Independent Project Theatre
Option B: Exploring Practice
As an artistic designer, how would I using- or integrating Beckett’s directions with Robert Wilsons Concept`s create a stage for the TV production of “Eh Joe” by Samuel Beckett ?
Index
Introduction / Preparation
Preparation
Overview
Exploration of the work of “Eh Joe” by Samuel Beckett
Exploration of the work of Robert Wilson
Synthesis of work of Samuel Beckett & Robert Wilson
Exploration of the work of Greg Lynn
Process
The concept- Adapting the Samuel Beckett script “Eh Joe” as an immersive environment*
The performance plan*
4. Conclusion
*Include reflections
As an artistic designer, how would I using- or integrating Beckett’s directions with Robert Wilsons Concept`s create a stage for the TV production of “Eh Joe” by Samuel Beckett ?
Preparation / Introduction
Since we have been informed about the start of the independent project a couple of days ago, I have thought about different options worth exploring. As I wanted to explore various forms of theatre and rather work experimentally and innovatively, I decided to chose Option B from the syllabus: Exploring Practice. Due to my interest in the intersection of performance with stage design and on the effect of space on performance, I was on the lookout to merge the two aspects together. In order to achieve this synthesis of both theatre performance and stage design I started out doing research in various spaces. As we have discussed several forms of theatre during class already such as traditional Japanese theatre forms (Bunraku,Noh), naturalism & realism, theatre of the absurd as well as west african dance and rituals I revised my Journal notes to see if anything would catch my interest to use as an inspirational basis for the IP. Turns out, the unit on theatre of the absurd as coined by Martin Esslin including practitioners such as minimalist/post modernist Samuel Beckett already caught my Interest while watching several of Samuel Becketts pieces such as „Waiting for Godot“. Therefore I started out analysing several of his scripts. The script which I found would work best for the IP was “Eh Joe”, written for a tv production of the BBC and first broadcasted in 1966. The research done on stage design led me into very different areas, which however also found their origin in minimalism, hence “work is stripped down to its most fundamental features”. To bring these two parts together, I decided to use both the script by Samuel Beckett “Eh Joe” and the stage design theories from Robert Wilson and merge them with the help of modern technology used to create immersive environments, as deployed by artists Olafur Elliason and Greg Lynn at the Museum of Modern Art. The three pillars of the course, theatre in the World, theatree in the Making and theatre in The World played a key role in the process of conducting the Independent Project, because they helped me apply the theoretical knowledge gained in TIW into both TIM and TIP.
Overview
The following list, was used as a preparation for the process of the IP. It includes several areas on which I did research.
Theatre in the World
Samuel Beckett (theatre in the World)
Robert Wilson (theatre in the World)
-Eh Joe video production
-Eh Joe script
Design and the elastic mind (Immersive environments)
Puma lift commercial
Notte Sento (Video made of 4500 stills)
Theatre in the Making
Overlaps with theatre in the world (How does Robert Wilson build a stage etc.)
Theatre in performance
Practical application
Exploration of the work „Eh Joe“ by Samuel Beckett
Based on the script & the television broadcast
The fact that “Eh Joe” is a TV production, therefore makes it possible for the script to be seamlessly adapted as immersive theater. Both the images and the voice used in the original script, can be integrated into the new stage.
As the stage will be built to encapsulate the audience, both the camera direction of Beckett and the voice directions have the effect on the stage design, that in an immersive stage design they can be used separately to create an even more intense effect. The voice and the images can be treated separately as they are in an immersive theater two different types of media, while in a tv broadcast they are broadcasted as one “file”. The secondary text directions by Beckett, describe this process of treating the images seperately from the voice/sound. “Each move is stopped by voice resuming, never move camera and voice together.” This creation of intensity in the mind of Joe and thereby the audience is described the four excerpts of secondary text below:
“After this opening pursuit, between first and final closeup of face , camera has nine slight moves towards face, say four inches at a time.”
“Camera does not move between paragraphs till clear that pause (say three seconds) longer than between phrases.”
“Practically motionless throughout, eyes unblinking during paragraphs, impassive except in so far as it reflects mounting tension of listening.”
The script of “Eh Joe” written by Samuel Beckett in April-May 1965 and broadcasted for the first time on 4 July 1966 on BBC2, describes a man Joe, sitting in a room and hearing the voice of a woman. Joe is as Beckett states “…late fifties,grey hair old dressing-gown,carpet slipeprs…” Joe is a man who left his girl friend behind, and now is haunted by a voice either resembling as Beckett himself states “An inner voice from the past.”. Samuel Beckett indicates in the script, that the camera should start of 1 yard away from Joe after the voice has begun talking (36 inches) and with every camera move (9 in total) move 4 inches closer to Joe. “The number nine is often associated with death” because in Dante`s view of Hell, there are nine circles. Joe sits on a bed rather than on a stool because as Beckett stated “a more telling image for a seducer would be alone on a bed.”
Pre-Voice
In terms of immersive theater, the audience would already be immersed as when they walk into the theater they have established an auditory sense of the space surrounding them.
