The first thing I panicked about was pencils. Pencils! Did I even own a pencil? When was the last time I even used a pencil? A pencil, a copy of the script, and clothes you can move in—these are the necessities for rehearsal. After I tracked down three pencils (and sharpened them, in the only place where I could find the ancient device—at the office), I was ready. Ready to plunge into the process of blocking (learning the physical actions of the script.)
Samuel Beckett’s En attendant Godot, in its initial draft, was written in four weeks in the middle of his composition of what is known as The Trilogy—the novels Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. After having stumbled in writer’s block, tossing off Godot was a treat for the author, resulting in what he couldn’t have possibly known would become what some say is the “most significant English-language play of the 20th century.” How could he have known? He was a struggling novelist and seldom-published poet who, aside from a dramatic fragment and a piece of dramatic juvenilia, had never written a real play. Although completed between 1948 and ‘49, the play was not produced until 1953 and his own English “version” (it’s not a straightforward translation) was not produced until 1955.
The play baffled many at the time. The elite critical community were either perplexed or tried to impose a simplistic reading onto it. Oddly enough, when it was performed at San Quentin prison, the hardest, most rough-hewn men in America got it almost immediately. (If you know the play, you can see why). But the meaning of the play is not the concern for the actor playing in it. The actor’s concern is to play each moment truthfully. I would argue the meaning is not even within the director’s purview. The meaning is ultimately up to the audience, and this is true of any theatrical production. When 100 people see a play, they go away with 100 different versions of the play in their heads. This is, perhaps, the only thing in the world that I would call an example of postmodernism at work, as I can find no real useful application of its principals anywhere else (and I would argue when postmodern theory has been applied—in schools, in politics, etc., we ultimately have a society that is none the better for it).
A play, to echo a sentiment on poetry espoused in Archibald MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica,” does not mean something, it is something—it is an object (work of art) which occurs in space and time. That is all. The playwright does not even necessarily concern him or herself with the meaning. And yet I felt like, at our first read-through Monday night, I had to get two things straight with the director and cast very quickly. To settle my own nerves, I had to make sure we were going to pronounce the title of the play correctly and thankfully we all agreed on Beckett’s pronunciation—GOD-oh, rather than the North American Guh-DOH). I also wanted to make sure no one in the room thought that the offstage character of Godot was meant to represent God. Beckett famously said if he had meant for Godot to be God, he would have named him so. And if you say, “Well, if it’s pronounced GOD-oh, isn’t he clearly engaging in word play?” No. It was written in French, so he would have most certainly played on the French word for God, Dieu.
While some of the actors were surprised to learn the North American Guh-DOH pronunciation was wrong, I was relieved when we all were in agreement about "Godot" as God. It would seem obvious, given that the characters directly reference God, Christ, the Gospels, and attempt to recite Proverbs and they speak of Godot as a separate entity, but the idea of Godot as God, the estimation of its earliest critics, still lingers in undergraduate-level minds who wish to hold the play up as a prime example of Existentialism. While Godot has echoes of Existentialism, a philosophy that crept up after many witnessed of the carnage of World War II, I don’t believe Beckett thought of it as Existentialist (no more than Philip Glass would characterize his music as Minimalist) and he would have most certainly been uncomfortable with his work being lumped in with other authors of what critic Martin Esslin called “The Theatre of the Absurd.” While very different indeed from standard theatrical fare, Beckett’s work has a cold calculation that aligns less with Eugène Ionesco and Jean Genet than one might think. No, his plays are not naturalistic in the traditional sense, but Edward Albee called Beckett one of the most naturalistic of playwrights and I understand what he meant. One need look no further than the outside world in all its incongruities and see how Beckett’s plays simply reflect the incongruity of modern life. The play may even be more prescient now than it was in the early 1950s (so, contemporary life as well).
I walked into the small theater, with its dim lighting that sometimes barely allows me to see the script, and we gathered at the table for a first read-through Monday night. It’s the first time you can sense if the director has any sort of idea that the right people were assembled for the job. I was completely blown away by the actor playing Lucky who spoke the famous Quaquaquaqua monologue as if it were her second language. Of course, we all stumbled over what are obvious Irishisms that sound a little strange in the American mouth, but overall—I think we were all relieved and excited. At least I was.
