Alistair J. Gardiner
Entering the Void
An exploration of Beckett in
performance
INTENTIONS AND OBJECTIVES:
The idea came about whilst I was studying Beckett’s Endgame as part of a theatre module and I
stumbled across a whole section of his work that I had never even heard of. As I was reading
through all these short plays (those that are known as the ‘Late Plays’), I was struck by their
deceptive simplicity and how they can be read as distillations of Beckett’s theatrical attitudes and
philosophies. The idea for the project evolved and eventually took the form of a series of
workshops based around 4 of Beckett’s short dramatic pieces. An audition process would take
place to determine the small group of actors who will make up the company; the group will then
assemble one evening of every week for the workshops. These workshops will not be simple
rehearsals, but a process for research and development – the intention is not to produce a
polished performance, but rather that the company learn how to approach Beckett dramatically.
In terms of the institute’s objectives my project aimed to hit the following key areas:
Academic literacy
A certain degree of academic literacy is required to fully engage with Beckett – I will conduct the
workshops with this in mind, and in the hope that the group will guide themselves towards a
deeper understanding of Beckett’s theatre. For those involved who have never studied or
performed his work, the nature of the workshops and his writing should improve these academic
skills hugely.
Performance-based learning
The Workshops will only be directed to a certain extent, though I will give quite a lot creative
freedom to the actors in the hope that ideas will arise that can be refined, cultivated and perhaps
ultimately used in performance. Beckett’s writing is incredibly distinctive and notoriously difficult
to get right; my hope is that many of the actors will be stretched above and beyond their current
ability.
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Alistair J. Gardiner
Research-led learning
Beyond the practical learning that will take place in the workshops, I personally have been and
will be doing a lot of academic research on staging Beckett’s work – this will involve literary
study as well as talking with scholars and professionals who have experience in this area. I will
keep a weekly journal to record all progress from the workshops and findings from this research.
The plays I decided on were:
Come and Go (1965)
Footfalls (1975)
Ohio Impromptu (1981)
Catastrophe (1982)
These plays were picked for reasons both for artistic and logistical. Not only do these plays
seem to capture many of Beckett’s overriding themes and subjects, but they also all had very little
staging and simple costume and lighting – this was essential, because the project was with
concerned with how to effectively perform Beckett and not necessarily how to effectively stage
Beckett.
The first workshop will be an introduction to the texts and Beckett as a theatrical voice. The
ensemble will do read-throughs and then discuss each piece as a group - these initial discussions
will go some way in informing what will take place in the following weeks.
The next couple of workshops will be focused on Catastrophe and Come and Go. Among other
things we will be looking at unanswered and unanswerable questions, politics informing
performance style and tragi-comedy.
The workshops following those will be focused on Footfalls and Ohio Impromptu and the
implications of time, memory, duality and death within the pieces.
Of course, the project and its content will evolve as it progresses – my intention is to remain
flexible in the running of the workshops and allow ideas to flow and creativity to thrive in our
collective learning of how to approach Beckett in performance.
A dissemination of the project will take the form of a written report. Beyond this findings from
the workshops will be used in rehearsals for a performance of all four plays at the Warwick
Student Arts Festival. The ensemble managed to secure the Warwick Arts Centre Studio as a
performance space and acquired the rights to perform the plays using funding from the Warwick
University Drama Society.
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Alistair J. Gardiner
RESEARCH:
I conducted both literary research and spoke to academics in order to find a way to approach the
performing of these short plays. Here is just a small selection of my findings.
Come and Go:
In researching Come and Go I found that the play began life as a comedy. Rosemary Pountney
describes the “Hilarious revue-like style” of the first drafts1. However the play was refined by
Beckett into the form in which it is currently published: “…what remains is only the barest
minimum of dramatic form” writes Hersch Zeifman2. Indeed the comedy appeared to be lost on
many scholars, James Knowlson included, who wrote ‘The unspoken nature of the
condemnation… is the more powerful precisesly because it is less explicit.”3 He also writes that
“both the theme and dramatic structure of the play are dominated by images of circularity and
recurrence”4 which in my mind certainly rings true of all of the plays I am looking at, and
basically all of Beckett’s work. In this respect, Come and Go can be seen as a distilled summary of
Beckett’s entire dramatic philosophy.
