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Copyright © 1997 by The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with this header included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without express written permission from the JHU Press.

Performance Review

The University of Victoria Beckett Festival

Figures

Last May, the University of Victoria's Department of Theatre hosted a three-day festival celebrating the theatre of Samuel Beckett. The keynote speaker was Stanley Gontarski, whose address entitled "Revising Himself: Samuel Beckett's Self Collaborations" discussed the ongoing revisions the playwright made to his dramatic texts in light of their theatrical production, and how he made himself into a man of the theatre through his increasing involvement with productions of his work. Gontarski's comments set the stage for the rest of the Festival, which included numerous performances and presentations: nine groups performed twenty-four live shows; three groups produced three radio dramas, repeated daily; four videos, including the rarely seen Film, were shown daily; and twenty-seven scholars presented papers on a wide variety of topics.

Festival organizers emphasized works that are infrequently seen, particularly the shorter dramatic works and pieces originally written for forms other than live theatre. Under the direction of the distinguished Shimon Levy, Switzerland's Goetheanum Theatre performed (in German) Footfalls, Play, Catastrophe, and Not I. The Pantechnicon Theatre from Pomona College under the direction of Stephen Young brought their completely self-contained and transportable laboratory stage to perform Footfalls, A Piece of Monologue, and Not I on one bill, and Company and Rockaby on another.

One of the highlights of the Festival was an adaptation of Worstward Ho, here masterfully directed and performed by Fred Neumann of New York's Mabou Mines. As in so many Beckett pieces, the first few moments encapsulated the whole. The lights came up on stage, and the audience saw a grave freshly dug in the "ground," from which clumps of dirt were being tossed. Out of this grave [End Page 238] then came a puppet-like shovel, from which a voice seemed to issue, followed by Neumann himself and a skeleton, which he treated with the casualness of an old friend, crossing its legs as if to make it comfortable, and propping it up just right so that it could gaze at him as he continued his monologue. When Neumann spoke of his "shades," figures became visible, but so dimly and so otherworldly that they seemed suspended not only in space but in time. In this theatricalization, which Beckett suggested to Neumann, the imagined voice and evocations of the original prose text became materialized in real bodies and objects, located in actual space, making the performance a substantial revision of the original work.

A benefit of the performance schedule was that some plays were performed by two different groups, thereby providing Festival delegates with an opportunity to see the same show refracted--revised and revisioned--through slightly different lenses. Catastrophe, for example, was also performed by a group from the University of British Columbia and directed by Stephen Malloy in a less overtly political manner than Levy's production. Also notable in this regard were the two back-to-back perfor-mances of Krapp's Last Tape. The first Krapp, produced by Victoria's Theatre Department, was directed by Harvey Miller and featured the accomplished John Krich. The second was directed by Dickinson College's Robert Hupp and featured Jean Cocteau Repertory Company member Lee Krich, who is John's daughter.

Both directors used parts taken from both earlier and later versions of the script. In Miller's production, the audience could see a dimly lit area upstage to which Krapp retreated when he wanted to drink or to retrieve various items, whereas Hupp's production depended upon an earlier version of the script in which this area, and Krapp when in it, remain invisible. In this play, initially written between the radio plays All That Fall and Embers, Beckett experimented with the theatrical relationship of sound and image. His choice to make the closet visible lessened any tendency to sentimentalize [End Page 239] Krapp and instead gives a relatively clear-eyed view, both literally and figuratively, of how Krapp has or has not participated in the events of his life.

Both productions also showed that within Beckett's detailed and precise stage directions there is still room for directors and actors to make their mark. For example, John Krich's Krapp repeatedly circled the table in the same direction. This simple movement demonstrated not only the repetitions in which Krapp is caught, but also suggested a reel of tape spinning on a tape recorder and Krapp's life winding down. On the other hand, Lee Krich's Krapp moved erratically and angularly about the stage. Her brilliant physicalization, with all sorts of little hics and hold-ups, demonstrated not only Krapp's deteriorating physical capabilities, but also suggested an oncoming loss of lucidity. Both Krapps used a strikingly similar arm gesture when irritated, and in each Krapp's gesture, dismissive and yet constricted, one saw the father in the daughter and the daughter in the father. Beckett set this play in a future that depends on echoes from the past. In watching these two Krapps and these two actors, the question implied was whose future and whose past?

