Acting for Beckett

OVERVIEWS ACTING FOR BECKETT SAMUEL BECKETT'S ABSORPTION in the performing. arts has been profound and sustained. In Dublin, he went to the Abbey, in London to the music-hall, in Paris to the little theaters.' Today, a friend of theater people, he sees their work where he lives or visits. His poem, Whoroscope, is a dramatic monologue. After writing his first novel, Murphy, he took copious notes for a. play about the Dr. Johnson-Mrs. .Thrale relationship, which, however, he did not write. After World War II, Beckett turned almost simultaneously to fiction and dramain French. Eleutheria, unpublished and unproduced, precedes the Godot which made him famous, and which involved him directly in theatrical production. At first. a silent observer during rehearsals, he has now directed Godot and Endgame in English, Play in French, and Eh Joe in German. Early this year, his sixtieth, he wrote me that he had been busy with "14 weeks nonstop theatre cinema and TV." To this day, then, the performing arts continue to fascinate him even though he views them as a gregarious game, an evasion of the lone exploration of fiction. Through the years, Beckett's fiction has pared away narrative garb to zero in' on man narrating. Similarly, Beckett's drama is concentrated down to man acting, even as the different plays emphasize by examining the building-blocks of· drama-entrances, exits, monologues , dialogues, tableaux, movements, and stillness. Beckett's conflicts are basic oppositions: Gogo and Didi cannot leave the Board, while Pozzo and Lucky cannot stay. Hamm cannot stand, while Cloy cannot sit. The radio plays cannot be seen, whereas the mime plays (including' Film) cannot be heard. Krapp's Last Tape separates ,a man from his taped voice; Words and Music separates language from melody; Eh Joe separates the filmedacfor from the recorded voice. In Happy Days and Play, the characters are cued, into the action by which they exist. Aristotelian drama, which imitates an action, is crystallized by Beckett to the acting which is all we know of living. Beckett's drama draws us to its root: dian-to do, to perform; through radicalizing all aspects of performance, Beckett underlines and undermines his prob- . . "N h' b d " lematlc openmg: ot mg to e one. RUBY COHN'" -Ruby Cohn, author of Samuel Beckett,. Rutgers. is the editor of this issue. 237 ...