Ohio Impromptu:
In writing about Ohio Impromptu, most of the scholars wrote about the act of simultaneous
creation and narration at play, which some linked to Footfalls. Others likened to play to Krapp’s
Last Tape (1958) in it’s stasis and themes of nostalgia and regret. What was most of interest to
me, however, was the relationship between the two figures. Are they creator and subject? Or one
and the same? If so, have they always been one and the same? Anna McMullan takes the
diplomatic approach and writes: “The relationship between the two figures remains ambiguous
and ‘open’ and our interpretation of it is developed through the series of gestures and through
the text.”5 This is something I decided to take to the workshops: that the gestures in the play
should be as expressive as the text in allowing an audience to interpret the performance.
Catastrophe:
Catastrophe was written for Vaclav Havel at a time when he was imprisoned; however, most
practitioners and scholars seemingly choose not to read it as political. S.E. Gontarski writes that
the play is a comment on the human condition, summing it up with “What a curse mobility!
What a curse immobility! What a curse life! What a curse death!”6 Other interpretations include
that it is a comment on the uncontrollability of art, a philosophical musing on the nature of free
will or a self-deprecating mockery of Beckett himself.
Pountney, Rosemary, Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-76, Irish Literary Studies, Gerrards Cross,
Colin Smythe 1988, p78
2
Zeifman, Hersch. Come and Go: A Criticule, in Samuel Beckett: Humanistic Perspectives, ed. Morris Beja, S.E. Gontarski
and Pierre Astier, Columbus, OH, Ohio State University Press, 1983, p143
3
Knowlson, James. Frescoes of the Skull, James Knowslon and John Pilling (eds), London, Calder, 1979, p124
4
Knowlson, James. Frescoes of the Skull… p123
5
McMullan, Anna. Theatre On Trial: Samuel Beckett’s later drama, London, Routledge, 1993, p115
6
Gontarski, S.E. The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Texts, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1985,
p 181
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Alistair J. Gardiner
Footfalls:
Anna McMullan writes that “Footfalls is said to have been inspired by one of Jung’s lectures
which Beckett attended in the 1920s. Jung was speaking of a female patient and he described her
condition as ‘never having been really born.’ ”7 In short, the play can be read as being about lack
of identity. S.E. Gontarski agrees with this sentiment stating that “…the footfalls that May uses
as evidence of her own existence…”8 Once again this is not the only reading of this play; it can
be read like in much the same way as Ohio – with “May” and the “Mother” as one being
(possibly as a result of some kind of trauma crystalized by memory, regret and ritual). The
structure of the play certainly lends itself to this reading – Gontarski states that the monologue
either “observes (or creates)” the visuals that we see9.
Performing Beckett:
In a discussion with Lois Oppenheim, the director Antoni Libera mentioned that the following
were essential in directing Beckett:
“1) Approaching a play (both text and stage activities) as if it were a musical score…
2) Attempts at bringing out the melody and rhythm of the text. Treating the text as if it were
poetry…
3) A very precise designing of the stage movements, as if in a ballet…
4) The pace of acting and speaking…
5) Bringing out comic elements…
6) Bringing out sadness and lyricism, with all their delicate shades of grey. No black gloom.
7) The spirit of German Romanticism…”10
For Peter Brook, the following four points are the key to successfully directing Beckett: “Small
means – intense work – rigorous discipline – absolute precision” A great many practitioners
mentioned the musicality of Beckett’s work – this seemed to be of huge importance so I made
sure to take all of this with me to the workshops.
