“All Right...Nothing She Could Tell...Try Something Else...What to Try...No Matter... Keep On”: P.E.T.E.’s Beckett Women

by Pancho Savery

Most serious theatre-goers are familiar with the major works of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), both fictional and dramatic, including More Pricks than Kicks (1934), Murphy (1947), Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), Waiting for Godot (1952), Watt (1953), The Unnamable (1953), Endgame (1957), and Happy Days (1961). These novels and plays were all published/produced prior to Beckett’s winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Much less well-known are Beckett’s shorter plays, of which there are at least 29, beginning with All That Fall (1957) and going through What Where (1983). One of the strangest is Breath (1969), whose entire text consists of one paragraph of 6 sentences and a total of 65 words. The 65 words are all stage directions, mostly about how the lights are to be used. There are no characters, only a “faint brief cry” that gets repeated. The entire play, taking place “on a stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish” (211), lasts approximately 35 seconds.

What P.E.T.E (Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble) has done for this performance is to take four of these short plays (Come and Go (1965), Not I (1972), Footfalls (1975), and Quad (1982)) and put them in dialogue with each other under the collective umbrella Beckett Women. All of the scripts contain eight pages or fewer of actual text, and that includes, in some cases, elaborate designs about how, where, and when the actors are to move. It is almost like looking at choreographic designs by Martha Graham or Merce Cunningham.

The text of Come and Go consists of two pages of dialogue and two pages of choreography. In it, three women sit on a bench conversing. One leaves, and the other two talk about her. She returns, a second one leaves, and one and three talk about her. She returns, the third one leaves the first two talk about her and then she returns. They then all join hands, there is silence, and the play ends. Where the women go when they leave, or even why they leave, we are never told. Two literary texts immediately come to mind. The first is T. S. Eliot’s famous line from The Waste Land (1922), “In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo.” Although the women here do come and go, there is no discussion of art. Instead, the first line is “When did we last meet?” Here is an obvious allusion to the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1623), spoken by the three witches, “When shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightning, or in rain? // When the hurlyburly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won//...Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air.” Are the three women (Vi, Ru, and Flo) witches? Are they the three Fates? We learn that the three women have known each other since childhood, “Just sit together as we used to, in the playground at Miss Wade’s,” and that they haven’s seen each other in a while; because when each one leaves, the other two wonder if she has changed. The most important questions raised are, “May we not speak of the old days? [Silence.] Of what came after?” (195). Presumably, what came after was not good, given that they do not, in fact, speak of it. When each woman leaves (to go where? Why?), the other two speak of a secret the third one doesn’t know. And so theoretically, Flo and Ru know something Vi doesn’t, Vi and Ru know something Flo doesn’t, and Flo and Vi know something Ru doesn’t. When the secrets are revealed, in whispers, the response is similar: “Doe she not realize? God grant not...Has she not been told? God forbid...Does she not know? Please God not.” What is it that two know and the third does not? Are they three different secrets or the same? Is the secret about the missing person or someone else? Why in each case is God invoked? This suggests that the nature of the secret is something of significance and that its revelation could in some way be harmful. There are only three other pieces of information. When Flo, the last to leave, returns, Ru says, “Holding hands...that way,” And Flo responds, “Dreaming of...love.” Vi later asks, “Shall we hold hands in the old way?” They have a history of holding hands and dreaming of love, presumably from when they were adolescents. Is love still missing from their lives? The play (actually, Beckett refers to it as a “dramaticule”) concludes with the women joining hands, each one’s hands clasping the hand of another, and “The three pairs of clasped hands rest on the three laps,” and Flo says, “I can feel the rings” (195). Are these wedding rings they are wearing? Are they in happy marriages? Are they in unhappy marriages? Were they forced into marriage? Did they have to give up children? Are they nuns married to God? Beckett, of course, doesn’t answer any of these questions, and he complicates things further by telling us about the women’s hands, “No rings apparent” (196). What does it mean, then, that the rings are psychological and not actual? What we can say is that the women have found a moment of solidarity and rest and communion despite whatever has happened to them in the past.

Far too often, Beckett is viewed as a bleak writer who writes about such things as two people waiting for someone who will never show up, or people trapped in trash cans, or a woman being slowly enveloped by a rising mountain of sand. This reading has Beckett as the champion of nothingness in the devastated landscape of the post- modern world, Mr. No. The more appropriate way to look at Beckett, I would suggest, is to consider the word “despite.” Despite the fact that Godot will never show up, despite the fact that we are living in adjoining trash cans, despite the fact that we are slowly being consumed by a mountain of sand, how do we conduct ourselves? How do we find meaning anyway? It is important to remember that the more accurate translation of Beckett’s original French is “While Waiting for Godot.” This completely changes the focus. Given that we thought Godot was going to show up and give meaning to our lives, and now he is not, how do we make life meaningful anyway? This is the fundamental question in Beckett. Here, the women clasp hands, they are dressed similarly except for color, and they wear hats that cover their faces. Who are they? They are all of us.

