Why is this the first time that all 3 plays have been performed
together?
Well I guess one reason is that Not I is rarely
performed and Footfalls has never been performed by one actress
playing both roles of Mother (off stage) and May (on stage), and to my
knowledge no other actress has tried to perform all three roles in one evening.
Up until I tried it, I didn't even think it was possible.
What do you feel is the single, most urgent theme that runs through
Beckett's plays?
Gosh one single theme?!.. Well if I have to squeeze all the
sentiment, the ideas, the layers and depth into one single theme, I think
DEFIANCE is a good place to start. Beckett celebrates the very human
spirit of I can't go on, I must go on, I'll go on.
Do you have a favorite of the 3 you're performing? If so, why?
All three are so different and require so much and each have
different rewards. Not I is so physically and intellectually taxing
but so exhilarating and liberating at the same time, I discover new and
profound almost spiritual depths every time I perform Footfalls, and Rockaby's simple
compelling poetry grabs me by the throat each time, examining loneliness and
yet the honest sharing of this experience and the connection it has with the
audience makes me feel less alone.
What do you think audiences are attracted to in Beckett's plays? Is it
the harsh reality of the human condition? It is often said that Americans are
hooked on violence. Do you think this element is universal?
For me the big attraction is the type of truth Beckett puts
on the stage and the fact he isn't selling it to us. He isn't selling us
anything, As Pinter puts it "he isn't standing over us with his hand over
his heart", There's no polemic, pr or worthy preachiness and I'm so grateful
to him for that. He simply puts his finger on his own wounds and in that gentle
dark space he leaves us room to find our own. He pays his audience a great compliment.
Do you feel that Beckett manages to entertain while getting out his
message? How does he do that?
The great news about Beckett is that he's not out to
entertain, there are no stories on sale here nor does he have an explicit
message. As a result we observe the human condition and it’s that profound and
real recognition that have us weeping and laughing at the desperate hilarity of
our situation.
Talk in depth about Billie Whitelaw, as an actress and human being, and
how she helped you.
When Billie Whitelaw spoke, she did so with the arresting
gravitas that only someone of profound integrity can. She never minced her
words, she was direct, never suffering fools, but she was also disarmingly
open, extremely generous and often seemed so emotionally vulnerable as someone
who seemed to live life without their skin on. This is precisely why Samuel
Beckett loved her.
Despite being a child star Billie had no formal training as
an actor. She was therefore a very instinctual artist with a fierce commitment
that came direct from the gut. She fearlessly stretched her private landscape
around Beckett’s creatures and Beckett drew as much from hers as his own. Their
names will always be intertwined as one of the greatest theatre partnerships: a
towering master of European theatre and his muse.
 |
| Billie Whitelaw |
I know that I am only able to perform these late Beckett
roles, especially the mouth-only piece Not I, because Billie Whitelaw did.
Even before I got to know her, she made that possible. Like Roger Bannister who
broke the four-minute mile, Billie’s performance also broke a psychological
barrier by turning the famously “unlearnable” and “unplayable” into theatrical
tours de force, thus granting those of us who dare to follow in her wake the
confidence that it was possible.
But it was Billie alone who was the pioneer of the most innovative theatre of the 20th century. I first met her in 2006 a few months after my first performance of Not I in London. Edward Beckett attended one of those performances and over a Guinness with me afterwards suggested that it might be finally worthwhile to meet her, now that I’d “found my own way”. Up until that point neither of us had ever met anyone who had played Not I, and we greeted each other like two long-lost war veterans. We immediately swapped our trench stories of how we trained our mouths and diaphragms to speak at the speed of thought without moving a millimetre out of the meagre pinprick of light that allows just the lips alone to be seen.
Once she collapsed during rehearsals and Sam rushed over to
her saying “Billie, Billie, what have I done to you? What have I done?” Coming
to, she replied, “I really don’t know how to answer that Sam.” “Never mind,” he
said, “back you go.”
“I would have walked on glass for that man,” Billie
admitted. A year after our first meeting she called me out of the blue. “I want
to give you his notes, I have to give you his notes ...” Now I had no idea that
I would ever play this role again, so I wasn’t quite sure what had me standing
in Billie’s kitchen later that afternoon. I thought she might take out and dust
off an old rehearsal manuscript, but instead she told me to sit down at the
table and “Begin!” As I started speaking she sat directly opposite and began
waving her hand, conducting me. I later learned that was exactly what Beckett
had done to her, across her kitchen table.Billie lifted the lid on all of his
well-worn notes, especially his instruction Don’t Act: “No colour”. She was
adamant not to let me emulate her performance or veer towards a surface
“Beckett-style” reproduction, but wanted instead for the work to connect deep
within the performer. She explained that Beckett dealt with such truths that he
had no room for an actor’s craft. He did want emotion, only he wanted all of it
– the real stuff, the guts – not some polished fool’s gold. Like a diviner
carrying an ancient wisdom she tirelessly helped me and all of us who
encountered her to search deep within. She taught me that truth has a sound, a
timbre. I will always be in her debt for this. And, of course, for her parting
northern wisdom: “Just get on with it.”
What do you hope audiences will take away with them from this newly
organized evening?
The most I can hope for is that people will have a personal
visceral experience and not an intellectual one. Beckett can be chewed to
pieces in the mouths of academics, leaving us to absorb the leftovers, but in
fact Beckett wanted his work to play on the nerves of his audience and not on
their intellect. Ultimately I would love even just for a few people that when
they close their eyes and think about theatre that they remember this show. If
it can stay alive in the imagination of just a few long after its performance I
would be very very happy.
With such fantastic reviews, why
are you leaving Beckett's work this spring?
All good things must come to an end. I've been performing
these works for over 11 years now and I really have to hang up the lips at
least as its wreaking havoc on my neck and my body as well as the strain of
putting myself into a nightly state of trauma for such a long and sustained
time. I'd like to be able to walk away from this work in one piece. However I'm
not done with Beckett and I don't suppose he's done with me and I'm preparing
to work on two of his prose pieces one of which with open in the Old Vic
Theatre in September and the other I hope to work on in America as I've just
got a green card and am planning to make New York my home.
Has this been the greatest challenge of your acting career? How?
It has been the greatest challenge but also the greatest
privilege. There is no other experience that has stretched me so much
intellectually, physically, psychologically, emotionally and imaginatively.
There is no greater gift as a woman than having the issue of your body
removed and being given the freedom to inhabit a role like this, where to be -
is to be a slice of life, being paid the compliment to be consciousness
itself from womb to tomb. Wow.. It's very hard to go back to being a petty
little bite size cardboard cutout character from the chambers of a frightened
limited mind. Women's roles still haven't graduated that far from the three
main sexist gears..The bitch, the psycho and the bimbo. We wait in hope..but
godot, we've waited a long time.
Plays Thursday, April 7 at 7:30pm; Friday, April 8 at 7:30pm; Saturday, April 9 at 2:00pm and 7:30pm; and Sunday, April 10 at 2:00pm. The Eli
& Edythe Broad Stage is at 1310 11th St. in Santa Monica. Parking is free
Box Office at 310.434.3200
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