Performing Beckett as an Intercultural Actor

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Notes

¹See, for example, an account of critical reviews of Brook's Mahabharata in Bharucha (1993: 81).

²For factors surrounding the permissibility and intelligibility of an accent, see, for example, Van Els and De Bot (1987: 147).

³ I do not use the term ‘linguistic structure’, in order to try to reduce the predominant mental, rational and cognitive connotations that this concept would imply.

⁴Performing Beckett, the actress suggested, ‘is like playing the right music. Once that I've heard Beckett say it – just once – I've more or less got in my head the music of what he wants. That doesn't necessarily restrict me, but I think “Right. I know what music they are playing”’ (quoted in Brater 1987: 174).

⁵ This would have been a valid strategy. However, as this approach is often considered more ‘appropriate’ for intercultural actors, I wonder if it is not a way of maintaining the boundaries of those ‘suitable’ to perform works thought of as classics.

⁶ In return, the actor who managed to surrender to this thing bigger than him/herself can also become the thing itself. Only in this way we can understand the extraordinary praise and admiration for Beckett actors, best represented by Billie Whitelaw and David Warrilow.

⁷ Catherine Laws has made me aware of the dangers of using musical terminology as a medium to ensure a ‘correct’ interpretation of a Beckett's text. Music, it should be noted, is an interpretative art where notes (tones), silences and scores are left open to the performer's (and the director's) aesthetic/artistic choices. However, at the time that I was engaged in this project, I used musical terms as a grounding (neutral) element that could enable me to achieve the ‘right’ way of performing Beckett. In fact, this strategy has been used widely by Beckett performers and even by Beckett himself. See, for example, Mansell (2005: 225–39).

⁸ And one should indeed ask oneself exactly what delivering a text ‘without colour’ means. Performing in different languages makes evident that what might be considered plain delivery in one language may not be perceived as such in another. Even in the same language the use of regional accents problematizes the use and understanding of this phrase.

⁹ There is empirical evidence to sustain that hardly anyone who learns a foreign language after reaching twelve years of age will be able to speak it as a native. Why this happens is subject to speculation. See Van Els and De Bot (1987: 147–8).

¹⁰ See, for example, Perloff (1987: 37).