Beckett, performance and the miming body in theatre, film and television / Jonathan McAllister.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McAllister, Jonathan, author.

Series:

Other becketts.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mime--History and criticism.

Mime.

Theater--History.

Theater.

Performance art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

[Place of publication not identified]: Edinburgh University Press, 2026.

Summary:

Taking Beckett’s mimes as a departure point, this book questions the value of his close attention to and choreography of the body for performance. It examines how Beckett’s encounters with the traditions of twentieth-century French mime impacted his theatrical imagination and directorial practices, exploring his uses of the miming body across a wide range of postwar works for theatre, film and television. Investigating the significances of movement, gesture and posture, the study emphasises what is embodied, kinetic and performed in Beckett’s work, keeping a steady gaze on the peculiarities of miming bodies to tease out and turn over their expressive capacities. Drawing on phenomenological philosophy, poststructural theory, performance analysis and historical literature, Jonathan McAllister argues that Beckett’s dramatic works provide a bodily commentary on being in mid- to late twentieth-century Europe: they constitute an embodied philosophical inquiry into the questions and anxieties for a generation experiencing a profound crisis of meaning.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Beckett and Mime

Chapter 2 Movement: Performing Impotential

Chapter 3 Gesture: Being-in-a-Medium

Chapter 4 Posture: Humanity in Ruins.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part of the metadata in this record was created with the help of AI Metadata Assistant

ISBN:

9781399551304