Act Without Words I
By:
Samuel Becket
CATEGORY: Play
NUMBER OF ACTS: 1
FIRST PRODUCED: 1957
GENRES: Fairy Tale/Fantasy
TIME & PLACE: Desert
Introduction: Act Without Words I (a mime for one player) is a short mime piece written by Samuel Beckett. It was originally performed after Beckett’s major play, Endgame, during the latter’s first run in London. It was Beckett’s first attempt at the genre and dates from a period when he had just experimented with his first play, Waiting For Godot, and his first radio play, All That Fall.
Characters:
Man: We do not know his name. He spends most of the play reflects. Several actions from "above" take place and take opportunity to happen to him. He often turns aside from the action, as if rejecting and not acknowledging the existence of a "power from above". He is alone onstage, except for the presence, suggesting man is alone, except for the presence of God. He does not speak because he believes words do not have any intrinsic value .
Things that occur are only reality, then again, by an absurdest point of view, man cannot validate them or give them man. The man spends a lot of time looking at his hands, as he is a mime, and he can mime the actions of anyone or anything. We are all mimes by this respect, he may reflect. It is important we do not know what he is thinking, but as an audience, we try to imagine what he is thinking. It is what is spoken through the mime, not through words. The man is present by the tree of life, symbolizing he is the archetype of man.
Context: In 1942, Albert Camus published “The Myth of Sisyphus”, an essay about absurdism, which revolutionized the absurdist movement and inspired the theater of the absurd. Some of the early plays included “The Maids” by Jean Genet, “The Bald Soprano” by Eugene Ionesco, and “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. Beckett was known for his minimalist style and was mentored by James Joyce and had ties with Flann O’Brien. The minimalism with the sparse number of characters, little to no dialogue, the use of stage directions, and bare set bridges the gap between modernism and postmodernism. “Act Without Words” (later followed by Act Without Words II, with two actors), traces back to the Myth of Sisyphus, only stylizes another mythological figure of the underworld, Tantalus, who was tormented for water and tied down in a lake in the underworld with a branch of fruit he could not reach above his head .
The theater of the absurd was a response to the events of WWII and the existentialist movements of the time. By creating these plays, the authors were able to illustrate the themes of the absurdist movement, such as the lack of communication, the purposelessness of life, and the feeling of being disconnected from the world. Other themes seen in the works of this movement include nihilism, existential angst, and the idea of a meaningless universe. These themes were reinforced by the lack of plot and traditional structure in the plays and the lack of dialogue or character development. Audiences were left with a feeling of confusion and isolation as they watched the characters struggle with their own existence and the lack of a clear plot. This form of theater became popular in the 1950s and 60s, and many of the works of the period have since become classics, such as “Endgame” by Samuel Beckett and “The Caretaker” by Harold Pinter. The theater of the absurd continues to influence theater and literature today.
Themes:
The Difficulty of Communication: The entire play is performed in mime. The lack of verbal communication of any kind suggests that real communication through verbal means is either pointless or impossible. Either way, the result is that it creates difficult in translating meaning between people.
The Illusion of Choice: The carafe of water is there for the taking, or so it seems. Every time the man tries to make a grab for the carafe—holding the stuff of life—he is denied. The message is clear: when given the opportunity to get something that really matters, the matter of choice is false. The man really has no choice when it comes to get getting the water; he will be denied no matter mater. Everything is an illusion of possibility, not actual possibility.
The Impossibility of Escape: You can’t escape fate. Every attempt to extricate himself from the vagaries of fate sends him tumbling right back into the desert again. He is there for good because life offers no real escape, but one. Only death can extricate him from an endlessly repeating cycle of being thrown right back into the situation that is his living hell .
The Absurdity of Existence: As with many of Beckett’s works, ultimately the overarching theme is the utter absurdity of existence. What could be more absurd than being thrown into a world to face the same challenges every day with the same illusion of having choice provided for you that are really no choices at all in a situation where it seems those around you just don’t even seem to speak the same language as you? About the only thing more absurd than the situated faced by the fellow there in the desert is…just about any employee’s day at work in a face bureaucratic system or the hell of having to come home to a family already firmly ensconced in their ridiculous expectations of you. One man’s desert with no chance to get a drink of water is another man’s absurd extrapolation of life, or so Beckett suggests.