A Theatre of Affect

Combining phenomenological analysis with dance and performance analysis and affect theory, A Theatre of Affect: The Corporeal Turn in Samuel Beckett’s Drama takes stock of the various ways in which the body in Samuel Beckett’s drama participates in the affective ecology of performance. Affect is here located in the materiality of the body and discussed in relation to the symbolic significance of, for instance, the effort, direction, speed, or duration of a posture, movement, or gesture. Although the meaning of the body in Beckett’s stage-images cannot be mapped onto conventional discursive ‘meanings’, the significance of the body’s formal modulations is affective in the sense that the import of such changes is immediately recognised and felt as ‘significant’ by spectators. Beckett’s theatre of affect therefore predicates on the infinitesimal stirrings of subliminal meaning-making that continuously shape and create the world in experience.

Charlotta P. Einarsson received her PhD from Stockholm University (Mis-Movements: The Aesthetics of Gesture in Samuel Beckett’s Drama), but she also has a degree in professional dance from the Ballet Academy (Stockholm) and a degree in dance pedagogy, with a specialty in classical ballet, from the University College of Dance (Stockholm). Although a literary scholar, her previous experience as a dancer has continued to guide her research into the significance of the body in literature and art. Her forthcoming publications include a study on the reception of Samuel Beckett’s drama in Sweden.