Images of Beckett - Index of

added. 42 This strange, almost manic quality affected the sudden, eagle-like,
swooping gestures that were adopted by the actress, as well as the speed,
tone and pitch of her delivery. In the later Not I, Whitelaw’s acting of Mouth
was rapid, almost breathless, while, in Footfalls, Beckett worked with the
same actress to convey a ghostly absence, where her words appeared as frail
and as insubstantial as her physical presence. There was, of course, the
danger that his methods would lead to an excess of stylisation, a danger that,
as a director, he kept very much in mind. He embraced artificiality and yet he
worked hard to avoid anything that appeared forced, rigid or sterile.
Beckett’s (privately stated) attitudes towards the actor also have much in
common with Craig’s related views on the über-marionette. Craig explained in
the preface to the 1925 edition of On the Art of the Theatre that ‘the über-marionette
is the actor plus fire, minus egoism; the fire of the gods and demons, without
the smoke and steam of mortality’. 43 Craig also wrote that ‘the actor must
cease to express himself and begin to express something else; he must no
longer imitate, he must indicate . . . Then his acting will become impersonal,
he will lose his “egoism” and use his body and voice as though they were
materials rather than parts of himself. To this end a symbolical style of acting
most be devised, based on the power of the creative imagination.’ 44 Many
actors and directors who worked with Beckett spoke of his personal dislike of
what is so often thought of as acting and of his tendency to dehumanise the
actors in his plays. Brenda Bruce, who played Winnie in the British première
of Happy Days, told me how he tried to get her to speak her lines according to
a very strict rhythm and in a very flat tone. To her horror, one day, he even
brought a metronome into the theatre and set it down on the floor; ‘this is the
rhythm I want you to follow’, he said, leaving it to tick inexorably away. Siân
Phillips also spoke about Beckett’s insistence on rhythm and tonelessness
when she was rehearsing her recording of the voice for his television play, Eh
Joe, with him. ‘We worked like machines,’ she said, ‘beating time with our
fingers’, 45 until eventually she managed to get somewhere close to the flat,
cold, toneless voice that he could hear in his head.
It seems likely that both Craig and Beckett found a common inspiration
for their approach in Heinrich von Kleist’s essay, ‘Über das
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