All around the presence

Sweet Briar Theatre Presentation Makes You Think about the ‘Endgame’
By Jennifer McManamay - SWEET BRIAR COLLEGE

If all you knew about Samuel Beckett’s one-act play “Endgame” was that two characters live in trash cans, you’d think, “Oh. Like Sesame Street.

”But Beckett’s world is not like Sesame Street. It’s the stuff of our worst fears, something gone terribly wrong, something, maybe, that we brought on ourselves.

Sweet Briar Theatre will present “Endgame,” directed by adjunct SBC theater instructor Geoffrey Kershner, at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 15, 16, 17 and 18 in the Babcock Fine Arts Center studio theater. All shows are free, but reservations are suggested and will be accepted beginning Feb. 5 by calling 381-6120 or e-mailing boxoffice@sbc.edu.

The playwright never reveals what caused the death of nature, but nothing lives beyond the walls his four characters inhabit. There is blind, paralyzed Hamm and his servant Clov who cannot sit down, and the garbage can dwellers Nagg and Nell. They are Hamm’s parents. Both are legless and going deaf and blind. All seem vestiges of humankind, and are still decaying.

Writing in the mid-1950s, Beckett might have been alluding to nuclear annihilation. “There was this sense and fear of humanity’s self-destruction,” Kershner said.

Rereading the play’s text in 2006, it struck Kershner that the danger of global warming makes “Endgame” eerily contemporary. The dialogue doesn’t deal with the issue directly, but he believes the resonance between Beckett’s time and ours will start conversations.

“This isn’t a generation that had to duck under their desks. This is a generation that’s dealing with new fears and new issues,” Kershner said. “This is a way to get them talking about it.”

A playwright of the absurdist theater movement, Beckett’s work is abstract, which appeals to Kershner. “To me, his metaphoric approach is a truer reflection of the pain and pleasure of existence than theatrical realism,” he said.

Hamm, played by Mary Susan Sinclair-Kuenning ’09, harangues Clov and the two bicker constantly. Clov (Elizabeth Caldwell ’08) talks of leaving, but where is there to go? The world outside is dead. Clov would kill Hamm, except that Hamm has the combination to the food cupboard.

There is dark humor in the foursome’s awful situations. “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I’ll grant you that,” Nell (Eugenia Hannon ’10) tells Nagg (Doug Macleod) before Hamm, angered by their talk, insists that Clov “bottle” them in the trash cans.

Kershner thinks people will take from the play a sense of hopefulness or hopelessness according to their own inclinations. His direction aims for balance. “I’m acknowledging both because I think life has both. If it’s too dark you get depressed and you get it in five minutes,” he said.

For SBC’s production of “Endgame,” Kershner is teaming up with set designer Krista Franco and sound designer Bryce Page. The three are partners in their recently established Endstation Theatre Co.

The show will be in the black box studio theater, a setting that is conducive to the play’s atmosphere, Kershner said. “The performance will happen in and around the audience, with sound throughout the whole space.”

Cheryl Warnock, SBC assistant professor of theater arts and Babcock technical director, will design the lighting. Luna Dellaporte ’08 will take on the costume design.

A pre-show dinner lecture and discussion is planned from 6 to 7 p.m. for the Feb. 15 opening. Speaker Nathan Currier will draw on training he recently attended through Al Gore’s Climate Project to talk about global warming.

The lecture will be in the Johnson Dining Room at Prothro Hall. Dinner prices with a Sweet Briar ID are $5.50 for adults, $2.75 for children ages 3 to 11; and $6.75 for adults, $3.50 for ages 3 to 11 without an ID.

For information, call (434) 381-6120 or e-mail: boxoffice@sbc.edu.

What a Brutal Fucking Movie

The review of Inland Empire, the last David Lynch's movie.
"A corpse is a corpse, of course, of course. And no one can talk to a corpse, of course. Unless, of course, that corpse is brought to you by the famous Mr. David Lynch. In this case the corpse gets up and shuffles away, walking the earth like something out of a Samuel Beckett play directed by George Romero."
THE ALL TEXT HERE.

Familiar or not

Paul Auster Playfully Examines What It Means To Read
By Richard Gaughran - The Daily News Record - Harrisonburg Virginia

