Fail better: dramaturgy and staging in Samuel Becketts final theatre from manuscripts to theatrical notebooks

Author(s)

Felipe Augusto de Souza Santos

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2021-11-26

Examining board members

Fabio Rigatto de Souza Andrade; Luiz Fernando Ramos; Cláudia Maria de Vasconcellos

• Advisor: Fabio Rigatto de Souza Andrade

Abstract

This work aims to develop reflections about Samuel Beckett\'s final theatre from the perspective of the improvement of Beckett\'s dramaturgical writing process resulting from his experience as a director. In order to do so, we study and analyse our object, Beckett\'s work as playwright and director during the last two decades of his theatrical production, in a time span that starts in 1972 and goes until 1983, comprising the entire final arc of the theatrical production by the author of Waiting for Godot. In order to comprehend Beckett\'s complex and extensive final work, we wil focus on eight Beckettian dramaticules, comparing them with the study and analysis of extensive primary material, ranging from the theatrical notebooks of four of the eight final dramaticules Beckett staged at Berlin\'s Schiller-Theater and London\'s Royal Court Theatre passing through the unpublished manuscripts that are part of the Beckett Archive of the Beckett International Foundation, located at the University of Reading in England, and arriving at the Irish playwright-director\'s correspondence and some of his theoretical writings. The work is divided between critical comments on the plays Not I, That time, Footfalls, A piece of monologue, Rockaby, Ohio impromptu, Catastrophe and What where, critical notes on the plays directed by Beckett and, in specific cases, stagings performed by other directors with Beckett\'s direct collaboration. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 16/14069-0 - Exhaustion and cruelty on the later plays of Samuel Beckett: drama and performance
• Grantee: Felipe Augusto de Souza Santos
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate