Act Without Words I

A human being

Act Without Words I ( Acte sans paroles I) Samuel Beckett's first pantomime (followed by Act Without Words II). Like many of his works written Beckett this piece first in French and translated it himself later into English. Beckett wrote it in 1956 at the request of the dancer Deryk Mendel. The premiere took place on April 3, 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where it was shown following a performance of Beckett's play Endgame. The original music for the piece was written by John S. Beckett, a cousin of the author, who later also worked with him on the radio play Words and Music.

Action

The action takes place in a desert, which is illuminated by " blinding light ". The piece is filled with only one male character who is " backwards thrown on stage " at the beginning of the piece. Then the man hears a whistle from the right. He " keeps the noise for a kind of reputation, and after he gets a little thought about it, he goes in that direction, to be thrown back just to get back. Then the sound of the left sound. The scene is repeated reversed. " There is obviously no way out. He sits on the floor and looks at his hands.

After a series of objects to be lowered into the scene, initially a sapling with " only a branch, about one meter above the ground," a "cartoon of the tree of life" His arrival will - as well as the arrival of all other objects - of the same sharp whistle announced. When the man thus became aware of him, he moves into the shadow of the tree and looks at his hands. " A tailor scissors drops down from the flies ", but again he noticed she did not, until he hears a whistle. He then begins to cut his nails.

In the course of the piece other objects are still let down from above: three cubes of different sizes, a piece of rope and - always out of his reach - a "small carafe, which carries a big stiff protruding label bearing the word water on the neck "

The rest of the piece is a study of thwarted efforts. "With two natural tools equipped with his mind and with his hands, the tools that distinguish him from the lower animals, he tries to survive, he is trying to gain a bit of water in the desert. The mind works, at least in part: He learns that the small cubes on the large cube; he invents, or he receives the inventions scissors, dice and rope. But once he has learned to use his tools useful, they are taken from him: the scissors when he thinks about to cut off the neck instead of the nails; the cube and the rope when he discovered that he could use it as a gallows. " ( At the end of Waiting for Godot also consider Vladimir and Estragon to kill himself in this way. ) Beckett refers to the he saw in silent film comedies of Buster Keaton, Ben Turpon and Harry Langdon, all of which meet with objects that seem to have minds of their own.

Finally, it looks as if the man abandoned. He sits on the big cube. After a while it is pulled out from under him, and he remains on the ground. At this point, he decides not to play the game: Even as the water carafe dangling directly in front of his face, he makes no effort to take it. The palm leaves of the little tree open and provide shade again, but he does not move. He just sits there in the blinding light and looks at his hands.

Interpretation

Tantalus had not been punished for no reason. In Beckett's piece is not shown, however, that the man is actually punished for nothing more than its mere existence. Like the narrator in The Außgestoßene whose history thus begins that he is banished from the place where he lives in an environment " in which he neither exist, nor from which it can escape ," here is a external power, whereas the existence of Godot remains questionable in waiting for Godot. This external power is " sharp, represents inhuman, disembodied whistle. " By allowing you not to leave the man. His case (s) can be understood as a representation of the Fall.

The fact that the man is thrown in the truest sense of the word, at least in the eyes of the public, in its existence, reminiscent of Heidegger ash concept of facticity. Heidegger uses this term in a metaphorical sense: he thus describes the accidental, random nature of human existence in a world that is not made ​​by our own conscious choice to the world of man. Likewise, metaphorically goes before Beckett: The man is like the baby from the uterus, kicked out from nothingness into being, out of the darkness into the blinding stage lights. The performer is without a name, it could be anyone. " As Beckett 's American publisher Barney Rossett announced in 1957, it is only ' human flesh or bones ' "

As a first time he looks at his hands, it is "as if he were taking for the first time notice of his own body [ ... ] When his existence he is aware [ ...] [ he is ready ], the presence of the various beings [ Heidegger to accept " designation for existing things ]. After, appears as one of the beings, the scissors, the man begins to cut his fingernails, " for no other reason than that the proper object of this is available at a time. Of course, the scissors can stand here for any other useful object of daily life, such as a home or car, things whose existence is generally considered self-evident.

The play is a parable of resignation - a condition which is reached only after a series of disappointments. The man has learned ' the hard way ', that there is nothing on which he can rely on in his life, as he himself GC Barnard objected to this common interpretation of the inference one that the man did not move, lay not believe that he was simply broken ". The man remains defeated, he withdrew from the hardship and lies on the empty desert floor " But in this striking, traditional end Beckett demonstrates his consummate skills, because the real play begins at its end. The climactic end of the pantomime should not mean a pathetic defeat, but a conscious rebellion, the deliberate disobedience of man. Lucky ( from Waiting for Godot ) has finally brought against Pozzo. Ironically, the actor does then most when he is immobile, and his life will receive at the end of a meaning. In that denial, this severing of the umbilical cord a second birth, the birth of humans occurs. The man himself was born, even if it means his death.

Movie recording

Karel Reisz filmed the piece for the Beckett on Film project with a specially composed by Michael Nyman music.