{"id":1168,"date":"2018-08-08T14:23:33","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T13:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/beckett\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2021-03-19T10:35:18","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T10:35:18","slug":"beyond-the-fourth-wall-experiments-in-tv-drama-samuel-becketts-plays-on-bbc-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/beckett\/beyond-the-fourth-wall-experiments-in-tv-drama-samuel-becketts-plays-on-bbc-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Beckett on the BBC: A blog by Jonathan Bignell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n\t

Beyond the Fourth Wall: Experiments in TV Drama<\/h2>\n

- Samuel Beckett\u2019s Plays on BBC TV<\/h2>\n

By Professor Jonathan Bignell<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h2>\n

Samuel Beckett\u00a0is probably best known as a theatre dramatist, but there is a long history of BBC TV presenting dramas that he wrote for specifically for the medium, and also television adaptations of his theatre work (Bignell 2009<\/a>). In its 2012 season of screenings titled \u2018Beyond the Fourth Wall: Experiments in TV Drama<\/a>\u2019, the British Film Institute screened a selection that comprised Beckett\u2019s original television play\u00a0Eh Joe<\/em>\u00a0(BBC 1966), and an episode of the arts series\u00a0The Lively Arts<\/em> (BBC 1977) that includes three of his dramas.\u00a0 These are visually distinctive plays, worthy of the term \u2018experimental\u2019, and the story of how they were made and received reveals fascinating relationships between Beckett, the BBC and different groups of viewers.<\/p>\n

The commissioning and screening of Beckett\u2019s plays by the BBC demonstrates a linkage between British television and an experimental\u00a0Modernist\u00a0aesthetic that Beckett\u2019s name already represented in the later decades of the twentieth century. The formal experimentation, theatrical background and complexity of Beckett\u2019s TV plays supported the Public Service claims of the BBC to present the best of contemporary arts practice despite, but also because of, the distance between some of that practice and the mainstream forms of television drama. The Modernist experimentation in Beckett\u2019s plays on television can be seen in their pared-down verbal and spatial textures, and their concentration on geometrical forms and static or very slow physical action.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The opening of Eh Joe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In\u00a0Eh Joe<\/em>, there is only one set, and the play opens with a wide shot of a space representing a room with an oddly-proportioned door and window, and a narrow bed. Joe (Jack McGowran) moves around the set, drawing curtains and seemingly shutting himself in.\u00a0 Joe never speaks in the 20-minute drama, but the audience hears a female voice (Sian Phillips) questioning him and berating him for his involvement in the death of a woman, probably his lover.<\/p>\n

