ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of silence in the works of Samuel Beckett and Andrei Tarkovsky, seeking to explore different ways of expressing its spatiality. It argues that theatrical and film productions are also performative transpositions of different qualities of architecture and natural landscape, and investigates the way silence is mapped through staged places. The chapter also examines the role of emptiness and stillness in the performative unpacking of silence by Beckett and Tarkovsky respectively. Seeking to reach conclusions about the importance of silence as a material condition of openness and deeper awareness of the surroundings, it suggests the significance of waiting in architectural understanding. The chapter argues about the potential of performative transpositions to translate events of place in a different way from the traditional, more abstract, two- and three-dimensional representations. It shows that silence plays a key role in the works of both Samuel Beckett and Andrei Tarkovsky.
