Cinematic Adaptations of Beckett’s Breath

• Autores: Anna Sigg
• Localización: Beckett’s Voices / Voicing Beckett / Laurens De Vos (ed. lit.), Mariko Hori Tanaka (ed. lit.), Nicholas E. Johnson (ed. lit.), 2021, ISBN 978-90-04-46839-9, págs. 208-220
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Beckett’s Breath, which focuses on bodily sounds and amplified recordings of breaths and screams, gives up plot and language to represent traumatic pain. The birth cry, in particular, has been interpreted in various different ways, and it has often been associated with the trauma of birth, which may instigate a secondary cycle of ongoing trauma — the trauma of existence. The original primary trauma, which Breath seems to articulate, may remain inaccessible and unknowable. However, if ‘held breath’ in the cinematic adaptations can bring about an engaged silence emanating from the listener, the potential trauma, which that silence represents, can arguably also be temporarily ‘held’ and contained. I compare four productions of the play available on video, a production by the National Theatre School Canada from 2008, an Arsonist Production from 2007, the ‘Beckett on Film’ version directed by Damien Hirst, and a German performance directed by Gerd Conradt from 2009. The most politically engaged performance is the Brechtian production directed by Conradt. Although it is a misinterpretation of the play in that it does not closely follow the text’s script, it asks the spectator to get involved by articulating a ‘countervoice’ of refusal. Instead of having an actual actor perform the play, the director asks the audience to perform the objet a voice of trauma (the breaths and cries) themselves. By making the collective ‘body’ of the audience the ‘actor’ in the play, the trauma appears less isolating, and through its synchronisation and repetition, the countervoice conveys agency.