Beckett, Performance and the Miming Body in Theatre, Film and Television

Explores Samuel Beckett’s use of the miming body across theatre, film and television as a philosophical meditation on mid- to late twentieth-century being.

Taking Beckett’s mimes as a departure point, this book questions the value of his close attention to and choreography of the body for performance. It examines how Beckett’s encounters with the traditions of twentieth-century French mime impacted his theatrical imagination and directorial practices, exploring his uses of the miming body across a wide range of postwar works for theatre, film and television. Investigating the significances of movement, gesture and posture, the study emphasises what is embodied, kinetic and performed in Beckett’s work, keeping a steady gaze on the peculiarities of miming bodies to tease out and turn over their expressive capacities. Drawing on phenomenological philosophy, poststructural theory, performance analysis and historical literature, Jonathan McAllister argues that Beckett’s dramatic works provide a bodily commentary on being in mid- to late twentieth-century Europe: they constitute an embodied philosophical inquiry into the questions and anxieties for a generation experiencing a profound crisis of meaning.