Gontarski writes “One characteristic of Beckett’s most formal and fantastic drama is that the
mystery sits at the center of the circle, unknown and unknowable”11This is confirmed by Beckett
himself in Catastrophe when at one point the “Director” exclaims “This craze for explicitation!?”
With this in mind I made sure to be cautious of finding meanings and revealing these to an
audience.
I spoke to Dr Elizabeth Barry about this, and we talked about ‘the expression that there is
nothing to express’. She also talked to me about the fact that the plays can be likened to a
rehearsal in themselves, possibly even a punishment. Finally, she spoke to me about Beckett
aiming for what he called a ‘syntax of weakness’, which can clearly be seen in “May’s”
stammering in Footfalls.
McMullan, Anna. Theatre On Trial: Samuel Beckett’s later drama… p93
Gontarski, S.E. The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Text… p162
9
Gontarski, S.E. The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Text… p162
10
Oppenheim, Lois. Directing Beckett, USA, University of Michigan Press, 1994, p108
11
Gontarski, S.E. The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Text… p162
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Alistair J. Gardiner
Aside from Catastrophe, the places that I’ve chosen can be seen as depicting nostalgia for
something that may never have happened. My research has also shown Metatheatrics, abstraction
and prescription, and cyclicality are all clearly themes that I need to address. But I am also now
aware that I need to remember that language is the protagonist in Beckett’s work. I think that
Anna McMullan encapsulates all of these points in writing: “Visual ghosts is an apt description of
the stage images of Beckett’s plays of the late 1970s and 1980s…”12
AUDITIONS:
In order to be sure that an ensemble was put together with performers of the right physical
capabilities in both their control and style, an audition process took place. This was quite unlike
the average audition – performers were not picked on looks or even acting ability. The criteria
was based on how well the auditionees responded to a couple of unseen texts (taken from
Beckett’s catalogue) and direction given in relation to these – the actors that were picked showed
that they could go against all their natural instincts as performers and let the text take over.
Auditionees were first asked to deliver a prepared monologue – these ranged from Shakespeare
to Miller and were simply to show that said person had some dramatic understanding. After this
they were each given an extract from Not I (1972), an extract from Ohio Impromptu and a extract
of dialogue from Rough for Theatre 1 (late 1950’s). They were first asked to respond to the texts
however they wanted to – many attempted to dramatize them, colour them with emotion and
character; however there were a couple of performers who ignored this impulse and delivered
these pieces exactly as the language is written, in varying shades of grey. Those who attempted to
dramatize the pieces were then given a few bits of direction: for the extract from Not I, they were
told to isolate each word or phrase between the ellipsis; for Ohio they were asked to make a
decision on the ambiguous subject of who the reader is referring to in the text; for Rough for
Theatre 1 they were told to deliver it as if they had conversed using this dialogue every single day
for the past 20 years. With this in mind, many of the auditionees seemed to continue along the
same vein – creating cartoons and exaggerated caricatures and continuing to try to attach a story
and character to Not I. A few, however, did fight their dramatic impulses and begin to approach
the Beckettian style. It became apparent that a part of the workshop would need to be used to
break down the walls of Naturalistic acting that had been built up within these performers.
Both those who responded naturally well to the texts and those who took the direction on board
were considered for the ensemble. Eventually, two male and 3 female performers were selected.
12
McMullan, Anna. Theatre On Trial: Samuel Beckett’s later drama… p90
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Alistair J. Gardiner
WORKSHOPS:
Warm Ups:
We began each workshop with a series of warm up exercises to initiate the kind of physical
awareness and control that would be needed during the day. We started with a few quick drama
games (‘Kung Fu Ninja’, ‘Zip Zap Boing’ etc) and then moved onto slow controlled walking
from one side of the room to the other – being able to execute this kind of meticulous and
measured movement is quite integral to performing much of Beckett’s late work.
