ABSTRACT
Originally staged in protest at the detention of Czech playwright Vaclav Havel in 1982, Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe stages a pared-down trope of political resistance to repressive regimes. This chapter traces the fate of the gesture across space and time to ask how durable or universal it is. First, a 1999 film adaptation of the play, directed by David Mamet and featuring Harold Pinter, is examined to consider how the change of time and medium alters the meanings and effects of the play. I then ask how well the trope of a minimal but resonant act of resistance in the face of significant power ‘works’ in a ‘real life’ situation. I do this by considering the figure of Liu Xia, Chinese poet and photographer, whose association with her late husband, Nobel Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo, led her to be held under extended house arrest by the Chinese authorities. I note the similarities between some activist representations of Liu Xia’s plight and Beckett’s Catastrophe. At the same time, I argue that Liu Xia’s various responses to her circumstances raise difficult questions about the political efficacy of dramatic tropes of resistance, and perhaps about political theatre more broadly conceived.
