MWPlay

__Play__ The written text of Samuel Beckett’s __Play__ and the film interpretation of the work both portray the same subject matter and sense of purgatory, yet their different ideas and methods of producing the actual show invoke a different set of emotions within the audience. Each “version” of __Play__ has its own method of delivering the message and feel of Beckett’s work. A live performance of the play that works directly from the script would rely on quick visual flashes to accompany the rapid and driven dialogue. Each character and their lines would project individually out into the audience as highlighted by the one roving spotlight and the prescribed footlights. However, the film version of the work calls for a grander, more elaborate set-up because of its ability to splice together different angles and takes to create a similar effect to that of the single spotlight. Instead of a direct appeal to the audience as in the text, there is a grander sense of the purgatory that the characters are in; their story is compelling, yet it appears as one of many stories, as the rest of the “stage” is covered in hundreds of other urns as well. One of the most important aspects of theatre, staging, is conducive to setting the mood and atmosphere so that the audience has a feel for the work before the actors even enter the stage. The film production sets up the physical stage in a way that would be less like what Beckett described and more conducive to filming the action and creating a more concrete visual setting. An entire set filled with urns and a foggy expansive space is an addition contradictory to Beckett’s vague darkness that permeates the text. Beckett’s idea of the scene is total darkness with the exception of the dimly lit urns, and then the sporadically lit faces of the actors. The minimalist bleak staging directions are replaced by the grand and elaborate film setting, and in another change from the original text, there is a distancing of the urns themselves. This was likely orchestrated to facilitate filming and shooting the play from a dynamic variety of camera angles and shots; originally the urns were “touching each other” in what seemed to present a solid front or unit that would address the audience during the work. The key difference in interpretation between the two lies in the choice of lighting. While the original play relies on a spotlight to provoke dialogue by focusing on an individual actor, the film replaces the spotlight’s function with jarring camera shots, cuts, and angles. In a radical interpretation, the film production has essentially cut out Beckett’s “gimmick” where one spotlight’s frantic energy back and forth gave the play its frenzied feel. If the original use of lighting had been used in the film it would have restricted the camera to only one angle to shoot from, so while the change made is different from the text, the quick camera cuts essentially give a similar feel of the original spotlight. The five-second blackouts specifically noted in the play are also replaced by quick clips of the scene upside-down or of rolling film strips, etc. The director followed the same general pacing of __Play__, yet adapted it so that the role of lighting could be replaced by angles and shots just as disorienting as the original lighting would have seemed to the audience. The overall effect of reading Beckett’s text is somewhat confusing, relying on fragmented and broken dialogue from characters that do not directly interact with one another. Only the smallest bit of relatable storyline can be put together to make a “plot”, which gives the reader a frenzied feeling. However, the real depth of the play would be in its actual performance onstage; the play version of __Play__ relies on the use of the imagination to fill in the black world around the three lonesome urns onstage. As a result, this version of the play can be seen as more interactive with the audience, requiring an active viewer to piece together dialogue with the sudden changes in lighting on an otherwise empty stage. The film effectively gives the audience a better (as in more literal and concrete) sense of the setting, purgatory, and the sense of futility in the character’s dialogue. Although it deviates from the original text, the film somewhat manages to give a humanness to the urn-people through their confessional-style camera shots. The addition of the mechanical sounds of the “camera” gives the film the feel of a secret documentary that reveals the desperation of the human existence. Though the film deviates from the script, it manages to convey a deeper meaning by directing the audience toward what Beckett meant instead of throwing the information at them like Beckett originally did.