Combining phenomenological analysis with dance and performance analysis and affect theory, A Theatre of Affect: The Corporeal Turn in Samuel Becketts Drama takes stock of the various ways in which the body in Samuel Becketts 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 Becketts stage-images cannot be mapped onto conventional discursive meanings, the significance of the bodys formal modulations is affective in the sense that the import of such changes is immediately recognized and felt as significant by spectators. Becketts theater of affect therefore is predicated on the infinitesimal stirrings of subliminal meaning-making that continuously shape and create the world in experience.