The camera\u00a0moves in stages towards Joe, ending on an extreme close-up of his face, with no cuts between shots.\u00a0 The effect is to emphasise Joe\u2019s reactions to the voice, which might be the voice of his conscience, and the play achieves a great intensity by means of its concentration on the single actor.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The camera moves towards Joe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The recognition Beckett gained after the theatrical success of\u00a0Waiting for Godot\u00a0<\/em>(first staged in the UK in 1955) and\u00a0numerous BBC radio productions of his work that Martin Esslin oversaw as Head of Radio Drama, meant that Beckett was perceived by television producers as part of a cultural elite.\u00a0\u00a0Esslin himself commissioned Beckett\u2019s media work and also published academic writing that emphasised its aesthetic significance.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Joe in a final close-up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When\u00a0Eh Joe<\/em>\u00a0was first screened, the\u00a0Radio Times<\/em>\u00a0billing (30th June 1966) noted that \u2018Eh Joe?<\/em>\u00a0[sic] was written specifically for television by Samuel Beckett, the Irishman long resident in France whose plays \u2013\u00a0Waiting for Godot<\/em>,\u00a0Endgame<\/em>,\u00a0Krapp\u2019s Last Tape<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 have formed an important part of the post-war theatre revolution\u2019.\u00a0In the early 1960s, the BBC produced many dramas exploring television form and drawing on European arts culture.\u00a0 For example, a TV version of Beckett\u2019s\u00a0Krapp\u2019s Last Tape<\/em>\u00a0was screened in 1963 in the BBC\u2019s\u00a0Festival\u00a0<\/em>anthology series, in which an adaptation of James Joyce\u2019s\u00a0Ulysses<\/em>\u00a0and plays by Jean Cocteau and T.S. Eliot were broadcast. But Beckett\u2019s plays mainly featured in arts series, and it was in BBC2\u2019s\u00a0Lively Arts<\/em>\u00a0that \u2018Shades\u2019 was screened in 1977. The programme included three plays by Beckett;\u00a0Not I<\/em>\u00a0was a version of a theatre play first staged in London in 1973.\u00a0Ghost Trio<\/em>\u00a0was written specially for television, as was\u00a0\u2026 but the clouds \u2026<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The opening of Ghost Trio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Initially the space in\u00a0Ghost Trio<\/em>\u00a0looks like the pared-down room of\u00a0Eh Joe<\/em>, containing a door, window, bed and a single performer (Ronald Pickup) sitting hunched on a stool, holding a cassette player. A female voice (Sian Phillips) describes the setting, instructing the viewer to look at still images representing the rectangular objects within it. She appears to preside over the space, and announces the movements that the male figure will make (walking\u00a0to the door, the window) and that he will hear \u2018her\u2019, a woman who we assume he is waiting for.\u00a0 The woman does not arrive, and instead the man returns to his stool and hears music on his cassette player, Beethoven\u2019s 5th\u00a0Piano Concerto (known as \u2018The Ghost\u2019). The action is divided into three similar sequences, in which the camera moves into the space and closes up on the man\u2019s bowed head, raised for the last time towards the camera in the final shot.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The voice presents a sample of floor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As in\u00a0Eh Joe<\/em>, camera\u00a0movement is slow and repetitious, takes are long and there are few cuts. A male performer and a female voice disconnect sound from vision, and the schematic setting questions any temptation to understand the action as \u2018realistic\u2019. Instead the play seems to be about loss, memory, expectation and resignation.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The male figure at the end of Ghost Trio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The third drama in \u2018Shades\u2019 develops similar ideas, beginning with a shot of a hunched male figure against a featureless black background. A male voice slowly speaks of times when, at night, having returned home from tramping the roads, he thought of a woman.\u00a0 Reconstructing these occasions slightly differently each time, the camera cuts from the hunched figure to a lighted circle of space into which a man walks, stops, then walks away again. The absent woman is represented by a shadowy female figure, inaudibly mouthing a few lines from W. B. Yeats\u2019 poem \u2018The Tower\u2019 that include the words \u2018but the clouds\u2019. The separation of sound and image occurs again in this play, together with the attempt to evoke the past, though the absent loved-one is associated with poetry rather than music. But the activity of remembering and awaiting her \u2018ghostly\u2019 appearance continues Beckett\u2019s concern with how both language and vision summon up, yet draw attention to the absence of, something or someone that cannot be recaptured.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
The mouth speaking in Not I<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An interest in vision, language and identity are also important to\u00a0Not I<\/em>. There is only one shot; the camera stays in close-up on a mouth speaking for the whole of the play\u2019s 15 minute duration. The character is a woman (Billie Whitelaw) who speaks very rapidly about how, at the age of around 70, she becomes suddenly able to speak. Disconnected, repeated phrases tell fragments of her story, but whenever she is about to refer to herself as \u2018I\u2019 she stops and switches to the third person, \u2018she\u2019.<\/p>\n

She seems unable to take on the subjectivity that language would define for her. As the play progresses the mouth\u2019s shape, movement and materiality (the detail of lips, teeth, saliva) become mesmerising, both intensely physical but also abstract and disassociated from the rest of the body.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Esslin introduces Beckett's plays in 'Shades'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Lively Arts<\/em>\u00a0\u2018Shades\u2019 was planned as a tribute for Beckett\u2019s 70th\u00a0birthday in 1976, but problems deciding what to include delayed it and gave time for Beckett to write\u00a0Ghost Trio<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0\u2026but the clouds\u2026<\/em>\u00a0specially for the programme.\u00a0The Lively Arts\u00a0<\/em>usually featured interviews with writers, artists and other cultural figures, but Beckett refused to be interviewed and instead introductory material and a discussion between Martin Esslin and the presenter Melvyn Bragg was shot.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe links between Beckett and a tradition of experimental literature, theatre and art were explored in the discussion, and were signalled visually by shots of paintings by Henri Hayden, Edvard Munch and Francis Bacon, and sculpture by Alberto Giacometti.
\n\u200b
\nBeckett\u2019s television plays draw on aesthetic forms and production practices that associate them with early television drama and with theatre.\u00a0 Until the late 1950s, British television drama was shot in relatively long takes, and many of the dramas were excerpts from, or adaptations of, theatre performances. The dramas were live, because of the impossibility of prerecording.\u00a0 But as\u00a0Jason Jacobs (1998)<\/a>\u00a0has shown, there were strategies to create visual dynamism, by changing the composition of a shot, changing the relationship between the performer and the set by physically moving the camera closer to, or further from, the action.\u00a0 Pace and dynamism were created by camera movement rather than by editing. Beckett self-consciously uses this technique in his screenplays, by closing-in in slow and deliberate steps in\u00a0Eh Joe<\/em>, for example, or by moving the camera across the acting area in\u00a0Ghost Trio<\/em>.\u00a0 However, the length of shots in Beckett\u2019s dramas is still much greater than the average for British television drama after the Second World War, and the camera movement is much slower.\u00a0 The dramas concern only one visible performer at a time, so the dynamic movement made possible by panning between speakers, or by changing the framing to include or exclude one performer from a group, is unavailable. Beckett\u2019s television dramas, whether written specifically for TV or adapted for television production, alluded to a superseded aesthetic and refused many of its visual possibilities.<\/p>\n