Not I (1972) consists of an eight page, hesitant, stuttered, repetitious monologue by a character identified only as “Mouth.” It’s as if Beckett were channeling Thelonious Monk in “Ruby My Dear,” Crepuscule with Nellie,” or “Pannonica.” There is also a second character identified as “Auditor.” Not surprisingly, Mouth speaks and Auditor listens but never speaks. Mouth speaks of a “tiny little girl” who was abandoned by both of her parents, who was shown no love in her life, and who grew up with “other waifs” to believe in a “merciful God,” even though born into a godforsaken hole called...called...no matter.” She matter-of- factly adds, “so no love...spared that... no love of any kind...at any subsequent stage.” At the age of seventy, she wanders in a field one April morning when “suddenly...gradually” the lights go out and she finds herself in the dark (216). At first, she thinks she is being punished for her sins, but then realizes she isn’t suffering, even though there is a constant buzzing, not in her ears, but in her skull, and all the time there is this “ray or beam...like moonbeam”(218). She wonders if this is some attempt to torture her, but she feels no torment; and because she is incapable of deceit, she cannot tell herself she is being tormented when she isn’t . She screams, but there is no response. She sees a distant bell and heads towards it. She, who has spoken very little in her life, finds herself speaking, her lips moving, “the whole face,” her “mouth on fire” (220), but her brain can’t understand, and she can’t stop talking. She remembers the one time she remembers crying, after being born, that is, while the buzzing continues as well as the beam continues “flickering on and off.” She also remembers being tried in court and had to plead guilty or not, but could only stand there, “mouth half open as usual,” and how she had managed to go on and survive after “waiting to be led away...guilty or not”(221).

Who is this woman? What is her relationship to Mouth? Who is the Auditor? Why does the Auditor never speak? What is the relationship between Mouth and Auditor? Why is the Auditor listening to this particular story? Is either of them the woman in the story? Why does Mouth need an auditor? Is she confessing? Under “normal circumstances,” these would all be legitimate questions to ask. We have been trained to interrogate characters and their motivations. But we always need to remember that theatre by Beckett is not “normal circumstance,” and so there is no such thing as “legitimate questions.” A woman is abandoned at birth by her parents. She manages to survive without love in a world in which she can barely speak. And when she has spoken, no one can understand what she is saying, including herself. That is not what is important. What is important is that despite these difficulties, she continues on. When one thing doesn’t work, “Try something else... What to try... No matter... Keep on” (222-223). Despite a world of clouds, Beckett’s silver lining is that we must always keep going on, and that constant struggle against meaninglessness

is what makes us who we are, and what allows us to survive.

At several points in the play, Mouth makes a gesture of “simple sideways raising of arms from sides and their falling back, in a gesture of helpless compassion. It lessens with each recurrence till scarcely perceptible at third,” Again, compassion for others, despite the difficulty, is what makes us human. As a last note, not that it especially matters, Beckett tells us that “Mouth recovers from vehement refusal to relinquish third person” (215). This suggests that the story Mouth tells, in the third person, is about herself. She has found a way to survive, despite, and that is all that matters. She may insist that the main character in her story is “not I,” but we know that it is.

