Everyday Catastrophes: Gender, Labour and Power in Beckett's Theatre

Abstract

In an era of public consciousness about gendered inequalities in the world of work, as well as recent revelations of sexual harassment and abuse in theatre and film production, Beckett's Catastrophe (1982) bears striking resonances. This article will suggest that, through the figure of its Assistant, the play stages the gendered nature of the labour of making art, and, in her actions, shows the kind of complicit disgust familiar to many who work in the entertainment industry, especially women. In unpacking this idea, I conceptualise the distinction between the everyday and ‘the event’, as in, between modes of quotidian labour and the attention-grabbing moment of art, between the invisible foundations of representation and the spectacle of that representation. It is my thesis that this play stages exactly this tension and that deploying a discourse of maintenance art allows the play to be read in the context of the labour of theatre-making. Highlighting the Assistant's labour becomes a way of making visible the structures of authority that are invested in maintaining gender boundaries and showing how art is too often complicit in the maintenance of social hierarchies.

Theatricality, Playtexts and Society

“…McTighe notes: 'While her gesture might be seen as revolt, it is not really consequential to the outcome of the scene.' 115 As such, the showy removal of D's sweat does little to alter A's place in the power relationher ostentatious disgust remains an empty gesture. As Wolterman notes, 'Reportedly, for Beckett, P's final gesture was an unambiguous gesture of protest: "He's saying, you bastards, you haven't finished me yet".'…”