The title of Beckett's play, “Act Without Words I,” betrays an immediate awareness of its dual status as text on a page and as something intended to be used for performance. The title, lacking an indefinite article preceding it, could be read either as descriptive: “An act without words! ", or as an imperative command to the reader: "Act without words! From the start, we therefore become aware of the unstable or unknown status of the text. On the page, it doesn't usually look like game text; there are no italicized character names, speeches, or stage directions. The page looks like widely spaced prose or even poetry; and yet he declares himself in writing as "a mime for a player", and indicates at the end that a "curtain" must fall. On the face of it, the play is a set of precise directions that a “player” must imitate. The absence of discourse or textual elaboration on the man's motivations or inner life makes the text appear both different from a written story and different from a dramatic performance text. However, it is precisely these qualities which constitute a privileged relationship between the reader, the text and the potential performance through the act of reading. Beckett uses empty space on the page, punctuation and repetition to mimic the rhythm of the action to the rhythm of the reading to create a highly visual experience; the player “sees” the play being played as he reads. If they are "players", then they must repeat actions in the same futile cycle in front of an audience. Where no speech is indicated in the performance, the aforementioned techniques of repetition and suggestive language on the page allow the reader to infer feelings and emotions as they read, interpreting and embodying the character. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Everything in the text takes place in the present tense, which means the reader moves in step with the action as they read. :"He turns around, sees a second cube, looks at it, towards the carafe, goes towards the second cube, takes it, carries it and places it under the carafe" The reader's position here is twofold, because he is led to occupy both the usual position of the reader at a distance and embody the human gaze. This is done through moments of “looking” in the text. Because, as readers, we are not offered any other perspective, nor any other information, we must look where the man is looking, and embody his gaze. The word "look" is also imperative, and where it appears in the text our attention is drawn and we are forced, by the text, to imagine the object the man is looking at. In addition to this, Beckett's careful punctuation slows the reader's pace to allow a pause between each action, "look at him, to the jug, go to the second cube", creating a sense of realistic bodily movement over time. His use of white space on the page is also very suggestive, as it imposes a pause between each action when we read: "A large cube descends from the flies, lands. It continues to think. Whistles from above." As readers, our eyes cannot move as quickly between sentences as they normally would in a close line of prose or poetry. This has the effect of imposing real time between one action and another, as it would appear with a body on stage. So if we treat this as a performance text, the words here not only inform movement, but also posit that movement over time. The word “reflect” here also has a special meaning in thetext. The white space left after the word in the aforementioned example has the obvious particularity of imposing a spatial implication of the time in which the man is thinking. But the word “reflect” has additional meaning in relation to the reader’s experience of the text because of its layered repetition. It is one of the few words in the text that indicates an inner life to the "man" who performs the work of otherwise mechanical actions, and thus invites the reader to embellish or imagine the substance of this "reflection." By reading at the same pace the man "performs", they are invited to think from the same intellectual position of the man, both participants having received no indication of the reason for the events on stage. It is at these moments that the reader ceases to be a spectator of the man's actions, but rather becomes an instrument for giving him inner life, performing it through reading. It works by repetition. Each time the word “think” is repeated, the reader is asked to think about the action that has just taken place. The first time the word is used, it is surrounded by punctuation marks: "He falls, gets up immediately, dusts himself off, turns away, thinks." » The moment has its own integrity, looped into a visual impression of a stage pause. But each time the word is repeated, it takes on a different meaning simply by the nature of having been repeated, each time becoming more desperate and devoid of understanding: “A small tree descends from the flies, lands […] It continues to think. Whistle from above. He turns around, sees a tree, thinks, approaches, sits in its shadow, looks at his hands. "Although the word itself does not change, each time the man is outwitted, the reader necessarily takes the word differently. They begin to question whether "thinking" is really effective. And the text also guides this understanding, through the repeated gesture of the man looking at his hands, an event which only occurs after several moments of “reflection”. The two gestures testify to the text's own conscious attempt to produce the simultaneous experience for the reader. embodying the man (produced by moments of reflection) and looking at the man from a distance (embodied by looking at his hands. In these two positions, the reader, like the man, is unable to progress, through the will to). thought (reflection) or action (hands) The fact that the person reading this text is probably an actor who will literally embody the man on stage reinforces the feeling of futility and testifies to the feeling of endless repetition that the text describes. . act, the text specifies that after having fallen, the man “remains lying on his side, his face turned towards the audience, looking in front of him”. It is a moment where the intimacy between the act of reading and the performance crystallizes. The reader has "observed" the man's actions, but now he looks towards them, "stares" and pushes further the boundary between the text and the performance that the reader has experienced throughout. Here they become very aware of being “watched,” a visual gesture that would usually only be achieved in a theater. That said, even this gesture would be unusual in a theater, as it would break the fourth wall between performer and audience, an effect which I believe is deliberate; co-opt the reader in the execution of what they read.Keep in mind: this is just a sample.Get a custom paper from our expert writers now.Get a custom essayThe relationship between text in as an element of reading and an element of interpretation is complex here in many ways, but the lack of words means that an intimate and unsettling relationship can exist between the two, as they both rely solely on visual experience. The imperative which could have been read in the..