Part of “Happening 2019” by Variations of Beckett

Video documentation by Theodor Barth

More photos from the Happening: https://variationsofbeckett.net/2019/11/17/happening-2019-part-1-documentation/

Sophie Barth has been working with creating her own Beckett character in a performance context that reaches out of the theatre. She has used several of Beckett’s plays to investigate different ways of understanding a character who lives on the outside. Not just as an outsider, but a person choosing a different perspective and excluding herself. Her work has been focused around researching nothingness, of isolation and silence. These themes contribute to creating the human condition found in all of Beckett’s literature. 

Her character Rose relates to a selection of movements, objects and routines. She acts within her own narrative where change is limited. The main storyline is taken from ”Come and Go”, but with the absence of her companions – Flo, Vi and Ru. In her desperate search for elements that can fill the absence, she grows more and more desperate. This leads her into a conflict between her routine driven everyday life and the unknown of the everyday surrounding her. Themes that are explored in this performance revolve around the active and the inactive, the animate and the inanimate. Barth delves into how her memories of different stagings of Beckett plays have influenced her to create one single character. Is Rose a true Beckett character, or is she just a figment of Barth’s own imagination?

Photos by Aksel Pépin