The staged painting of Samuel Beckett

This thesis examines the influence of visual art on Samuel Beckett's stage plays. Recent scholarship on the topic confirms the importance of painting on his theatre. This study contributes to the field by examining the ways select paintings directly inspired Beckett's theatrical development. It draws on the history of painting and visual art theory, in combination with developments in theatre during his lifetime, to contextualize and illustrate the creation of his staged painting.;Chapter one establishes the origins of the topic and presents the result of Beckett's theatrical vision as a guiding image. It then positions this study within the critical discourse between the identification of the painterly influence on Beckett and its phenomenological result by developing and analyzing the visual factors that influenced his approach, conceptualization, realization, and reception of his plays. The remainder of the chapter discusses how the ineffable is confronted by transforming the word into visual language. Chapter two examines Beckett's artistic shift from writing prose, poetry, and criticism to his entrance on the stage. The differences between his first serious theatrical endeavour and his first produced play demonstrate that painting shaped his shift from narrative to portraiture. Chapter three analyzes the development of painterly techniques in his plays by his use of chiaroscuro on the stage. The incorporation of this technique results in a further reduction of movement and action, dialogue to monologue. Chapter four focuses on the transition from Beckett's middle to later plays, uncovering the fusion of them with elements of expressionism, montage, and the ubermarionette. Chapter five determines Beckett's attention to the primacy of perception as the foremost receptive act in his last stage plays. By transferring the heightened visual concentration of a single image from painting onto the stage, he provides the spectator with an opportunity to see beyond what is objectively presented. The visual arts inspired Beckett to transform the theatre into an art gallery, and the dramatic enterprise into a staged painting.