COME AND GO opens with a paraphrase of the opening line from Macbeth. Since that was our fall show, I was initially intrigued by the idea of closing the season with an echo of our beginning. I also am a fan of Beckett's writing; the short pieces are so spare in words, and yet offer these great challenges to the actors to fill the spaces and the
silences in the piece. I think that all of the actors I'm working with are meeting the challenges of doing less, slowing down, following Beckett's stage directions, but there's no question that those challenges are enormous, even in a short piece that takes a little over five minutes to perform. Beckett's works always seem to have a post-apocalyptic feel to them, as if the characters have all suffered some unspecified catastrophe, and the plays are a working out of that cosmic fate. Since we wanted to keep After the End of the World from being too dark, I wanted to include one of the short Beckett works that also has recognizable humor in it. The repeated coming and going of the women, all in turn, is a deft bit of [almost] vaudevillian business. The trick is to give the audience permission to laugh, even in Beckett's dark world. As we are working on the play, we are finding how precisely the movements must be choreographed. All three actors have to learn how to sit, stand, move, and even speak in a similar way, to control even the slightest movement on stage. Many times in rehearsal I have the actors watch each other, to catch the specific turn of the head or the pace with which they have to move. And we're taking time to discuss and plan out the specific back-story of the characters. Although there are concrete references to the past, it is never spelled out by Beckett, but the actors have to have a very real, very grounded reference point for each other. They have to know, literally, each others secrets throughout the play. It is pretty intense work for them, and we find we need to take little breaks; they need to shake off the world of the play to keep at it for any length of time. I'm really excited by what they are doing, and can't wait to share this piece with our audiences.
silences in the piece. I think that all of the actors I'm working with are meeting the challenges of doing less, slowing down, following Beckett's stage directions, but there's no question that those challenges are enormous, even in a short piece that takes a little over five minutes to perform. Beckett's works always seem to have a post-apocalyptic feel to them, as if the characters have all suffered some unspecified catastrophe, and the plays are a working out of that cosmic fate. Since we wanted to keep After the End of the World from being too dark, I wanted to include one of the short Beckett works that also has recognizable humor in it. The repeated coming and going of the women, all in turn, is a deft bit of [almost] vaudevillian business. The trick is to give the audience permission to laugh, even in Beckett's dark world. As we are working on the play, we are finding how precisely the movements must be choreographed. All three actors have to learn how to sit, stand, move, and even speak in a similar way, to control even the slightest movement on stage. Many times in rehearsal I have the actors watch each other, to catch the specific turn of the head or the pace with which they have to move. And we're taking time to discuss and plan out the specific back-story of the characters. Although there are concrete references to the past, it is never spelled out by Beckett, but the actors have to have a very real, very grounded reference point for each other. They have to know, literally, each others secrets throughout the play. It is pretty intense work for them, and we find we need to take little breaks; they need to shake off the world of the play to keep at it for any length of time. I'm really excited by what they are doing, and can't wait to share this piece with our audiences.
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