After this I lead the group in directing a round of Steve Reich’s Clapping Music (1972), which can
be seen below:
Each person starts by clapping the same basic rhythm, but after each round one person falls a
beat behind the rest of the group and so on until the group are back in time with each other
again. This idea was inspired by the oft talked about musicality in Beckett’s work – indeed Alan
Schneider once said that when he directed Ohio Impromptu he felt he was “a conductor”. The
importance of rhythm is undeniable in both Footfalls and Come and Go as well, so I wanted the
ensemble to begin to think and feel metronomically.
Another key feature of Beckett’s Late Plays is mimesis, which can be seen in Ohio, Footfalls and
Come and Go – to introduce this to the group I put a spin on the classic memory game ‘The
Shopping List’. I asked that, not only must the ensemble remember what each person had said as
we went round the circle, but also that they remember the exact intonation of what was said and
attempt to mimic them.
Some scholars note that, although their intentions differ hugely, there is a certain degree of
similarity between the style of Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett – this is partly why I decided to
use an exercise that I had last used during preparations for a production of The Caucasian Chalk
Circle: the ‘Alienation Game’. I wanted the actors to rid themselves of the naturalistic character
building that actors are trained in, so this exercise involved the ensemble splitting into groups of
two and taking part in an improvised duologue between two deliberately very different
characters. After a minute or so, on my signal the two actors had to switch roles. This became
more and more rapid. The intention was essentially to break down the dimensionality of the
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Alistair J. Gardiner
character to its basic DNA – something that I thought necessary for Beckett’s shorts. I then took
this a step further and instructed all the actors to leave their groups and try the same exercise,
but with themselves – this was inspired by the subject matter of Ohio Impromptu and arguably also
of Footfalls.
The final exercise I instructed the ensemble to take part in was one of my own invention – a very
basic exercise that I named ‘Hamming It Up’. Inspired by the quotation (well known amongst
Beckett scholars) by Walter Asmus, “Dare not to act”, it involves taking a line from any play (we
used Shakespeare) and beginning by asking all the actors to, in turn, deliver the line in the most
melodramatic and emotionally exaggerated way possible. This continues over and over, but each
time the actor must dramatically bring it down a notch. This continues until the actor cannot
physically drain any further colour from the line. This was to prepare them for acting in the
varying shades of grey of Beckett’s Late Work.
Discussions/Read-throughs:
After the warm-ups, we began discussing everyone’s experiences with Beckett – all of the
ensemble had seen at least one of his full length plays in production (mainly Waiting for Godot
(1953) and Endgame (1957)) and a few of them had been involved in amateur productions of
these plays as well. None of them, however, had experience with the Late Plays, which was
perfect because it put everyone at the same level and meant that the whole process could evolve
more organically.
We then sat down and did read-throughs of all the plays that we were working on and I asked
for their immediate reactions. Many topics were brought up during this discussion, including the
theme of performativity – if one looks at Ohio Impromptu, for example, the two characters are
named “Reader” and “Listener”. We also talked about the act of ritual and themes of cyclicality
that appear to relate to all four of the plays (with the possible exception of Catastrophe) – indeed
this is a theme that can be traced throughout most of the rest of Beckett’s canon.
Though Catastrophe initially seemed to be the odd one out of the four shorts, we found during
our discussion that it actually fits with many of Beckett’s dramatic motifs – questions of agency
are raised (who is the puppet and who is the puppeteer?) as well as the very human desire to
submit. We also talked about the possible readings of Catastrophe: the fact it was written for
Vaclav Havel, the way it can be seen as a comment on theatre or even art in general, the
potential for comedy etc.
Questions of limitations placed upon us by physical, social and psychological phenomena are
raised in all the plays: be it the limitations of our roles in our diegeses (the “Reader” and
“Listener” in Ohio Impromptu, the role of “Protagonist” in Catastrophe), our social roles and the
responsibility they bring (the role of daughter as carer in Footfalls), the banal limitations of life
itself or even the limitations of what is knowable and unknowable (Come and Go).