I was cast as Estragon last year and, as the production was postponed, I suppose I could have gone ahead and taken the time to memorize my lines over this last year and all that, but I didn’t. Whereas, as a young actor, I tended to learn the entire script before rehearsals, I found as I went along my acting journey, lines are better learnt after the movements are set. While the dialogue is still a daunting task ahead of me, most of Estragon’s lines are responses and reactions to direct questions/commands of his partner in torture, Vladimir, played by a fine actor nearly a foot taller than me, giving us the right Mutt-and-Jeff, Laurel-and-Hardy differences that should make a good Didi and Gogo (the nicknames of the main characters). Regardless, I must be off book (lines learnt) by August 7th, so as I work full time and write after rehearsals, the weekends will become very precious as the time to continue to hone Gogo’s physical mannerisms and words.
Tuesday through Thursday were devoted to blocking the entirety of the scenes consisting only of Didi and Gogo. By Thursday night, this was accomplished. While the play may pose cosmic questions, it is rather simple. And Beckett was notoriously in complete command in terms of what he wanted from the stage directions, which we follow almost to a tee, though getting to know the small space is a challenge as I’ve never acted at Birmingham Festival Theatre (BFT), though I have seen productions there, including the late Janusz Glowacki’s hilarious Hunting Cockroaches and, recently, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive. BFT is known for doing more edgy material and it’s the perfect place for Godot. While the space is small, the feeling of vastness can still be accomplished and the proximity of the actors to the audience should provide an immersive experience into the world of Beckett’s apocalyptic (post-apocalyptic? does it matter?) world.
By Thursday night, it was clear the actor playing Didi and I had a certain amount of chemistry only dampened by the fact that we still hold in our hands three-ring bindered scripts (unfortunately in small print, hard on the eyes but what can you do?) The director, Markeitra Gilliam, is one cool cat. With a background in physical work, she has already been a terrific resource for someone like me, who has never played a character so dependent on the significance of his physical movement. She is not domineering, open to enquiry, and poses questions that make one think beyond the text. She, I, and the actor playing Lucky are the only ones who have been consistent members of the company since it was first cast last November and I feel my job is to not only serve the text, and to bounce off the what the cast gives me appropriately, but to serve her needs as well.
This is not altogether easy. As a practicing playwright who no longer even considers himself an actor, simply because it is not a pursuit of my life, sometimes I feel I say things in rehearsal that are more directorial, forgetting my place as an actor in a company, but you never know when you might say something that might illuminate a part of the text to other members of the flock—as an added plus, my ideas have been listened to without judgement, so I feel free to speak even as I try to remember listening, as it always has been, is the key to a good performance. When the scripts are out of our hands, my listening to Didi will be the key to making the piece soar.
On Friday night, we brought in our Pozzo and Lucky, the master and slave who interrupt each act. The actor playing Pozzo has done mostly solo work and I believe this will be a blessing in disguise for him as Pozzo seems (to me, at least) a fascistic narcissist who speaks most of his lines to the world, which he feels he owns. Still, these scenes are complex in dialogue and movement, and we were “lucky” to get through a difficult night of blocking, still hampered by the scripts in our hands. But such things are expected in the first week and we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves.
Part of what makes theatre such a phenomenal form is you have a short span of time in which people are intimately brought together. As Pozzo and Lucky rehearsed their physical movements with Gilliam, the actor playing Didi and I ran lines in the lobby of the theater and, after we were done, began bonding as people. The theatre has a beautiful way of bringing interesting people together who would have never otherwise crossed paths. We found common ground, shared stories of our lives—even some intimate ones, as I have an (increasingly) open filter than ever re: my life story. It was beautiful.
As we left, we pointed to each other and wished ourselves a great weekend, a safe drive home. He’s a friend. But it’s the theatre. Will he be a friend only through our last performance? Will he be someone who will be just a brief shining moment in my life or will we meet again, even after the stage set is “struck?” Either way, I’m getting to meet people, use time I would have otherwise spent on the couch, and push myself back into extroversion as I prepare to perform for audiences after a seventeen-year absence.
Based on what I’ve experienced so far, I think we have a fighting chance at soaring with this production. And as I write this, I’m keenly aware I must get sized for costumes and should probably get to that rather than writing this.
You can begin purchasing tickets now at the following link: https://www.onthestage.tickets/show/birmingham-festival-theatre/62ca0102b075e10e2442f2b9/tickets
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