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These two most famous plays of Irish Nobel Prize Winner Samuel Beckett comment on the impossibility of action, mutual understanding and emotions – that is on the impossibility of life, language, and love in general. And what is even more, these central texts of the Theatre of the Absurd stage their nihilistic plays in an extremely funny way in combining elements of slapstick, Vaudeville comedy and even circus with discussions of existentialist philosophy and theology. Or as former critic Vivian Mercier wrote on behalf of the opening night of Waiting for Godot: "(Beckett) has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." (Irish Times, 18 February 1956). Please buy and READ before the course begins Samuel Beckett, Endgame, Faber and Faber: London 2006 ---,Warten auf Godot/En attendant Godot/Waiting for Godot, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt a.M. 2008 |