The commissioning of original dramas by Beckett as a writer associated with theatre, and also the presentations of his theatre plays on television, advertised the theatre medium as an important cultural institution. The\u00a0Radio Times<\/em>\u00a0(30th\u00a0June 1966) billing for\u00a0Eh Joe<\/em>, for example, noted connections between the performers in the play and both television and theatre productions: \u2018The distinguished Irish actor Jack McGowran has for long been a close personal friend of the author, and he has become (with Patrick Magee) one of the principal interpreters of his work.\u00a0 He is also one of drama\u2019s most skilled pantomimists, as evidenced by his recent television performance as the jockey turned Trappist monk in\u00a0Silent Song<\/em>.\u00a0 Sian Phillips, the voice of Joe\u2019s past, has been seen recently in the West End theatre in\u00a0The Night of the Iguana<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Man and Superman<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n

But the cultural power of Beckett, his BBC collaborators and the distinguished performers in the plays was at odds with the audience reception of the television plays.<\/p>\n

The BBC Audience Research Report on\u00a0Eh Joe<\/em>\u00a0(BBC WAC T5\/1296\/1) shows that 3% of the viewers in the BBC\u2019s audience sample watched the play, and the Reaction Index for the programme (a measure of appreciation) was the low figure of 49. Several viewers liked the use of monologue over silent images, and one viewer wrote \u2018obviously television could be the medium for this sort of thing, and it is a good experiment\u2019.\u00a0 But many viewers thought the play was very depressing.\u00a0 A third of the sample said it was dull and dreary, with no visual appeal.<\/p>\n

Clearly, Beckett\u2019s cultural prestige was sufficient to overcome such negative factors.\u00a0 In fact, it was the recognition of Beckett\u2019s significance among the powerful but tiny audience of cultural commentators and opinion-formers that legitimated the BBC\u2019s continued investment in Beckett\u2019s work. Press reactions to \u2018Shades\u2019 exemplify this.\u00a0 Sean Day Lewis reviewed it for the\u00a0Daily Telegraph<\/em>\u00a0(16th April 1977), and wrote: \u2018Casual viewers who stray into The Lively Arts [\u2026] tonight are likely to think that something has gone seriously wrong with their sets. [\u2026] The shades are all grey, Beckett does not believe in colour television, it seems, just in case too much information is let loose.\u00a0 And then the grey is made as misty as possible so that the characters are dimly perceived.\u00a0 This Tristram Powell production is not to be missed by those of us who are Beckett admirers, but it is uncompromising and may not make converts.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u200bIn Britain there has always been a tension between television\u2019s Public Service responsibility to raise the cultural standards of audiences, and the requirement to entertain. Broadcasts of Beckett\u2019s television work show that the BBC could ignore negative audience responses and small numbers of viewers and present \u2018the best\u2019 of arts culture as defined by BBC personnel and an informed reviewing culture in the press. The casting of high-profile theatre actors in Beckett\u2019s television work, and the images of art-works by Bacon and Giacometti in \u2018Shades\u2019, for example, link Beckett\u2019s plays to a valued European (and not just British) arts culture.<\/p>\n

By Prof.\u00a0<\/strong>Jonathan Bignell<\/strong><\/a><\/h2>\n

Jonathan Bignell<\/strong> is Professor of Film and Television at the University of Reading.\u00a0Author of\u00a0Beckett on Screen: the Television Plays<\/em>\u00a0(Manchester University Press, 2009), he\u00a0works primarily on television history and the methodologies of television and film analysis.<\/p>\n

This is a re-published article from:<\/strong>
\nhttp:\/\/blogs.reading.ac.uk\/spaces-of-television\/2012\/12\/02\/beckett-plays-on-bbc-tv\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beyond the Fourth Wall: Experiments in TV Drama – Samuel Beckett\u2019s Plays on BBC TV By Professor Jonathan Bignell Samuel Beckett\u00a0is probably best known as a theatre dramatist, but there…Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[129,126,133,132,45,134,125,124,130,115,127,101,82,128,131],"class_list":["post-1168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-but-the-clouds","tag-article","tag-arts","tag-bbc","tag-beckett-and-europe","tag-culture","tag-eh-joe","tag-ghost-trio","tag-jack-mcgowran","tag-jonathan-bignell","tag-martin-esslin","tag-not-i","tag-ronald-pickup","tag-shades","tag-sian-phillips"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBeckett on the BBC: A blog by Jonathan Bignell - 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