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Beckett as director
Samuel Beckett was closely involved with the staging of his plays from the
very outset of his career as a dramatist. He attended almost all of the
rehearsals of the first (and original) French production of En attendant Godot
(Waiting for Godot) in the latter months of 1952, when he acted discreetly as an
advisor to its director, Roger Blin. He also helped Blin, with much greater
self-assurance this time around, to direct the world première of Fin de partie
(Endgame) in 1957. Yet it was to be almost ten years more before he began to
direct his own productions. Throughout this period, however, he helped and
advised several other experienced English and French directors – George
Devine, Donald McWhinnie, Anthony Page and Jean-Marie Serreau – with
productions of Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape, Happy Days, and Play, as well as
assisting with a number of revivals of Godot. In that time, he learned all that
he possibly could about staging and lighting from these directors, who
became personal friends. Occasionally, he was invited to come in to bale out
a production that had run into choppy waters. 1 Then, from the mid-1960s on,
he directed almost all of his own stage and television plays at least once, until
his career as a director came to an end at the ripe old age of 80 with a
production of Was Wo (What Where) for German television.
Why did he choose to direct his own plays? With a few notable
exceptions, most playwrights in the past have preferred not to do this,
although it has become much more common in recent years. Beckett directed
partly because he was asked to do so. The Schiller Theatre administration in
Berlin, the Royal Court Theatre in London and the Compagnie
Renaud-Barrault in Paris were responsible for inviting him to take sole charge
of productions. From personal encounters and reports of his wife and friends
on productions done by others, 2 as well as from photographs, recordings
and reviews, he had become aware that some of them were falling far short of
his expectations. He told Michael Haerdter, his assistant on the 1967 Schiller
Theatre Endgame, for instance, ‘I saw photographs of the first Berlin
production; everything is wrong in it. The ash bins are separated, you can see
Hamm’s feet, they’re touching the ground.’ 3 He was also sharply critical of
(Left) Samuel Beckett directing Billie Whitelaw in Footfalls, 1976
BECKETT AS DIRECTOR 97