Another productive doubling involved two performances of Quad II--one by the State University of New York at New Paltz under the direction of Dan Swartz, the other a collaboration under the direction of Linda Moore between Neptune Theatre and Jest in Time Theatre, both based in Halifax. Swartz began with the colorfully costumed Quad I, which then passed without pause into the black-and-white Quad II. Beckett originally wrote these plays for television, and Swartz preserved the televisual aspect at least in part through the addition of an angled screen suspended over the quad and onto which were projected the movements of the actors from above. This arrangement provided the audience with a kind of double vision: from the front, figures dressed in shiny, stiff costumes with faces and arms completely hidden, marched along with fast-paced robotic precision; from overhead, these figures lost any trace of humanity and instead appeared as bits of luminous glass flowing in kaleidoscopic patterns.

In contrast, Moore's version emphasized the humanity, if not the individuality, of these figures. Their robes were of a dense material that draped in soft, heavy folds over the actors' bodies. Under the cowls which hung down over their faces, some features remained recognizably human, and their arms were simply folded in front. The figures walked with a steady but unhurried pace to a percussive accompaniment that was simple and relatively unelaborated, in contrast to the jazzy SUNY version. Swartz's figures belong to the next century, and with their unerring and unswerving advance around the quad, suggested the highspeed tracings of electrons firing on a preprogrammed computer chip. On the other hand, Moore's Quad looks back in time; her figures were like monks, and theirs was a walking meditation, a journey through the labyrinth, contemplative and human.

Quad II nested in a series of five other shorts also presented by Neptune and Jest in Time Theatres. Play, presented at breakneck speed, articulated the reciprocal relationship between the silent, unseen, but speech-inducing spot, and the three reactive players, who shot out their words as fast as they could when given the chance. Some of the intricacies and simplicities of power were laid bare in Rough For Theatre I and What Where. The jewel-like Come and Go, and the lyric Nacht und Träume demonstrated the economy and beauty of Beckett's theatrical sensibility. Moore and the players, Sherry Lee Hunter, Mary Ellen MacLean, Christian Murray, and Shelley Wallace, rendered each of these shorts with an impressive clarity. The bill provided a multifaceted view of Beckett's interest in the expressive possibilities of pattern, both verbal and visual.

Victoria's Theatre Department also created a space for three of Beckett's radio plays. In the intimate "Audio-torium," the placement of platforms delineated a relatively conventional theatrical space in which the stage was separated from the house. This separation was accentuated during performance as the house lights dimmed and the stage lights brightened. The first piece was Cascando, with Ron Faber as Opener, Joseph Chaikin as Voice, and Richard Peaslee as Music. The second piece was Rough for Radio I, produced by the University of Victoria in collaboration with Camosun College. For these two pieces, an old fashioned radio was placed onstage, and a sound technician came out and switched on this radio at the beginning of each "broadcast," at which point a tape began to play.

Whereas the first two pieces were taped, Embers was done live. The setting was a 1950s radio studio with two microphones and two stools set downstage for Henry, played with sardonic wit by Tim Crofton, and Ada, played with flirtatious verve by Michelle Monteith. A variety of sound effects equipment was set upstage for the two sound technicians (Britt Small and Stephen Lewis), who also played the parts of Addie and the Masters. This University of Victoria production, directed by Richard Stille, was engaging with carefully focused vocal characterizations and expressive sound effects. However, being able to look at these actors [End Page 240] with their facial expressions and period costumes made this a theatrical experience, not a radiophonic one. The added visual dimensions of all of these pieces constitute another revision of these originally acoustic, and therefore, disembodied, immaterial works.

Fittingly, the Festival closed with the thirty-five second Breath, after which members of the University of Victoria's Department of Theatre no doubt let out their own collective sigh of relief and satisfaction.

Kim S. Conner
Berkeley, California

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