Vitro Nasu

I - Faces

Faces from left, Anna Akhmatova, Meryl Streep, Patricia Clarkson and Simone Weil.

We have the actresses to portray Anna Akhmatova and Simone Weil. Would anyone care to write scripts for these talented actresses?

II - Ohio Impromptu - Jeremy Iron in Samuel Beckett Play.

There are two characters, the Reader and the Listener. The Reader, it emerges, is a mysterious messenger from someone now dead and once loved by the Listener. The book the Reader reads from tells the story of the Listener mourning right up until the last moment, when the story is told for the last time and “there is nothing left to tell.” Throughout, the Listener not only listens but also regulates his companion’s reading by knocking on the table with his hand in an attempt to ensure that this will not be the final telling of the tale.

As in Dead Ringers, Irons does a remarkable job at portraying dual natures without the need for makeup or gimmickry: you always know which is which, as if Irons has inhabited both roles from birth to present, experiencing every nuance of difference over the years and inscribing them into face, voice, posture, manner. His Listener is deeply tragic but never pathetic; lost in a barren desert of his own creation, his final, angry knock is a note struck with overtones of futile desperation and fateful resignation. His Reader is no less remarkable. Like someone trusted with the care of a terminally ill but occasionally demanding loved one, he balances tender pity with profound weariness, painfully restricted compassion with self-aware frustration. When Reader and Listener trade knowing looks, you completely forget this is the same actor.
From the modernword

Play by Samuel Beckett

Alan Rickman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Juliet Stevenson playing (tongue twisting Beckett play directed by Anthony Minghella) now on Youtube.

Part I here

Part II here

Three urns stand on the stage. From each, a head protrudes – a man and two women. The play tells the story of a love triangle, and each character narrates a bitter history and their role in it. On the stage, each head is provoked into speech by an spotlight. In the film, the camera takes the role of the spotlight. (Synopsis)

You only discover Beckett’s genius once you start immersing yourself in the material. Beckett completely altered our vision of what theatre can do. In a sense they are not really plays but theatrical events. He is more a poet or installation artist, or performance artist, or some strange combination of all of those things, than a playwright. He pays as much attention to what sound and light are doing as he does to text. Stevenson on Play.

In 1965 Philip Glass composed music for a production of Play. The piece was scored for two soprano saxophones, and is his first work in a minimalist idiom - an idiom which was substantially influenced by the work of Beckett. From here.

Sam I Am (from the New Yorker by Benjamin Kunkel)

Beckett’s work can lay a strong claim to universality: not everyone has a God, but who doesn’t have a Godot?

“Little body little block heart beating ash grey only upright. Little body ash grey locked right heart beating face to endlessness. Little body little block genitals overrun arse a single block grey crack overrun. Figment dawn dispeller of figments and the other called dusk.” (The last paragraph from “Lessness” by Samuel Beckett.)

A room and Samuel Beckett

The photo above is a room preserved as is from Beckett’s residence in Roussillon.
Javier Marias used the photo of Samuel Beckett shown on the bottom right to describe him in his book “Written Lives”.
He wrote about Mayakovsky and his remarkable shoes before moving forward to his impression of Beckett’s photo.

“They (shoes) are the main object in the photo of Beckett too, except that their owner, seated almost on the floor and in a corner, seems slightly terrified of them. He is another hounded man, but at least he is not surprised by the hounding: he’s ready for it; he is holding a cigarette in his right and his left hand seems to be adorned, incongruously for someone so sober, with a bracelet rather than a wristwatch. His clothes are nothing out of the ordinary, although his cufflinks look like handcuffs. It it weren’t for those large shoes, the only thing that would matter, as in any portrait of Beckett, would be his head and those eagle eyes, which stare straight out with a truly animal expression, as if they did not understand the need for this moment of eternity, or why anyone should want to photograph it…..” ( page 191 - Perfect Artists, the last chapter from “Written Lives”)

Beckett was asked by a reporter how a small country like Ireland could have produced so many great writers since the last half of the nineteenth century.

“It’s the priests and the British, Beckett replied tersely. “They have buggered us into existence. After all, when you are in the last bloody ditch, there is nothing left but to sing.” (Page 282, A biography of Samuel Beckett by Deirdre Bair.)

Samuel Beckett was a close friend of Joan Mitchell and her husband Barney Rossett was Beckett’s publisher.

Beckett at 100 from Greencine daily with many good links including one on Barney Rossett.

Samuel Beckett was born 100 years ago on April 13, 1906.
His sun is in Aries and his moon is in Sagittarius, the same combo as Vincent Van Gogh and Thomas Jefferson with whom he shares a birthday.

The combination of your Sun and Moon sign produces independence of thought, action, and speech. This is a position of dynamic ideals and popular appeal. You believe in the truth with an almost absolute devotion. This belief is perhaps not in the truths of scientific investigation, but more likely in the proper philosophies of life and other large issue abstractions. The natural tendency for Aries to be the pioneer, the fighter, the doer, and the initiator new concepts and ideas is not greatly modified by this combination. Yet the Sagittarius Moon does impose a personal code of ethics and honor that may not always be present in the brash Aries native. In you, executive powers are strongly marked, taking the form of controlling others with ideas and principles. The proper path that should be followed is so clear to you that you are not one ever to mince words in plotting the course. Your intensely emotional approach to getting something accomplished can sometimes limit your awareness of the feeling of others and you can be tough on those around you. The human frailties of pettiness, emotionalism, and jealousy are not well understood by you, and do not relate well with your totally open and frank personality. (From here, scroll down to Sagittarius Moon section.)