Footfalls (1975) begins as a three-page dialogue between May and her mother. May, with her “disheveled grey hair” and “worn grey wrap hiding feet” is constantly pacing from one side of the stage to the other and back in a choreographed way, nine paces in one direction and then nine in the other. May’s mother remains in complete darkness upstage; and like Mouth in Not I, all we get is her voice; but unlike Not I, we do not even see her lips move. We learn that mother is ninety, and is being taken care of by May, who is in her forties. The mother needs help changing her position, getting injected, using a bedpan, having her sores dressed, and having her “poor lips” moistened. But to all of May’s entreaties offering help, her mother’s response is “too soon.” Something negative has happened in the past, as the mother asks for forgiveness and wonders, “Will you never have done...revolving it all?...It all [Pause.] In your poor mind. [Pause.] It all. [Pause.] It all.” What she is referring to is completely unclear at this point, and Beckett adds more unclarity by the structure of the mother’s sentence. She says, “I had you late. [Pause.] In life. [Pause.] Forgive me again. [Pause. No louder.] Forgive me again” (240). Is the mother apologizing for having a child at fifty, who now in the supposed prime of her life has to take care of her sick mother, or is she asking forgiveness for something else? The first part of the play ends with a page-long monologue in which May begins talking about herself in the first person, “I walk here now” ; but then, much like Mouth in Not I, switches to third person, “She fancies she is alone.” Is it easier to talk about oneself in the third person, especially if there is some trauma involved? We learn that she “has not been out since girlhood,” and that she is now “in the old home, the same where she - [Pause.] The same where she began ; and that one night, “while still little more than a child,” she complained to her mother and said, “ Mother, this is not enough.” One’s thought immediately goes to is she complaining that she has had to live her life taking care of her mother “When other girls of her age were out at ... lacrosse,” and that , again, is what her mother is apologizing for? But that turns out to be incorrect because May actually says, “I mean, Mother, that I must hear the feet, however faint they fall,” and that “The motion alone is not enough.” Whose footfalls are these that May needs to hear, her mother’s, her own, or someone else’s? Is it not only the pacing, but the sound of her own footsteps that help keep her alive in this bleak world? Has the meaning of life been reduced to this? Is this all there is? Meaning, however minimal, is still meaning. As with Come and Go and Not I, the women find meaning in the articulation of their stories, however bleak. On the one hand, there is little to be said; but on the other hand, whatever little there is must be articulated. This part of the play concludes with May’s noting that some nights she sleeps, and some nights she talks “when she fancies none can hear” and “Tells how it was. [Pause.] Tries to tell how it was. [Pause.] It all. [Pause.] It all” (241).

Following this, there is a two-page “sequel,” a monologue by May in which she tells us that some nights she slipped out of the house, went “into the church by the north door” and walked “up and down, up and down, his poor arm.” Whose arm is this? She has gone to the church at night, which is “always locked at that hour.” She then tells a story about “Old Mrs. Winter” who questions her daughter Amy about something strange that happened at church. Amy says she saw nothing because she wasn’t there. Her mother insists she was because she heard her say “Amen.” The mother then asks Amy the same question May’s mother asked earlier, “Will you never have done? [Pause.] Will you never have done...revolving it all? [Pause.] It? [Pause.] It all. [Pause.] In your poor mind. [Pause.] It all. [Pause.] It all. [Pause. Fade out on strip. All in darkness. Pause.” And then the play ends.

Four times during the play, there is the sound of a chime. Each time it is heard, the sound is more faint, and the lights focus on a smaller and smaller part of the strip where May paces; until at the end, there is “No trace of May” (243). In these three plays, some combination of movement and storytelling is what keeps these people alive, despite the circumstances they find themselves in. This all reaches a kind of expected endgame in Quad (1982), in which the four characters do not speak a word, but pace without interruption around and through a square, the length of whose sides is six paces. Each character has a different color of light that shines on them while they pace in “unbroken movement,” (291) in a costume of the same color, wearing “Gowns reaching to ground, cowls hiding faces.” Each character is also associated with a percussion instrument that sounds when they are walking, the percussionists being “barely visible in shadow on raised podium at back of set”; however, the sound must be “Pianissimo throughout” (soft), because each player also has a “particular sound” to their footsteps that cannot be drowned out by the percussion (292). Because there is no dialogue, the entire play can essentially be seen as four pages of stage directions. The play as play has pretty much been reduced to one of its most basic forms.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that everything has a function, and a virtuous life comes from fulfilling that function. The function of a knife is to cut; and in cutting well, the knife fulfills its function. The function of a human, for Aristotle, is to use rational thought to make meaning of life. In Beckett Women, the playwright uses the rational thought of storytelling, choreographed movement, and sound to demonstrate that we humans will use everything at our disposal to continue to assert that despite the darkness around us, we will continue to find ways to make it clear that however faint the sound, we are still here. As a last point, Beckett specifies that the three characters in Come and Go are women. From Mouth’s monologue in Not I, it is also clear that the character is meant to be female. May and her mother in Footfalls are also clearly female. In Quad, Beckett tells us about the characters, “Sex indifferent” (293), and so this is a director’s choice to make all four characters female. What better way to make profound comments on the nature of the human condition than to make them through those from whom we all come?

Beckett, Samuel. The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 1984.

About the Author:

Pancho Savery is a professor of English, humanities, and American studies at Reed College, where he teaches courses in American literature post-1850, African American literature, and modern and contemporary American and European drama. He also teaches in Reed’s freshman humanities program that covers the ancient Mediterranean world (Mesopotamia, Greece, Egypt, Persia, and Palestine) as well as Mexico City and Harlem. He has given theatre talks at PETE, Coho Theatre, Profile Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Artists Rep, and Portland Playhouse; directed Delve Reading Seminars through Literary Arts in Portland; and has published essays on Robert Creeley, Ezra Pound, Saunders Redding, Ralph Ellison, Cecil Brown, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Robert Farris Thompson, Albert Murray, and others. He currently serves on PETE’s board of directors.