From the Breath of Beckett, and his Endgame onto silence, the varied absences engendered there, I move now to a less theoretical or textual engagement with theater, and (momentarily leaving the modern era) to my own eyewitness account of a classic Greek tragedy, a contemporary adaptation that I attended of Euripides' Medea. Here, it will prove to be less the silences that resonate, the absences that threaten, and more the enduring impact and provocation of theater's lived event, the persistence of its crafted illusions, and of the actor's capacity to persuade those still seeking persuasion, still seeking signs of life. For upon the stage one evening, remembered and recounted, the ancient actions of Medea unfolded violently before me, tragic events that—like Beckett's empty boots, or his “miscellaneous rubbish” strewn upon the stage—were to appear only for an instant before finally disappearing, before transforming into next to nothing at all.