See Programme Notes for my thoughts on the production.

Was it by chance that I discovered Samuel Beckett quite so late in the day?

In the early ‘60s I had read Modern Languages at LMH, but the French literature course finished with Andre Gide in the 1920s, so I learned nothing about Beckett then.

It was not until March 1970 that I had the opportunity for some brief contact with his work. Francis Warner, later Lord White Fellow in English Literature at St. Peter’s College and a personal friend of the author, produced a Celebrity Gala at the Playhouse in aid of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Appeal. The event was intended to raise funds for a theatre at St. Peter’s dedicated to production of Beckett’s plays, together with a research centre.

The Gala consisted of a series of the author’s short plays, punctuated by five performances of Breath, a play without words, and a film, the script written by Beckett, starring Buster Keaton. Both cast and audience were full of theatrical and media luminaries; actors included Wolf Mankowitz, Laurence Harvey and Siobhan McKenna, while in the audience were Sir Peter Hall, Richard Burton, Harold Pinter, John Osborne et al.

For me the evening, despite its star-studded cast, was not artistically successful, so not at all memorable. And sadly, for many reasons, the Beckett theatre project, despite apparent initial interest, did not come to fruition. It had received the author’s blessing in characteristically modest terms: ‘It would be for me a very great honour indeed if my name were to be given to a theatre in Oxford. I send my gratitude to you and to those of your colleagues who have thought me worthy of such a tribute’. And Buckminster Fuller was eager to take up the position of architect. He wrote, ‘In appreciation of the appointment I am donating my personal design conceptioning (sic) and supervising time.’

However, disappointingly, nothing happened.

As David Tucker wrote, ‘The Oxford Samuel Beckett project very nearly succeeded. Had it done so, the ways in which the theatre sought to bring world-renowned dramatists such as Beckett – alongside Pinter and Osborne among numerous others – together with first-time, even student, authors and directors, as well as its innovative fund-raising methods, might in turn have had a much wider direct impact upon British theatre practices than was ever envisaged at the time. 

Yet the glimpse offered of what so nearly came to pass, as well as what did happen and how it happened, speaks to the complex and contingent nature of theatre history; much like broader theatre history, that of the Samuel Beckett Theatre is rooted in personal relationships as much as financial machinations, and in outcomes located prosaically somewhere between their blue-skies origins and down to earth necessities.’

It wasn’t until some twenty years later that Beckett was again, quite unexpectedly, brought to my attention.

In 1992/3 I was at a stage when, having recently benefited from the experience of shiatsu, I could cope better with my neuropathic pain, which had been much diminished by this particular healing therapy. So in 1991 I was beginning to direct two theatre pieces a year rather than just one. The main event, typically musical theatre, would take place in the spring at the Newman Rooms, while something on a lesser scale would happen in the autumn. I definitely felt the creative juices flowing again!

In the spring of 1993 I was asked to direct the operetta, Meet Me at St. Louis, for Neath Operatic Society, but my ideas were rejected by their committee for being too ‘Brechtian’(?).  Not that the word ‘Brechtian’ actually featured in their correspondence, but this, I’m sure, was what they meant. (See my chapter on Brecht for a full description of the latter’s work/theories etc.!)

However I felt a definite urge to direct something, so when a friend said, ‘Well, you could always direct Beckett’, I was interested. I took a copy of Beckett’s Collected Shorter Plays with me to France for the summer and soon became totally immersed. Since that first reading Samuel Beckett has, with Shakespeare, become the dramatist/theatre practitioner I hold in highest regard.

I don’t remember exactly why I chose to direct Beckett’s Shorter Plays, but probably, in large measure, because I didn’t feel sufficiently confident in my knowledge or understanding of the author to tackle one of his longer works. However when I looked at the shorter plays, all very different in terms of philosophy and visual expression, I felt inspired to direct five of them at once, with five in the cast... Hence the title of the programme, (actually a line from one of the plays), suggested by one of the actors, ‘We are the Last Five’.

In 1993 my summer reading had given me the strong feeling that Beckett was moving, above all, towards minimalism. I designed the programme to reflect this, so the performance sequence was: What Where (with four actors), Catastrophe (three actors), Act Without Words (a mime for two players), A Piece Of Monologue and Breath, a three minute play without actors, written as Beckett’s contribution to Kenneth Tynan’s review Oh! Calcutta!

