter.Beckett, however, gives no textual evidence to confirm or refute thishypothesis. It remains an unilateral effort to put Clov at Hammsservice.

Moreover, the relation of Hamms story to the issue of the endis configured entirely by its oral features. Hamm does not write anovel, but performs an oral narrative. He uses four different voiceregisters to tell the story of the beggar, requiring different gesturesand body positions, as well as comments on the effects obtained.This relation between narration and performance seals Hammsdependence on theatrical conventions. The most important is theaudience.

Clov: Ill leave you.

Hamm: No!

Clov: What is there to keep me here?

Hamm: The dialogue. (Beckett, 1990, 1201)

Just as the need for an interlocutor is understood as theatricalconvention, dependence on Clov is also a link to the theatricalenvironment in which the conflict between Hamm and Clov arises.There is a linguistic dependence between them, as defined byMenke, but it is not restricted to the realm of verbal language. Sincehis narrative is impossible unless it is enacted, he depends on morethan the dialogue with Clov in order to narrate. There are at leasttwo reasons for the interdependence of narration and enactment.


First, in a way that is immanent to narrative, there is the need foran external perspective to confirm the meaning of events:

Hamm: I wonder. [Pause.] Imagine if a rational being cameback to earth, wouldnt he be liable to get ideas into hishead if he observed us long enough. [Voice of rational being.]Ah, good, now I see what it is, yes, now I understand whattheyre at! [. . . ] And without going so far as that, we ourselves. . . [with emotion] . . . we ourselves . . . at certain moments. . . [Vehemently.] To think perhaps it wont all have been fornothing! (Beckett, 1990, 108).

Furthermore, there is another reason, one which is perhaps evenmore important: the staged narration cannot be explained as theverbal explication of the narratives own engendering; much morethan this, it corresponds to the possibility of projecting the endbeyond the drama or the narration, that is, to a point in whichthe end might finally be determined, namely, the end of the play.If there is any hope for an end to his story, from which he mightacquire some sense of the whole, this seems to depend on itsonstage consummation. The staging, however, offers no resolution,but is frozen into a tableau. This is followed by the plays end andthe promise of another performance. Thus it is understandable thatHamm complains of the repetition which forces him to return tothe stage. In spite of this, he gives in to theatrical conventions,hoping that some day the conclusion of his story might coincidewith the end of the play. Therefore, in his last lines he takes upthe link between beginning and end again before finally coveringhis face with his handkerchief. He accepts the rules of the gamebefore action is suspended by the tableau. That is why, in his lastline, he returns to the link between beginning and end before finallycovering his face with the rag.

Hamm: Me to play. [Pause. Wearily.] Old endgame lost of old,play and lose and have done with losing. [. . . ] Clov! [Longpause.] No? Good. [He takes out the handkerchief.] Since thatsthe way were playing it . . . [he unfolds handkerchief] . . . letsplay it that way . . . [he unfolds] . . . and speak no more about


it . . . [he finishes unfolding] . . . speak no more. [He holds thehandkerchief spread out before him.] Old stancher! [Pause.] You. . . remain. [Pause. He covers his face with handkerchief, lowers hisarms to armrests, remains motionless.]

[Brief tableau.] (Beckett, 1990, 1324)

In the expectation of concluding his story, Hamm, actor-character-narrator, accepts the rules of the game as laid down by Clov,who observes him, immobile, dressed to go out, before the play issuspended in a long tableau. By resorting to theatrical conventions,Hamm enacts his fictional impulse in the expectation that oneday, ending and meaning will coincide. He does not reach thecompletion of his novel, but this game gives him some hope thatindeed he might.

While Hamm needs the help of a listener to conceive his novel,Clov stays in the refuge for other reasons:

Hamm: Why do you stay with me?

Clov: Why do you keep me?

Hamm: Theres no one else.

Clov: Theres nowhere else. (Beckett, 1990, 95)

Clov is closely connected to scenic space. There is no otherreason why Becketts Schiller Theater production concentrated itsefforts on Clov: he is the theatrical element in Endgame. If Hammis the literary component, the effort to construct the mythos as aunit of a multiplicity, Clov resists meaning, opposing it with hisphysical posture on stage. Beckett highlighted the stages resistanceto meaning by constructing for Clov what might be called thechoreography of disobedience. In his choreographic movement aroundthe stage, he resists the role Hamm imposes on him in his story. Thischoreography certainly revisits elements of the text itself, that is, ofClovs and Hamms constitution as dramatic characters connectedthrough dialogue, but it bestows a new arrangement on them bysubmitting them to a precise positioning within the composition ofthe stage.


