Oldal 157 [157]
NICHOLAS E. JOHNSON, NEILL O’DWYER, AND ENDA BATES
through a digital model of an electric guitar amplifier, as the sonic effect of
the virtual loudspeaker cabinet again suggested a more significant physical
weight to the sonic gesture, compared to the original timbre.
In the final production, this real-time approach to the sound design
successfully retained the liveness of the performance, while also embodying
the physicality of the camera’s role as interrogator. As such, Intermedial
Play demonstrates the usage of new digital technologies to augment and re¬
interpret Beckett’s work in a new context, different from traditional theatre yet
also different from the more abstracted cinematic adaptation of Minghella.
CONCLUSION
It is now almost a truism of writing about Beckett and technology that he
always considers the ontology of his medium. Because Play appeared in
Beckett’s lifetime in so many different media — not only different productions,
but also in versions for print, recordings, cinema, radio, and television — it
is an excellent source material for investigating how specific technologies
exert influence on a work, as well as discovering how these configurations
alter the experience of subjectivity for performers and audiences. It is logical
that the media that continue to develop after his lifetime would generate new
possibilities, affordances, and constraints, and this project implies that certain
values apply when undertaking such translations. We observed Beckett’s
own admonition to Alan Schneider ahead of the American premiere, which
seemed to acknowledge that the play lives not in technological specificities as
much as it does in ideas: “What matters is that you feel the spirit of the thing
and the intention as you do. Give them that as best you can, even if it involves
certain deviations from what I have written and said."
The spirit of practice-as-research (PaR) within universities, especially in
robust interdisciplinary research configurations like the Samuel Beckett
Laboratory, enables a freedom with experimentation that the commercial
theatre cannot easily mimic. What initially began as a single PaR project,
conceived mostly as a demonstration of a technology in which Beckett’s
presence was incidental, has now evolved into an entire multi-year research
strand linking creative arts practice with creative technologies, encompassing
Intermedial Play as well as the later Virtual Play (which used the same
performers). In 2018 and 2019 this work progressed further into Augmented
Play, which integrates volumetric video content into a location-based spectacle
16 Beckett to Alan Schneider, 26 November 1963, The Letters, Vol. 3, 585.