ABSTRACT
Theatre directors and actors have recognized the potential of Beckett's prose texts for embodiment on the stage from the 1960s onwards. The text of Imagination Dead Imagine expresses the need to conjure a body or bodies in their small white rotunda as the work of the not yet extinct imagination. The bodies are gendered as 'woman' and her male partner, though any specific gender markings or differences between the bodies are absent. The persistence of indices of gendered corporeality/voice did contrast with Beckett's androgynous narrative voice and gendered but almost indistinct still bodies in their cramped rotunda. Stage embodiments of the prose intervene in the gap between narrative voice and imagined incarnations. The choice of female voice and body for the narration and image can be read as a resolution of the textual androgyny of the narrative, but it also raised questions about gendered assumptions in the interpretation of the narrative voice which are brought to the fore in performance.
