Blau - Sails of the Herring Fleet: Essays on Beckett

Sails of the Herring Fleet

THEATER: Theory/Text/Performance

Enoch Brater, Series Editor

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Essays on Beckett

Herbert Blau

Ann Arbor
The University of Michigan Press

First paperback edition 2004

Copyright by the University of Michigan 2000

All rights reserved

Published in the United States of America by

The University of Michigan Press

Manufactured in the United States of America

Printed on acid-free paper

2007 2006 2005 2004 5 4 3 2

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blau, Herbert.

Sails of the herring fleet: essays on Beckett / Herbert Blau.

p. cm. (Theatertheory/text/performance)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-472-11149-3 (alk. paper)

I. Beckett, Samuel, 1906Dramatic works. 2. Beckett, Samuel, 1906Dramatic production. I. Title. II. Series.

PR6003.E282 Z576 2000

842'.914dc21

00-008325

ISBN 0-472-03001-9 (pbk : alk. paper)

The following essays and interviews in this collection were originally published as indicated:

Notes from the Underground, in The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto. New York: Macmillan, 1964. 22851.

On Directing Beckett: An Interview, in Directing Beckett. Ed. Lois Oppenheim. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. 4865.

The Bloody Show and the Eye of Prey and Barthes and Beckett: The Punctum, the Pensum, and the Dream of Love, in The Eye of Prey: Subversions of the Postmodern. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. 65-103.

The Oversight of Ceaseless Eyes, in Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern Drama. Eds. Enoch Brater and Ruby Cohn. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991. 27991.

Quaquaquaqua: The Babel of Beckett, in The World of Beckett. Ed. Joseph Smith. Psychiatry and Humanities, Vol. 12. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. 115.

The Less Said, in Performing Arts Journal 35/36 (1990): 1113.

Remembering Beckett: An Interview, in Sources: Revue des etudes anglophones 2(1997): 31-54.

All photographs of productions at The Actors Workshop of San Francisco were taken by Chic Lloyd.

ISBN 13 978-0-472-11149-7 (cloth)

ISBN 13 978-0-472-03001-9 (paper)

ISBN 13 978-0-472-02440-7 (electronic)

To Jonathan

My only hesitation in thanking, once more, the Center for Twentieth Century Studies is that it will probably have changed its name before this is published, although its been rather mischievously casual, dilatory about that, while its current research on animals may suggest, to those not familiar with its leading edges, either some millennial atavism or eco-detour around the cyborgs. However that may be, here are the names of those negotiating the Y2K transition as if it were simply a matter of course, which is pretty much how theyve made things easier for me before: Carol Tennessen, Nigel Rothfels, Patti Sander; and, when I started putting the collection together, my research assistant, Clark Lunberry.

As for my wife, Kathleen Woodward, director of the Center, shes been acknowledged in so many books by so many other scholars that anything else I might say would be not only partial but redundant, though I rather like the redundancy of her unabating support.

At the University of Michigan Press, LeAnn Fields has long been receptive to suggestions Ive made about other books published there, and I appreciated her enthusiasm about this one from the moment it was proposed.

I wont repeat here what Ive written about within, but for this particular book my deepest and longest gratitude goes to some who worked with me back in the 1950s, out in San Francisco, in and around those early dubious productions of Becketts plays. There were times when Robert Symonds was so deep inas before the unveiling in Endgamethat it seemed hed never get out, but forty years later, usually now in Paris, Im delighted to be seeing him still, lively as ever, good-natured, even performing there and, as if heartened by all adversity, next to inexhaustiblea word he may remember from the waiting for Godot. As for one who never forgets, I must mention Alan Mandell, first of all because he asked me to. Mention my name, he said, in his imperious way, when I told him I was doing the book, and dont forget to send me a copy. That will be duly done, and with love for long devotion. I might add, meanwhile, that in the aftermath of our production of Godot at San Quentin prison nobody did more to perpetuate the Beckettian ethos there, which he did by advising and supporting the inmates in their own theater work. When some of them were paroled and the San Quentin Drama Group was reformed outside the prison, Alan acted with them, and later, too, in productions directed by Beckett.

Another I want to mention, though I can only wish to send the book, is the late Tom Rosqui, who came to The Actors Workshop, young and handsome, while still a sailor at Treasure Island (below the Golden Gate Bridge), only to find himself, eventually, sealed into leather as Clov, in the claustrophobic chamber of Endgame, too relentless an actor not to find it exhilarating. And then, of course, theres my partner in the theater for many hectic years, Jules Irving, who directed Krapps Last Tape after playing Lucky in Godot but who in the much too early end should have beenhe who loved to gamble and almost always wonfar luckier than that. I will be saying more about him in one of the essays.

There are age-old personal reasons for (again) acknowledging Ruby Cohn, but what Im remembering at the moment is that, amid her irreplaceable contributions to the criticism of Beckett, she also organized, some years ago, what may have been an unprecedented panel at the MLA, consisting of my (former) wife, Beatrice Manley (who had played Winnie in