Before the voice of the woman starts to be heard, Joe walks through the empty room and validates, that there is nothing outside the house. He does so, by opening the doors and the windows, through which the viewer cannot see. Hence, he thinks he is safe, but then the voice starts to speak to him. The voice in a sense, resembles his memories and what effect his decisions have had.
Voice & Joe
As the immersive stage will be built in a manner encapsulating the audience, the voice will have an infuriating effect, as the tone of the voice stands in contrast to the intensity of it.
The voice of the woman which as Beckett himself states “should be whispered. A dead voice in his head. Minimum of colour. Attacking. Each sentence a knife going in, pause for withdrawal, then in again.” In total, the voice of the woman makes 9 speeches, after which each the camera zooms, the above mentioned 4 inches towards the face of Joe until the camera is directly in front of his face. Joe should remain calm and not move, while however staring not at the camera but rather toward it. The initial actor of Joe, stated in an interview that “It’s really photographing the mind. It’s the nearest perfect play for television that you could come across, because the television camera photographs the mind better than anything else.”
Interpretation of the script in regard to creating an immersive stage design
There are several possibilities of interpreting the meaning of the voice for the script and in particular for Joe. One of them is as Gartorski brilliantly sums up:“a representation, an exteriorization of Joe’s internal conflict” or “not only the voice of memory, even memory rearranged or juxtaposed, but at least creative if not created memory, that is, memory leaching into imagination or creativity.” As mentioned in the introduction, Beckett in a letter to Alan Schneider stated that the voice should be “An inner voice from the past.”.
he images below illustrate the moving closer of the camera toward the face of Joe.
Exploration of the work of Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson is widely regarded as one of the most influential theatre practitioners. The reason for this, is the fact that he manages to incorporate several forms of media into a production, supported by very large geometric shapes. This is exemplified by one of his works, namely Peer Gynt in which the scenes are not drawn pictorially but rather roughly marked by some sort of geometric pattern.
The image below illustrates this.
(Image 1: Production photography from Peer Gynt)
This give the productions the possibility of being presented as Maria Shevtsova states “imagistically”, rather than just on a textual level. As Robert Wilson said: “Cezanne is my favourite painter. My work is closer to him than to any other artist. My production of Hamletmachine is like a Cezanne painting in its architecture. Cezanne simplified and purified forms to reveal classical structure and composition. I learned everything from Cezanne, his use of colour, light, the diagonal, and space- how oto use the centre and the edges. His images are not framed by the boundaries. Hence, what can be said is that Cézanne`s spacious looking canvas was a model that helped Wilson design the stagespace. His emphasis of not just relying on the text of the script is emphasised by the following quote by Robert Wilson : “In the European tradition, the text is the most important element on the stage. In my theatre all the elements are equal: the space, the light, the actors, the sound, the texts, the costumes, and the props. I think that is something Brecht tried to bring to the German theatre, too.” A quote by Eugene Ionesco, supports the theory of Robert Wilson to not just focus on text and thereby move the performance to a contextual level with more meaning and trying to eradicate superficiality. He states: [Wilson] “surpassed Beckett” because “[Wilson’s] silence is a silence that speaks”
Samuel Beckett & Robert Wilson
When looking at both theatre practitioners Samuel Beckett and Robert Wilson, something key can be seen. While both have made productions that do not follow this trend, it can be generally stated, that while Wilson works on a very visual level with the geometric shapes etc. Samuel Beckett works on a rather textual level. In Peer Gynt for example, It is shown how the main character Peer Gynt runs away from trolls in the mountains (the image above illustrates this) and runs of stage just to in the next scene have to run away again, but this time from the Boyg. Eventually, he even wants to run away from himself. Due to the character structures of Peer Gynt and Joe being very similar, it can be said that there is a significant overlap. Joe would also like to run away from his past, but he tries to do so with his mind rather than with his movements. While Beckett shows this state of the human mind trying to flee from something intangible with an text based piece, Wilson uses something very tangible (Monsters), at the beginning to display the fleing of Peer Gynt visually. Due to the fact that he eventually wants to run away from himself it can be said that both characters reach a similar state of mind.
Gregg Lynn
The designer Gregg Lynn, designed an immersive environment and named it New City. It should incorporate the web and be parallel and simultaneous to the world as we know it. It is built of twelve rear projections which project images onto twelve differently placed canvases, creating the feeling of being in a capsule.
Please see an image of his work below.
(Image:New city (immersive environment) by Gregg Lynn)
The concept – Adapting the Samuel Beckett script “Eh Joe” as an immersive environment
Performance Plan
What concepts should be incorporated into the performance & how will this be reflected in the stage design ?
There are several theatrical & dramaturgical concepts which should be incorporated into a performance synthesising the work of Robert Wilson, Gregg Lynn, Samuel Beckett and my own ideas. Silence as a mean of making the spoken more important, which was heavily done in the work of Robert Wilson. Therefore, the images projected on one of the two scrims will happen at a different time than when the images of Joe are projected onto the scrim. The inner voice should be merged with images (They will happen at the same time, but rather have a contextual connection to each other. I.e. the images will evoke an intuitional reaction as oppose to the voice which will mostly evoke a rational reaction). The images used will be very simplistic, in a sense almost minimalist, based around Cezannes paintings of moving the painting beyond its actual frame. The voice as used by Samuel Beckett will be incarnated by a computer generated text to speech voice, resembling characteristics of the voice that Beckett wanted to create such as the monotone pitch, without high or low pitches. Two scrims should be used onto which the two independent images are projected, which both lean towards the audience. (Please see image below).
