Beyond Minimalism: Beckett's Late Style in the Theater - Hardcover

Brater, Enoch

3.33

6 ratings by Goodreads

9780195041675: Beyond Minimalism: Beckett's Late Style in the Theater

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195041674 ISBN 13: 9780195041675

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1987

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Beyond Minimalism explores Beckett's drama of the '70s and '80s, examining the ways in which play text and performance merge through the playwright's poetic idiom. Beginning with Not I and continuing through Catastrophe and What Where, Brater examines the plays not only as texts but also as theater pieces. Discussing the technical and aesthetic demands that productions like Footfalls and Rockaby make on actor, director, and spectator, Brater clarifies the essential relationship between Beckett's achievement in the context of the breakdown of genre, performance poetry, and the electronic intrusion of the recorded voice as a new theatrical convention. In the course of his analysis Brater demonstrates how Beckett's late style in the theater both continues and clarifies the dramatic lyricism that is the hallmark of earlier works such as Endgame and Waiting for Godot.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Enoch Brater, Professor of English and Theater, University of Michigan; past President of the Samuel Beckett Society.

Review:

"Brater's is the first full-length study of Beckett's later dramatic works, and it is likely to remain the best....All told, Beyond Minimalism is thorough and lucid, an important contribution to Beckett scholarship."--Virginia Quarterly Review

"Brater's command of the primary and secondary Beckett material is everywhere present in this gracefully written, solidly researched, perceptive, often penetrating work, which not only succeeds in illuminating 'the same but less' but moves the study of Beckett's plays beyond minimalism. The
book contains excellent notes and a suggestive bibliography."--Choice

"The book's success is profound. It pays stunning tribute to one considered by many to be the world's greatest living playwright by situating the dramatist's achievements in a fusion of fictional time with the temporality of the theatrical experience."--Theatre Journal

"Will be indispensable to Beckett scholars....Not only does Professor Brater offer a detailed reading of each late drama, but he shows how Beckett builds new works on what he has already achieved."--Ruby Cohn, University of California, Davis

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.