When a wordless Samuel Beckett play is performed on the streets of modern Dublin, reality and theatre can soon become indistinguishable, writes SARA KEATING.
IN A COBBLED alleyway behind Christ Church Cathedral a familiar scene is unfolding. A man is crawling out of a sleeping bag, his winnowed body slowly straightening itself like a flag unfurling. The man is so thin he almost disappears in profile, and his spine is curved in a near-perfect C. He moves as if he is moving through water, as if every muscle is struggling against the force of an incoming tide. With eyes half-open, his consciousness only half-awake, he begins his day with a brief reflection and the pill that will get him through the next few hours.
His face is outdoor-weathered, the creases and lines telling the stories of a hundred other nights like this. Another body, still curled and shrouded in a cocoon of cheap polyester, lies close beside him on the ground.
A small group have gathered around this man. Others are watching from afar. Others still walk by, observing the observers, shooting disapproving glances at the street voyeurs, who seem to be watching a drug addict go through the motions of his daily routine. I am one member of this unlikely audience, as is director Sarah Jane Scaife, who has brought her production of Beckett's short mime play, Act Without Words II, out into the open air to see how it translates to the theatre of the street.
Having performed in several of Beckett's plays in the early 1980s, Scaife has spent the last five years exploring how Beckett's work resonates outside of traditional western theatre settings; namely in Asia, where she has travelled extensively, working with local actors in workshop productions, which were recorded by her long-time collaborator, designer Aedín Cosgrave. The concept behind Scaife's understanding of Beckett is that it is rooted in the body, the living, breathing, ever-dying body – as Beckett put it in A Piece of Monologue, "birth was the death of him".
As an actor trained in physical theatre herself, from the disciplines of Japanese butoh to European mime, Scaife has become increasingly fascinated by the idea that an actor’s body can bring a whole new dimension to any text. Her work as a director remains utterly faithful to Beckett’s text; you don’t have to change it, she says. All the meaning is already there, but she is compelled by the play’s ability to become different things in each enactment.
This is the third time Scaife has directed Act Without Words II, after productions of the play at the Peacock Theatre in 1989, in which she also performed, and at the Samuel Beckett Centre in 1997, in which clown and actor Raymond Keane was one of the two cast members. Keane also appears in this production as the weathered, angular, slow, awkward A to Bryan Burroughs's brisk, rapid, almost manic B.
Scaife sees the silent routines that the characters enact throughout the short play as metaphors for the way in which we order life; it is in physical action that the characters make sense of their days. However, it is the particular signifying qualities brought to the production by the distinct physicalities of the two men (Keane’s gaunt, wiry skeleton, Burroughs’s compact physical energy) that, Scaife says, elicit a whole new dimension from the play.
“I have often thought how the reality of addiction, the processing of pain through the body, resonates in Beckett’s world, especially in Act Without Words II,” she explains. “He was writing after the second World War, where the ugliness, decay, angst and poverty of the post-war world were all around him. We live in a similar world, in beautiful cities where poverty, homelessness and addiction and the body’s decay exist right under our noses. Walking around Dublin you can see the play everywhere, and although we rehearsed for the most part in a studio, when the actors came out on to the street, we have seen from the instant reaction to it that it is a recognisable realityto people in the city.”
During the production’s very first outdoor rehearsal, the visceral relationship between the play and its street space was immediately apparent, when Scaife was approached by a group of drug addicts keen to give their opinion on the scene unfolding in front of them, eager to offer their expertise.
“They were so sharp,” Scaife says. “One woman in particular took the lead, and literally started re-directing the show. She was fascinated by Raymond Keane’s character. If he was a drug addict, she said, he wouldn’t be moving like that, but like this – and then she showed me how he’d move. And his pill wouldn’t be in a box, but a baggie, and on and on. And the whole time Raymond is still performing, concentrating as best he can, and taking on in little ways the things that she is saying.”
ON THE EVENING I watch their outdoor rehearsal, the adaptation of city life to the unfolding drama is again remarkable. Immediately, the grand historic rear facade of Christchurch seems to mock the play’s set-up, drawing attention to the ironic contrast between the wealth of history in the city and its contemporary poverty, which has become increasingly visible on the streets as the recession affects our poorest citizens.
An Italian visitor casually eating Burdock’s fish and chips on a wall is drawn into the performance and is literally tear-struck by the end. He says it is “profound, the reality of double-face Ireland”. He has spent several months in Ireland and has been struck by the disparity of two cultures, “ expensive rich city and this poor ”.
Two teenage boys, who initially look like trouble, settle down (a few embarrassed giggles aside) to watch the entire show – at the end, they applaud and scoot off on their bikes. Casual passers-by stare. Wealthy lovers, look curiously at the dishevelled pair engaged in their strange routine; locals, with disgust, look at us, who seem to be watching, for fun, a pair of homeless people getting through their daily struggles. A group of local men even stop and ask Burroughs, struggling with the inert body of his friend, if he is okay. Burroughs carries on, ignoring them as best he can. “We’re just doing a play,” Scaife calls from the sidelines. “But thanks, lads.” In hindsight, it seems doubly poignant that such kindness was only offered once.
As Keane and Burroughs settle down into their sleeping bags, in starting positions for another run-through, the bells of Christchurch ring out, prompting the emergent movements of the play’s beginning. Some 30 minutes later, as the action draws to a close, the toll of the bells reverberates through the darkening sky again. For that brief interval, at least, as Beckett’s world crawls out on to the street, the characters’ predicaments and the environment they inhabit are in perfect harmony.
Act Without Words IIruns from September 9th-12th, with two shows nightly at 8.45pm and 9.45pm (meet at Barnardo Square, beside City Hall). The production is part of the Absolut Fringe festival, in Dublin,which starts on Saturday and continues until September 20th. See fringefest.com