In Endgame, the very configuration of the dialogue presentselements that go way beyond the transmission of meanings. Clovmobilizes operations of meaning sabotage against Hamms narrative.In his lines, words are not taken as bearers of meaning, but literallyas linguistic material, given their sonority and thus emptying thecommunicative potential of the language. The word is at timesgiven back as an emptied sign, and at other times treated as rawmaterial. In his production, Beckett used such materiality in orderto produce parallelisms and sound or rhythmic analogies betweenlines and distinct situations. In this use of language, Menke findsnot only the struggle between language practitioners betweenHamm the poet and Clov the avant-garde prosaist but also thereason the link between them is maintained.

If Clovs prose is nothing but his war on Hamms poetry, it canneither put an end to that war nor subsist independently of it.[. . . ] Like his prose, and yes, through it, Clov is tied foreverto his secondary status; he lives off his cues. In the same waythat Hamm can neither tell his story to the end nor tell italone, Clov, eternally giving off cues, cannot speak withoutHamms support, and because of that, cannot leave him.Clov, the clown, will always be Clov, the servant. [. . . ] WhileClovs prose presumes his opposite, since it only exists in thisstruggle, Hamms poetry seeks to integrate and dominate itsopposite. For the two positions, however, something similarapplies albeit in different ways: in the struggle against oneanother they resolve the antagonism that they respectivelyare. Thus, both positions reproduce what they fight against:not only the master reproduces the servants resistance, butthe servant reproduces his own dependence and his lack ofautonomy (Menke, 2005, 197200).

The dialogue may not only impede the dissolution of the linkbetween Clov and Hamm, but also any change or inversion of roles.The reduction of conflict to the linguistic dimension demands, inthe end, its solution, yet it seems that Beckett has already dismissedsuch an outcome. Even if his thesis of the sabotage of meaningclarifies the content of the dialogues between Hamm and Clov,


disregard for other dimensions of conflict erodes the plausibilityof Menkes reading. Becketts staging work gains brief mentionin a reference to the beauty of the game of symmetries. In fact, itis precisely Clovs physical and spatial resistance to Hamm thathis direction highlights, not to mention the fact that languageitself depends on the material elements of the configured scene.Since Clovs sabotage is not restricted to his lines, but is exercised,overall, by the corporeal mobilization of onstage space, Menkesconclusions need to be relativized.

As at least three modifications of the text show, Beckettsdirection highlights the physical mechanisms of subversionavailable to Clov. First, Beckett increases the distance between Clovand Hamm so that the former no longer remains close to Hammschair, but halfway between it and the door to his kitchen. Second,Beckett expands the repertoire of situations of disobedience. Theyare not only verbal, as in the lie about the colour or the positionof the dog. Clov also lies about his own movements inside therefuge, disobeying, for instance, Hamms order to move to the walland back. He stands beside Hamm, not taking a step, countingtime noisily while he confirms the enactment of a displacementthat never happened (Beckett, 1990, 95; Gontarski, 1992, 6). Finally,Beckett enhances the violence of his movements. After pushingHamm around the stage in his chair (an act the idealist Hamm seesas a trip around the world), Clov returns him to centre stage:

Hamm: I feel a little too far to the left. [CLOV moves chairslightly.] Now I feel a little too far to the right. [CLOV moveschair slightly.] Now I feel a little too far forward. [CLOV moveschair slightly.] Now I feel a little too far back. [CLOV moves chairslightly.] Dont stay there [i. e. behind the chair], you give methe shivers.

[CLOV returns to his place beside the chair.] (Beckett, 1990, 105)

During rehearsals, Beckett replaced slightly with a sequenceof rhythmic and aggressive thumps against Hamms chair(Gontarski, 1992, 556). This has a considerable effect on the scene,as it enhances Clovs weapons against Hamm: physical, sound andgesture elements belonging to the realm of the stage.5


In his function as stager, Beckett turns the text into a musicalscore for the execution of these theatrical devices. His workwith the materiality of the scene mobilizes rhythms, repetitions,symmetries, regularities and correspondences against the efforttowards a resolution that is inscribed onto Hamms history. Theplay is full of echoes. They all answer each other, Beckett explainedto the cast (Gontarski, 1992, xxi).6 Clovs movement betweenhis kitchen and Hamms chair should always occur in the sameway, as a dance exercise that is always repeated in the samerhythm in such a way that his movements are always symmetric:Clovs thinking walk, for instance, is choreographed intoa 6+4+6+4 pattern. Such patterns, perceived at the subconsciouslevel through repetition, are like subliminal images in film. At onepoint in rehearsals, Beckett called such patterning Pythagorean(Gontarski, 1992, 55).7

This choreography goes beyond an interest in pantomime which,in Clovs initial movements, pushes theatre towards an art ofsilence. It also serves as a separation between language and action.8