In 1993 I knew a theatre which would be just be right for a production of the Shorter Plays: what was by that time an upgraded Burton Taylor theatre, originally funded with money from Richard Burton’s 1966 production of Dr Faustus (see relevant chapter). This was now much more ‘user-friendly’ than when, as a bare, dusty room, with a few scruffy chairs for a possible audience of fifty, it had served for my first production of The Soldier’s Tale in 1987. There was a small open performance space, with raised audience seating, (fulfilling my dreams of the most congenial type of staging!), and expressive lighting – perfect.  It was, for me, in 1993, another example of play and performance space coming together to create theatrical harmony.

As you see from the attached programme, my own few notes have interpretative ideas about the plays, whereas Beckett concentrated above all on the purely physical aspects of a scene, with explicit regard to set, light, sound, costume, make-up and, occasionally, movement.  Here, for example, are his directions for the opening of Catastrophe, written in French in 1982 and dedicated to Vaclav Havel, then a prisoner in what was Czechoslavakia.

P, a silent, statuesque presence, represents Havel.

Director (D)

His Female Assistant (A)

Protagonist (P)

Luke, in charge of lighting off stage (L)

Rehearsal. Final touches to the last scene. Bare stage. A and L have just set the lighting. D has just arrived.

D in an armchair downstage audience left. Fur coat. Fur toque to match. Age and physique unimportant.

A standing beside him. White overall. Bare head. Pencil on ear. Age and physique unimportant.

P mid stage standing on a black block 18 inches high. Black wide higher brimmed hat. Black dressing gown to ankles. Barefoot. Head bowed. Hands in pockets. Age and physique unimportant.

D and A contemplate P. Long pause.

Other minimal notes follow. For example:

D. Light. (A returns, relights the cigar, stands still. D smokes.) Good. Now let’s have a look. (A at a loss. Irritably.) Get going. Lose that gown. (He consults his chronometer.) Step on it, I have a caucous.

(A goes to P, takes off the gown. P submits, inert. A steps back, the gown over her arm. P in old grey pyjamas, head bowed, fists clenched. Pause.)

A. Like him better without? (Pause.) He’s shivering.

As it happened, the girl who was due to play the Female Assistant in our production dropped out at the last minute. As this was the only small female role in the entire evening it seemed hardly worthwhile auditioning for someone else, so I took the part. (This was the first and only time I had acted since playing Mustardseed in Magdalen College gardens in 1964!) By the 1990s, thinking of myself as dancer/choreographer/ director, rather than actor, I did this a trifle unwillingly. However, it was only a ‘small’ part, and although my voice is not big I thought it would just about carry in the B.T. So I made the commitment

And I have to say that I actually enjoyed the experience in a terse, angry way. This seemed to be the character’s personality, her role consisting of acid one-liners in response to the megalomaniac Director’s own dry comments, instructions and pointed queries. I felt that the Director was issuing orders for torture which the Female Assistant was carrying out cynically, efficiently, and with total lack of feeling for the victim (P), who endured her cruelty with remarkable composure.

I relished the role partly because it seemed a way of expressing my own frustration at the actress who had ‘landed me in it’. Then, as I am constantly aware, body informs mind as much as the other way round, so carrying out the Director’s instructions like a robot, I came very much to feel like one. Rather than expressing any sympathy for the victim or guilt for my own lack of pity, I was able to relish my frustration and cruelty.

Reading about the play later I discovered that Beckett was influenced by Aristotle’s definition of the word ‘catastrophe’: ‘Catastrophe is an action bringing ruin and pain on stage, where corpses are seen and wounds and other similar sufferings performed.’ So, interestingly, I had been made aware of this myself, in a very direct way, through actual physical performance. Typically for Beckett, the apparent simplicity of the text combined with well-judged ideas for action reveal a profound human truth.

I am aware that one of the aspects of Beckett’s work that has interested me most is his valuing of the physicality of the stage. For him mime, action, gesture, clowning and theatre in general should be characterised by an important active element. He said, ‘The stage is a physical and concrete place that demands to be filled and to be allowed to speak its own concrete language, which first and foremost must satisfy the senses’.

My appreciation of Beckett’s attitude surely came from my own background as a dancer, with movement being the prime element of the theatre experience. Through my study of dance and experience as a dancer I had acquired a strong feeling for the power of form, of shape*, dynamic, relationship, use of time and space etc., which led me to feel an immediate empathy with the author.

*shape, as discussed later, was a vital concept in Beckett’s lexicon.

 As Sir Peter Hall said, ‘Sam was very interested in mime and ballet. He taught Peggy Ashcroft what Winnie in Happy Days did with the props from her handbag like a dancer. It nearly drove her mad, but it ended up beautiful. I remember them cleaning their teeth together. He had a rehearsal toothbrush, she had the real toothbrush and it was a question of how you did the upper gums.’

