The Landscape of Extinction

November 16, 2009

Beckett:  In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

In a college acting class on Beckett, before we read a word we first were tasked with a fascinating exercise. We had to go to this really shitty zoo–the kind where the polar bear paces back and forth on a tiny piece of ice, full of ennui and sadness. We were asked to pick an animal, and to learn to full imitate one piece of behavior, one routine, with absolute precision. It wasn’t hard to choose a behavior. Most animals had only one or two, confined and listless as they were in their pens.

Then we had to perform our task, over and over again, keeping the absolute precision of every gesture perfectly strung in balance. And an interesting thing happened. In every case–whether the hippo, the gorilla, the tiger, the sea lion–watching the person pick at nits, pace, or lick a paw was monotony at first. Then, something happened–the task, repeated precisely, with nothing around to distract, became fascinating, absorbing. And then, again in every case, the same task, still being repeated endlessly, became hilarious.  Tears rolling down your face, sides aching miserably hilarious.

And suddenly, we all knew why Beckett’s stuff is so goddamn funny. It’s not just the unhappiness, which Beckett wrote is “the most comical thing in the world.” It’s the precision of monotony, the absurdity of performing the isolated task, voicing the isolated phrase, in a landscape of extinction. Because even and especially in the wasteland, every animal (to paraphrase Beckett) must go on, can’t go on, goes on. And that’s the funniest schtick there ever was.