To those involved in the production of Endgame in Berlin, Beckettsaid: Never let your changes of position and voice come together.First comes (a) the altered bodily stance; after it, following aslight pause, comes (b) the corresponding utterance (Gontarski,1992, xix). It is not an issue of seeking mind/body dualities, butof exploiting the intervals between text and acting, producing asuccession of postures and frozen moments, as if the play shouldprogress in a pictorial mode, frame by frame, until it is suspendedin the final tableau in which Hamm again covers his face while Clov,dressed to leave, observes him without participating in the sceneor modifying the image produced. As the plays producer states,over and over, he has them [the actors] freeze for seconds at atime into a tableau which is to achieve its effect through repetition(Gontarski, 1992, xx).

Repetition against resolution: Beckett emphasized the symmetryof beginning and end so as to keep Hamm from concluding hisstory, and Clov from reaching a permanent immobilization ofscenic resources and meeting the ideal he dreamed of: one oforder and repose. Immobilized through an image that promisesrepetition, Hamm and Clov decipher the very theatrical experienceof which they are part. In the struggle between drama and theatre,


between sense and scene, Hamm performs the role of not liberatingthe stage from the effort of producing meaning, as obsolete andvacated as it may be. Clov, in turn, must resist the scenes fixationthrough meaning previously organized by the text. There is no endfor Hamms effort to produce a meaningful story, as his narrationneeds the audience that repeatedly sabotages his efforts to producemeaning by confronting him with the semantic openness of scenicmaterial. There is no end for Clov either, since his aim of permanentimmobilization of the stage cannot develop without the struggleagainst Hamms obsolete though non-removable effort to producemeaning. Without Clov, or rather, without theatre, Hamm mightnot be more than a traditionalist withdrawal in the face of theradical push of The Unnamable. The theatre was the way in whichBeckett chose to resume the problem of how to narrate andtake it beyond the impasse he faced upon conclusion of his prosetrilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable). The theatricalityof the conflict between Clov and Hamm gave visual and soundmateriality to the narrative problem, using the scenic and thebodily to develop the conflict between words and silence.

Endgame cannot be deciphered, however, through a singlenarrative issue. The conflict with the literary dimension of Hammscharacter also allowed the traditions of pantomime and clowningto be preserved without pushing the play toward a theatre ofpure physicality. Deprived of the search for Hamms literarymeaning, Clov might succumb to the shock of the scenic material,much like the character of Act Without Words I, conceived byBeckett as an appendix to Endgame. Adorno interpreted Act Ias the legitimate consequence of the play: its telos is silence. Itmight be more appropriate to find in Act I a counterpoint toEndgame: the pantomime might present a Clov deprived of hisconflict with literary language, which would reduce him to thestatus of victim of the scenic apparatus. In contrast with thepostdramatic apology of the scene, Endgame as theatrical praxis,sustains an irresolvable conflict with the vestiges of an epic-dramatic conception of meaning. Since the openness of meaningpermeates scenic organization, there would be also no reason touse the final tableau to draw conclusions regarding the failure ofmediation between aesthetics and practical life, as intended inrecent re-statements on the autonomy of drama.


In a scenario within which traditional resolutions are awasteland, Endgame makes conflict the very raison dtre oftheatrical experience. This, however, does not guarantee synthesisof meaning and performance. The presentation of conflictsabotages its outcome, projected onto Clovs departure, andsuggests that non-resolution itself is Clovs strongest weaponagainst Hamm, the idealist. By playing with the semanticindeterminacy of scenic material, Clov makes an effort to keepopen the experience that Hamm seeks to circumscribe through theuse of words. On the other side of the fourth wall, the audienceis confronted with a unique conception of theatrical experience.It does not return home with a message on practical life, nor is itinvited to subscribe to a particular diagnosis of the world in whichwe live. The scenic apparatus does not captivate the audiencethrough its senses. By dispensing with the spectators intellectualand affective engagement with the play, Beckett merely seeks tocircumscribe the social reach of his theatre: to build a moment offreedom in relation to the previous determination of meaning. Thehermetic quality of the last tableau should be understood in the lightof audience receptiveness to this experience of disorientation.

N O T E S

1. Early reviews are collected in Graver (1979) and Andonian (1998). Fora more comprehensive discussion of Becketts reception, see Boxall (2003).

