is it doing in the middle of ENDGAME?

What we arrived upon is the realization that in playing the Chronicle the

importance must be placed not in it's content but in the fact that Hamm sees his

literary/theatrical indulgence in his story as his "real" work, in contrast to the low

comic banter that occupies most of his time with Clov. We must see Hamm "work"

on the Chronicle. Despite the fact that there is important content in the text of the

"Chronicle", the fact that Hamm performs it, and the way in which he performs it

are much more significant realities for the actor playing Hamm.

This gave us an insight into a very delicate aspect of the text. In essence: The

lines of the play are not things that the character's "say ", rather the saying of the

lines are things that the characters "do". Speaking is the action of the play.

This is easy to say but to make theatrical sense out of it is a difficult matter.

All of the "normal" textual requirements of making the language active, and acting

within the lines were still upon us. Neither Rachel or Jay were satisfied with

playing the text as if there was no semantic import. But I was becoming more and

more convinced that the relationship between the fact that they spoke and what

was spoken was not a simple one.

We were moving forward with the structure of the musicality of the play.

This gave us several ways of dealing with text in any moment: there was text as

Joke, text as complaint, text as weapon etc. As we achieved more and more clarity

with this palette the question of the content was, in part, answered. The content of

any line is, with a few exceptions, local. By this I mean that the content of the

exchanges deals only with that specific exchange. Despite references to the larger

situation, the actors must play the lowest, most immediate level of the language.

For example: Nagg suddenly demanding his papp is a clear rhythmic shift

and acceleration.²⁶

The entrance of a third character creates a kind of comic crisis.