베케트 극의 연극성: 후기 극을 중심으로

Abstract

Dramatizing Performance in Beckett's Later Plays Shon, Hong-Kee Most critics agree that Beckett is among the first playwrights to produce a radical deprivileging of the orthodox dramatic text and, of the author's position in the theatrical hierarchy. Beckett continued to expose new boundaries by enacting in his late plays what lies beyond the poststructuralist horizon in contemporary theatre. He dramatizes the essentials of theatre, the contingent and dramatic interdependence between the actor's bodily resources and the role that the text commands. Especially in his late plays we can find his predilection for self-reflexive techniques of theatrical presentation. He himself said that 'I can think of none whose concern was not predominantly with his expressive possibilities, those of his vehicle." Therefore we call his late plays self-referential, in which he put the strong emphasis on various aspects of the self-consciousness of an expressive artist.This paper is to analyze self-referential techniques in Beckett's later plays: the use of the real theatrical devices on stage and the direct/indirect appeal to the representational processes, actor-audience relationship on stage, and the active participation of audience through the fragmented narrative. Through the self-referential techniques Beckett establishes the dialectic between text and performance, which animates his plays. I believe that one of the reasons why Beckett's plays can give us a great pleasure is that his plays always enable us to experience the polyphonic nature of the theatrical presentation.