Bad Godots - Vladimir Emerges From the Barrel'' and Other Interventions

This Element focuses on the machinery of commercial theatre, on extra-authorial interventions into the creative process and on the people and institutional forces that foster them. Such a process challenges the autonomy of the artwork and authorial integrity. The primary focus of this Element is then on the hybrid genre of theatre where collective esthetics tends to override and so to supersede individual creation. The essay pays special attention to Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play, Waiting for Godot, primarily its English language premieres in the US, UK, and the Republic of Ireland. Its implications, however, reach far beyond the genetic and production histories of a single theatrical work to deal with the nature of authorship in a monetized culture, the process of realizing dramatic texts in such a culture, and Samuel Beckett's engagement with such machinery of art.

List of contents

Contents; 1. Overview: a genealogy of intervention; 2. Broadway and other theatrical adepts; 3. Godot's bad blood: firing the director, rescuing the play; 4. Cutting up Godot; 5. Transatlantic parallels and contrasts; 6. The case for multiple authorship; Bibliography.

Product details

• Authors: S E Gontarski, S. E. Gontarski, S. E. (Florida State University) Gontarski
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 22.02.2024
• EAN: 9781009180719
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0918071-9
• No. of pages: 82
• Series: Elements in Beckett Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Fiction: special features, Theatre Studies, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: plays & playwrights, Literary studies: plays and playwrights, Fiction: inspired by or adapted from other media