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Alistair J. Gardiner
Various terms came up for the style of acting that we felt was required, these included: ghosting,
haunting, voiding, and We agreed that most of the plays felt almost like rehearsals in themselves,
as though a painful experience is being rehearsed or atoned for.
Text Work:
We then moved onto work on the texts themselves. Keeping in mind Peter Brooks’ four
principles of producing Beckett: “Small means – intense work – rigorous discipline – absolute
precision” as well as Antoni’s Libera’s remarks (above), we began working out what was the best
way of expressing without expression, bringing out the bleak poetry of the texts without
dramatizing them. We eventually decided that the expression in Beckett’s work had to come
from the smallest nuances, these being: the breaths, the footsteps, the knocks, the pauses, the
looks, the stammers and the stillness.
With Ohio Impromptu we started with the dialogue. The feeling we were trying to give was one of
over-rehearsal, a compulsion, the end of a tired ritual. We played with many different ways of
delivering this text including the style of a story-teller for children and that of a stand-up
comedian. We also tried literally conducting the speed of the actor delivering the lines as though
it were music. The idea was to go past the act of line delivery, then past the act of story-telling,
until the lines became instinctual. Then we attempted to bring the story out once again and, in
doing so, create the sense of the story having been told since the beginning of time. We then
moved onto the knocks. This is essentially the only emotion that we allowed into the piece. Each
knock was different in tone – whether angry, scared, desperate etc. Each knock corresponded to
the section that the “Listener” wanted to be read out again – for example, a painful part of the
story was met with a hesitant, yet defiant knock. We also spent a long time looking at the
moment when the “Listener” stops the “Reader” from referring back to an earlier page in the
book. We tried playing this moment in many different ways by asking questions: Is this the first
time this has happened? Is the “Reader” expecting it? How does the “Reader” feel about this? Is
this a welcome break from his endless duty? We decided in the end that it felt the most natural
when played as though the “Listener” just wants to reach the end, and the “Reader” is ultimately
under the “Listeners’” control – much like Hamm and Clov. The ending of the play should be
appropriately resonant so in order to get the image totally right we did a lot of mirroring in the
workshops. The actors took it in turn to exactly imitate the other actor’s movement – we then
transposed this into the final scene where they both look up at each other. This helped in raising
the plays biggest question: are these two people actually one and the same?
With Catastrophe, we wanted to find the most effective reading in performance, be it comedy,
political statement, artistic comment etc. To achieve this we did an exercise based around
tragicomedy, in which the performers playing “Director” and “Assistant” both had to deliver
their lines in either an incredibly sombre manner or an over-the-top comedic fashion. On a
signal they then had to switch over. We found that the comedy seemed to come out more
naturally and so we crafted our “Director” and “Assistant” into the moulds of “Hamm” and
“Clov” from Endgame (and, to a lesser extent, Pozzo and Lucky from Waiting for Godot).
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Alistair J. Gardiner
We played with many different readings of Footfalls, including “May” as self-aware simulacrum of
the “Mother” or simply as the same person (in a similar way to Ohio), “May” and “Amy” as the
same person, and the story’s she’s telling as truth or fiction. In order to get to the roots of the
text we looked at both the “Mother” and “May’s” monologues and got them to read them
together as a duologue. We then asked them to deliver them as monologue but, when they got to
the speech sections, to attempt a mimesis of the other’s delivery. This brought a certain amount
of life to the scene which helped in the communication of the text. It also gave the actress
playing “May” a sense of ritual and compulsion to bring to the role. As with Ohio I felt it
necessary to bring the identities of the two characters close enough to mistake them for the same
person. In order to achieve this, I took very small section of the text and turned it into an
exercise. At one point early in the play the “Mother” counts the steps of “May” simultaneously
as she is walking them. I asked the two actresses to turn this into a loop and increase the speed,
whilst always staying in time. I then asked them to decrease the speed until “May” was standing
still, and then to attempt to start again at the same time. They then had to stop when they both
felt that the speed of the walking/counting was appropriate for the performance. As well as this
we also timed all the sections of dialogue and worked out the number of steps that it would take
during the performance of each one. In this, we found the perfect pace for the walking and
indeed for the play as a whole. During our earlier discussions we had decided that the line
“…dreadfully un-…” was a pivotal point in the play. We saw it as the moment when “May”
could potentially break out of this ritual; however some compulsion crossed with a kind of
bewilderment forces her to continue. We did an interruption exercise to try and get this moment
right which involved the actress reading lots of lines from different plays and getting interrupted
by way of a silent signal – by way of this, she learned how to effectively portray an
unseen/unheard interruption.
