Brecht’s Alienated Actor in Beckett’s Theater

Brecht's Alienated Actor in Beckett's Theater Enoch Brater The relationship between Brecht and Beckett is a study of corres pondences rather than of influence or ready imitation. AB J. H. Matthews has recently suggested, one can speak of prece­ dence and possible borrowing, similarities in the orchestration of dramatic structure, but not similar reasons for manipulating it in oomparable ways.1 The interplay flows from Brecht to Beckett, from Beckett back to Brecht again. Before he died in 1956, Brecht wanted to adapt Waiting for Godot by socially anchoring the characters ·and their lli:les; in the Marxist counter­ play Gogo would become a worker, Didi an intellectual, Pozz o a large landowner.2 In 1971 Peter Palitsch, once Brecht's stu­ dent, finall y produced a Brechtian Godot, complete with gestus and estrangement.3 The round poem which Didi recites at ·the opening of Act II is not only recycled by Beckett into The Un­ namable, but used as an acting exercise by Brecht as well: A dog went into the kitchen And stole an egg from the coo k. The coo k took his cleaver And cut the dog in two. The other dogs came And dug him a grave And put on it a headstone With the following epitaph: A dog went into the kitchen . . . Substituting an egg for Beckett's crust of bread and a .cleaver for Didi's ladle, Brecht's version of the traditional eight-liner is to be recited each time as it might be said by a diff erent character in a different situation. The exercise of repeating the Rundge­ dichte, wrote Brecht, might be useful in learning the fixation of a method of portraya1.4 195 196 Comparative Drama In Not I, as in his earlier work for the stage, Beckett employs a series of Brechtian devices. Brecht hoped to aclrieve a spe­ cifically non-Aristotelian theater of "alienation" by recasting spee ches into the third person, transmitting the dialogue in the past tense, and having characters recite stage directions arid comments along with their speeches. Making his audiences con­ scious of the fact that they were watching a play, Brecht focused not on character, but on situation, on dialectic, not catharsis. In Not I Beckett renders what little exposition there is in the Brechtian past tense and Mouth, obsess ively transposing all pro­ nouns into the ,third person, tells a story about "she," not "I." Though her own situation on stage curiously resembles the "mouth on fire" of the old woman in her story, Mouth, like Grusha talking to the soldier Simon in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, is steadfast in her "vehement refusal to relinquish third person.''5 And like Brecht's actress intent on alienating her audience, Mouth also reads her stage directions out loud: "screams . . . (screams) . . . then listen . . . (silence) . • . scream again . . . (screams again) . . . then listen again . . . (silence)." Mouth, checking back with Auditor to make sure she's got her lines right, comments along with her speeches: ... April morning . . • face in the grass • • • nothing but the larks ... pick it up there . .. get on with it from there .. . another few- ... what? ... not that?... nothing to do with that? . . . nothing she could tell . . . try something else . . . think of something else ... oh long after . . . sudden flash ... not that either . . . allright • • . something else again . . . so on . .. hit on it in the end ... think everything keep on long enough ... then forgiven . . . back in the- ... what? .. . not that either? .. . nothing she could think . .. nothing she-­ what?... who?...no! . • . she! . • . Like Hamm and Clov perceiving themselves as characters within a play.kept on stage by the dialogue and warming up for their final soliloquies ("An aside, ape! Did you never hear an aside before?"), Mouth similarly uses the special vocabulary of show business. Ruining the dramatic illusion by "some flaw in her make-up," Mouth never gets her lines "all right." In Not I the prompting session roles on indefinitely. Yet despite these superficial affini ties, at first glance one might be hard press ed to relate Brecht's exuberant theatricality with the minimalist dramatic activity emanating from Beckett's familiar empty space on stage. Embodied in situations per- Enoch BFater 197 ceivable by...