To put matters simply, novels come in two varieties. The more familiar creates an alternative reality, allowing us to enter a make-believe world. The less familiar doesn’t necessarily invite us into an alternative world, because it never lets us forget that we’re reading.
In more familiar fiction, it matters only that we play along with the novel’s creator. We strike a deal: make the make-believe believable and we’ll accept, at least while we’re reading, that the fictional world is real.
Writers of this type of fiction can differ widely. They might present domestic dramas, as the Bronte sisters do; recreate history, as Leo Tolstoy does; or concoct a fantasy epic in the manner of J.R.R. Tolkien.
We feel we know the characters in these novels, whether we sympathize with them or not. These are the kinds of works we’re referring to when we say we’re going to "cuddle up with a good book." We may grow in knowledge from reading, and we may feel morally or emotionally invigorated, but we are undoubtedly also escaping.
In the less familiar kind of fiction, we strike a different bargain with the author, one that requires us to assist in the work’s creation. Instead of embracing alternative worlds, we must cope with constant reminders that we are sitting in our chairs, holding a manufactured object, reading words.
These books don’t allow us to get chummy with their characters, because they never insist that the characters are real. We’re less likely to cheer or frown at characters’ actions than to examine our own role as readers.
Most works in this second category have appeared since the First World War, created by writers such as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Jorge Luis Borges. These writers can appear difficult, since they never let us relax, keeping both hemispheres of our brains firing.
I offer this bit of pedantry to put into context Paul Auster’s new novel, "Travels in the Scriptorium." As we might guess from the title, this short work is decidedly of the second type. A scriptorium, after all, is a room set aside for the writing or copying of texts. The reference to travels within such a confined space announces irony at the outset.
Auster’s novel presents itself as a report about a man confined to this room. A tiny camera records his actions, and an unnamed narrator seemingly draws on the photographic evidence to construct the old man’s story, without reference to a world beyond the scriptorium, or even to the character’s past, except in fleeting moments, as though the world is a dream the man has had.
The narrator ostensibly has no other information about the man than what the hidden camera reveals: "Who is he? What is he doing here? When did he arrive and how long will he remain? With any luck, time will tell us all. For the moment, our only task is to study the pictures as attentively as we can and refrain from drawing any premature conclusions."
The narrator is being disingenuous, however, since he can’t refrain from immediately giving the character a name, Mr. Blank. He also supplies the character’s thoughts and feelings, which the camera cannot record.
Mr. Blank’s room contains a bed and a desk, on which rest photographs of people he doesn’t recognize. As he stares at the photo of a young woman, however, the name "Anna" floats into his mind, as though he once knew her but has lost his memory. The narrator also notes that pieces of tape have been affixed to objects in the room, each bearing the name of the object. "On the bedside table, for example, the word is TABLE. On the lamp, the word is LAMP."
Mr. Blank cannot determine the nature of his imprisonment, if indeed he is imprisoned. But he notices a manuscript on the desk, and he begins reading. It’s the narrative of a prisoner, someone who has been locked in a cell, from where he has evidently composed his report. We then read along with Mr. Blank, but, like him, we’re interrupted by visitors to the scriptorium, some bringing meals or mysterious colored pills, some asking cryptic questions or delivering veiled instructions.
One such intruder, an ex-policeman named Flood, says he desperately needs to question Mr. Blank about a passage in a novel by someone named Fanshawe. Flood claims that Mr. Blank once wrote a report on Fanshawe, referring to Fanshawe’s novel "Neverland," which describes one of Flood’s dreams. Mr. Blank has no memory of reading this book, but Flood pleads for help, insisting that only a recollection of that dream can restore his identity: "Sometimes I question whether I even exist. Whether I’ve ever existed at all. The dream is my only chance."
Obviously, this sort of cleverness won’t appeal to everyone. It’s probably no coincidence that Auster’s most recent literary endeavor, before this novel, was to edit an edition of Samuel Beckett’s complete works.
Beckett, who would have been 100 in 2006, perfected minimalist, self-referential, highly humorous writing of this type. Auster’s novel pays fitting tribute to a master.

Wait for me

Stripped to the basics
FLC's 'Waiting for Godot' has few decorative elements
By Richard Malcolm Durango Herald

Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, arrive on a stage that is bare but for a rock and a windblown tree, where they wait, wait, and wait some more, for someone named Godot, who never arrives. A New York Times reviewer in 1956 called Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot" "a mystery wrapped in an enigma."

But don't let the play's 'difficult' reputation put you off, said visiting Beckett scholar Professor Enoch Brader from the University of Michigan, speaking to a packed house at the Fort Lewis College theatre department on Friday night.
Brater spoke before the college's production of "Godot," a play Beckett wrote in French in the late 1940s and translated into English in 1954.
Brater called the play "the most important of the second half of the twentieth century." That's an impressive claim for a play in which almost nothing happens, but there is craft and method to Beckett's absurdity. Writing in the aftermath of World War II, Beckett conjured up a barren stage world in which all the old certainties and beliefs have been demolished, but people still hope, searching for meaning and, perhaps, salvation.

In doing so, Beckett ushered in a new genre of theatre in which complex plots, recognizable characters, and realistic sets were abandoned for a theatre that was stripped to the basics.
Brater described the play as "a compelling dramatic situation with the fewest possible dramatic elements."
Head of Theatre at FLC and director of "Godot," Kathryn Moller, added that she sees in the play "a human drama pared down to its most necessary emotions: expectation, companionship, and hope."
Richard Malcolm is a freelance writer in Durango.

If you go:
"Waiting for Godot" - by Samuel Beckett, plays at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday; $11/$9 staff and seniors/$5 students and children, in the Fort Lewis College Theatre building. It is performed by students Miles Batchelder, Geoff Johnson, Matthew Mount, Josh Becker and Tony Rocco. Set design is by Nathan K. Lee, and lighting design is by Kurt Lancaster.