When directing theatre myself, I have been occasionally reproved by actors for being too meticulous in my instructions to them, particularly when it comes to movement. However it has interested me to see how close they come, eventually of their own accord, to my original ideas.

For example, my interest in physical detail was noted by actor Mike Tweddle, who played Oberon in my 2001 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘I remember the amazing detail with which we worked on the physicality of my hand – when I was miming the love-juice flower that Puck had brought me. You directed each of my fingers to do something particular! It brought a new level to the phrase “an eye for detail”!’  I have to say that I have no memory of this, but along with the comments of other actors I guess it is evidence of how natural this concern for the importance of physical detail must have been for me.

So I very much like Beckett’s attitude: ‘the actor must get the actions right and only then can he begin to make the role his own’. He also said, ‘I hope that the movement I give the actor can give body to his words and be a source of nourishment for his character’. One’s physical nature, movement and expression inform emotion, thought and ideas as much as or more than the other way round; they certainly play a large part in their evolution, and this must be recognised in theatre. As Beckett said, ‘It is the shape of the thought, the shape of experience that matters’. From my study and practice of Rudolf Laban* I had learned to understand the importance of body informing mind as much as vice versa.

As to the production of We are the Last Five: a principal reason for moving from a play with four characters, What Where, via Catastrophe with three, Act Without Words with two, A Piece of Monologue with one, and finally Breath with none, was my attempt to acknowledge Beckett’s shift towards minimalism, saying more with less.

My approach to the plays was much praised by the author’s friend, Francis Warner, who commented positively, ‘the highly disciplined action and austere and accurate direction would greatly have pleased the author.’ Fantastic – I could want nothing more than to receive Beckett’s approval!

As one of the actors, Robert Bristow, who played the remarkably composed Protagonist (P) in Catastrophe, wrote afterwards: ‘Jackie tapped into the genius of Beckett and his highly prescriptive stage directions. These might have seemed on the surface to be the furthest from ‘dance’ of all ODT projects, but, in fact, using the very precise and exacting stage directions in Beckett’s plays, Jackie choreographed the pieces throughout, not only the movement, but the look and sound of each piece too.’

Finally, I feel I should say a bit more about Breath, the play repeated five times in Francis Warner’s 1970 Beckett Gala Evening. This for me was an indulgence, serving no clear dramatic purpose, and I had no lasting memories of it. However when it came to We Are the Last Five and I had made the decision to reflect Beckett’s working towards minimalism, it represented just the right finale to the programme.

CURTAIN

1   Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold about five seconds.

2   Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light reaching maximum together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold about five seconds.

3   Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in 1.) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold about five seconds.

CURTAIN

RUBBISH

No verticals, all scattered and lying.

CRY

Instant of recorded vagitus. Important that two cries be identical, switching on and off ad strictly synchronised light and breath.

BREATH

Amplified recording.

MAXIMUM LIGHT

Not bright. If 0=dark and 10=bright, light should move from 3 to 6 and back.

Coming as the last piece of five, Breath revealed the direction of Beckett’s artistic journey. It is an example of bare existence, surely at the heart of the author’s inspiration.

According to his work and quotations from friends etc., Samuel Beckett was a remarkable human being. People speak of his ‘inexhaustible human compassion’, ‘tragic caring awareness’, and his continual ‘outcry against forces both concrete and cosmic that strive to crush the human spirit.’

Some Beckett thoughts:

'Man is an actor in a tragic farce.'

'The uglier the reality that is confronted, the more exhilarating will be its sublimation into symmetry, movement and laughter.'

'There is no end to the punishment inflicted on man for having been born.'

'My work is a matter of fundamental sounds, made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones let them and pour their own aspirin.'

'For the artist the compulsion to express his intuition of the world is a condition of his very existence.'

'Il faut continuer, je ne peux pas continuer, je vais continuer.'

Edward Albee commented on Beckett, ‘It’s the economy and music about writing, its honest and clarity.'

Sir Peter Hall said, ‘The longer he lived, the blacker and more stopped-down his work became, because he reflected this horrendous century with its overriding themes of the inescapability of death, destruction and failure.'

Writing this on April 11^th, 2019, I read today in The Independent of Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier using a theatrical reference to explain the ongoing uncertainty about Britain’s plans re-Brexit. “I’m still waiting for Godot,” he said. “Last time he wasn’t there. I think this time again, he is not there.'

To finish, a typical Beckett rejoinder:

Martin Esslin: ‘Such weather makes you feel good to be alive!’

Beckett: ‘Oh I wouldn’t go quite that far.’

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Programme Notes