Come and Go is certainly the most minimal of the plays that we were working on, and we didn’t
want to lumber it with extra meaning that wasn’t there. Our intention with it was that were create
a perfect and isolated little piece of drama. We decided not to ask questions about things such as
what “the rings” in the final line refer to – but rather simply see what the most effective way of
playing it was. As such we decided to give all the actresses intentions to see what came out as a
result. We first tried telling all of them that they are simply three women gossiping to each other
– this gave the play a lightly comedic feel. I then took each actress aside and gave each of them a
different line to whisper in one of the other’s ear, without telling the others what they were going
to say. I had given very different lines to each actress, ranging from “her shoe laces are untied”
to “her husband is dead” and I told each actress to try to react as naturally as possible to each
whisper. What we found was that more shocked the “Oh!” was, the funnier it became with most
of the rest of the play in deadpan silence. Interestingly Come and Go became, for us, the ultimate
tragicomedy.
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CONCLUSIONS:
My main finding from the project is that Beckett was a very particular kind of playwright. His
work demands that you not question it, try to alter it, or colour it with anything other than what
can be found within the text. A good example of this was that, during on workshop, we decided
to denote each “pause” and “silence” in the stage directions with a certain time length. We found
that if we remained consistent throughout with these specific time lengths for each stage
direction, the pace and tone of the whole piece was perfect. This taught us, above all, to trust the
text.
The line between comedy and tragedy became very fine in the workshops. Come and Go and
Catastrophe in particular had the ability to both make us laugh and to sober us. What was most
interesting was that many times during the workshop, it was the helpless deadpan style that
produced the most comedy.
I discovered that the playwright can treat the stage as a canvas and the actors as paint, or the
actors as instruments and the script as sheet music. The company are merely there to sing
Beckett’s song, and not to bring anything else to it. In doing just this, Beckett not only blurs the
line between theatre and performance art, but also illuminates the philosophical questions of the
human condition far more severely and unflinchingly than almost any other playwright (in terms
of both the subject matter of his plays and in a metatheatrical way, that becomes most explicit in
Catastrophe).
It became apparent to me that there is no such thing as over-rehearsal with Beckett. The more
we rehearsed the plays the more haunting and tired they became, and, ultimately, the more
weight they gained. Rehearsals are where Beckett’s work really gains life, because that was
Beckett’s comment on life: it is just a long rehearsal for a play that will never be staged.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works, London, Faber and Faber. 1986.
Gontarski, S.E. The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Texts, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 1985.
Knowlson, James. Frescoes of the Skull, James Knowslon and John Pilling (eds), London, Calder,
1979.
McMullan, Anna. Theatre On Trial: Samuel Beckett’s later drama, London, Routledge, 1993.
Oppenheim, Lois. Directing Beckett, USA, University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Pountney, Rosemary, Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-76, Irish Literary Studies,
Gerrards Cross, Colin Smythe 1988.
Zeifman, Hersch. Come and Go: A Criticule, in Samuel Beckett: Humanistic Perspectives, ed. Morris
Beja, S.E. Gontarski and Pierre Astier, Columbus, OH, Ohio State University Press, 1983.
WORD COUNT: 4657
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