Actors, directors, and theorists alike have long acknowledged the formal subversiveness of Samuel Beckett's dramatic works. His plays deny closure, replace clear narrative development with extreme fragmentation and rigid patterning, and drastically limit the gestures and movement of the actor. Beckett's play Play is no exception; indeed, this work incorporates all of the above features. But perhaps the most significant challenge to the form of drama posed by this particular text emerges from Beckett's experimentation with dialogue and his related recourse to narration rather than to the on-stage enactment of many of the play's principal events.
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