The core principles of this part of the process, was to use the analysis of the Beckett script and combine it with the stage design theories of Robert Wilson to then adapt it as an immersive environment, using the “Web City” by Gregg Lynn as an inspirational basis. As Beckett had himself stated, the voice that indirectly speaks to Joe is “An inner voice from the past.”. Therefore, I personally believe that it is not directly one of his inner conflicts simply resembled in a voice, but rather a voice from another person that has a deep personal connection to Joe, but is however not a direct monologue simply portrayed as someone elses words. While planning the performance, I approached the performance as a holistic piece of theatre, then seperated into voice & images and then merged the two parts together again. The sound sequence is solemnly made up by a computer generated text to speech voice, that has neither highs or lows. This resembles very much the initial plan of Samuel Beckett. The image sequence will be composed of two independent image series. For one, the series of the the camera zooming in on Joe until it highlights his facial expressions and for one a timelapse video sequence of an entire sunrise and sunset. This wil create a dramaturgical tension, because the sunrise and sunset will follow Aristotelian theatre of a piece of theatre happening in a time span of one day , which will be supported by the action on the scrim displaying Joe, only happening in one room. However, the script being based on the “theatre of the Absurd”, will very harshly oppose this, due to it being impossible for a hero to exist when there is no purpose associated with life.
The stage design:
(Image: The above image displays the rough design done with the computer software Google Sketch-up. It not only works as a physical stage, however it also enables the projection of various media files, by “encapsulating” the audience. The audience physically sits inside the stage.)
(Image: The above image shows the drawing of the stage in a side perspective: The walls which are leaning towards the audience become apparent here.)
(Image: The above image drawn with Google Sketch-Up, illustrates the immersive character of the stage. The setup was used to project media files onto the surfaces. )
To reflect on the process of actually creating the designs for the stage, it can be said that it required a significant amount of time to get used to the software Google Sletch-up, but then it was a big help to realize a concept with the click of a button. In regards to the stage design, it can be said that the goal was reached, to create a stage design with an immersive character incorporating the dramaturgical theories of Robert Wilson, Samuel Beckett and Greg Lynn.
Conclusion
To reflect on the entire Independent Project and the concept resembling practically applied concepts, it can be said that they went very well. The detailed analysis of the script used as a dramaturgical basis, merged with the analysis of the stage design work and theories by Robert Wilson and the innovative work on immersive design of Greg Lynn helped create an inovative interpretation of the script “Eh Joe” by Samuel Beckett. The project has proven, that it is possible to create immersive theatre on the basic of a “conventional” theatre script. What must be said however, is that due to the nature of the script of it being “theatre of the Absurd” it was open for various interpretations, as long as the core message was conserved. What went particularly well, was the practical application of the theories. This was probably due to the stage design being a very flexible concept, hence various aspects could easily be integrated. If I were to do this project again, then I would approach the production from a perspective emerging from a physical theatre stage design, rather than starting from a theoretical analysis of
Works cited:
“Eh Joe -.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 29 Mar. 2009. 29 Mar. 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eh_Joe>.
Beckett, Samuel. “Eh Joe” BBC2. 4 July 1966.
Harmon, M., (Ed.) No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p 201
Samuel, Beckett,. The Complete Dramatic Works. London: Faber & Faber, 1990.
‘MacGowran on Beckett’ in Theatre Quarterly, III, ii (July-Sept 1973), p 20
Shevtsova, Mari. Robert Wilson (Routledge Performance Practitioners S.). New York: Routledge, 2007.
Holmberg, Arthur. Theatre of Robert Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
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Lamont, R., Beckett’s ‘Eh Joe: Lending an Ear to the Anima’ in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp 232,233
“Eh Joe -.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 29 Mar. 2009. 29 Mar. 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eh_Joe>.
Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 131
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Gontarski, S. E., ‘The Body In The Body Of Beckett’s theatre’ in Moorjani, A. and Veit, C., (Eds.) Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, Samuel Beckett: Endlessness in the Year 2000 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), p 172
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Eh Joe. Dir. Samuel Beckett. 1965.
Eh Joe. Dir. Samuel Beckett. 1965.
Eh Joe. Dir. Samuel Beckett. 1965.
Eh Joe. Dir. Samuel Beckett. 1965.
Eh Joe. Dir. Samuel Beckett. 1965.
Spinks, Lesley L. Peer Gynt. Digital image. Robert Wilson. Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation & Robert Wilson. 29 Mar. 2009 <http://www.robertwilson.com/archive/artifact_details.php?aid=679&index=10&keyword=&back_url=%2Farchive%2Fartifacts.php%3Fshow%3Dall%26filter%3Dtype%26filter_id%3D53>.
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http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?