2. All translations of quotations from Menke are my own.3. Cf. Menke, 2004, 33: In avant-garde theatre, the experience of failure

of the game in praxis is involuntarily exposed. [. . . ] What is showninvoluntarily in theatre can also become voluntary: the failure of thetheatrical game in praxis may become the object and content of thetheatrical game. This happens, for instance, when Clov acts the avant-gardist subversion strategies to the point of self-paralysis [. . . ]. In thosepost-avant-gardist forms of theatre, the failure of the historical avant-gardemovements to mediate (in a more or less dialectic way) game and praxisis not presumed, but it becomes itself presented and enacted. Here, theawareness of the insurmountable differences between praxis and theatre isacquired at the very theatre.

4. The concept of theatricality is normally applied to emphasize self-awareness of the theatrical game and its independence from drama as well.


It was not by chance that the concept acquired prominence in theatricaltheory, with the progressive conquest of the autonomy of presentationover dramatic text. The term, as much as the experience to which it refers,escapes unequivocal identification, and must be better understood as theeffort to circumscribe various processes of theatrical situation composition:physical presence of the actor, association of spectator to play production,autonomy of the arts in scene composition, relations between stage andaudience, mimesis and illusion, between performance and fiction, etc.

5. All of the elements of the staging presented up to this point may benoticed when Becketts production is compared with other available ones,such as that of Conor McPherson for the project Beckett on film, available onDVD, and that of the San Quentin Drama Workshop for the project Beckettdirects Beckett (available at http://www.greylodge.org/gpc/?p=901),which attempted to recapture Becketts own direction. Becketts version,the recording of which is available at the New York Public Library forPerforming Arts, presents a very different relationship between sceneand dramatic action. Of the three versions, Becketts is the only onein which there is an effective rupture between Clovs attitude and hispsychological interior. Not only his movement, but his facial expressionsare entirely mediated by the relationship with the scene. Its difference fromthe two other productions may be perceived in the remnants of a certainexpressiveness or a certain psychological interior in Clov, whether in theexternalization of his internal suffering and rebellion in the production forBeckett on Film or in the perplexity of the San Quentin Drama Workshopstaging. These vestiges of Clovs interior dimension were eliminated in theClov that emerged under Becketts own direction.

6. On the issue of sounds in Endgame, cf. Barry McGovern (2009).7. The same symmetry appears in Hamms first and last lines. In the

Berlin diaries, he states: The voice comes out of silence and returns intosilence (Gontarski, 1992, 69).

8. As indicated by Anna McMullan (1994), this would become thecentral mark in Becketts direction work for his late plays.

W O R K S C I T E D

Adorno, Theodor W. (1991), Trying to understand Endgame, in Notes toLiterature V. I, New York: Columbia University Press.

Andonian, Cathleen Culotta (1998), The Critical Response to Samuel Beckett,Westport, London: Greenwood Press.


Beckett, Samuel (1990), The Complete Dramatic Works, London: Faber andFaber.

Boxall, Peter (ed.) (2003), Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot / Endgame,London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cohn, Ruby (1980), Just Play: Becketts Theater, Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Esslin, Martin (2001), The Theatre of the Absurd, New York: Vintage Books.Gonstarski, S. E. (ed.) (1992), The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett:

Endgame, London: Faber & Faber.Graver, Lawrence (ed.) (1979), Samuel Beckett. The Critical Heritage, London:

Henley and Boston, Routledge & Kegan Paul.Kalb, Jonathan (1984), Beckett in Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.Lehmann, Hans Thies (2003), Postdramatic Theater, New York, Routledge.Lehmann, Hans Thies (2007). Tragdie und Postdramatisches Theater, in

Bettine Menke and Christoph Menke (ed.), Theater, Trauerspiel, Spektakel,Berlin: Theater der Zeit, pp. 21327.

McGovern, Barry (2009), They want to be entertained: PerformingBeckett, in Anna McMullan and S. E. Wilmer (ed.), Reflections on Beckett.A Centenary Celebration, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,pp. 17389.

McMillan, Dougald and Martha Fehsenfeld, (ed.) (1988), Beckett in theTheatre, vol. 1, London: John Calder.

McMullan, Anna (1994), Beckett as director: the art of mastering failure, inJohn Pilling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, pp. 196208.

Menke, Christoph (2004). Praxis und Spiel. Bemerkungen zur Dialektikeines postavantgardistischen Theater, in Patrick Primavesi and Olaf A.Schmitt (ed.), Aufbrche. Theaterarbeit zwischen Text und Situation, Berlin:Theater der Zeit, pp. 2735.

Menke, Christoph (2005), Die Gegenwart der Tragdie. Versuch ber Urteiland Spiel, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. [English translation (2009):Tragic play: Irony and theater from Sophocles to Beckett, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press].

Simon, Alfred (1986), Du thtre de lcriture lcriture de la scne inPierre Chabert (ed.), Beckett par Beckett: Revue dEsthetique (numro hors-srie), Toulouse: Private, pp. 7183.

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