Four Plays by Samuel Beckett with Billie Whitelaw

Not I is a twenty-minute dramatic monologue written in 1972 (March 20 to April 1) by Samuel Beckett, translated as Pas Moi; premiere at the ?Samuel Beckett Festival? by the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York (22 November 1972). Beckett had always intended that Billie Whitelaw, whom he had worked with on Play, give the definitive premiere performance of Not I. ?I knew that woman in Ireland,? Beckett said, ?I knew who she was ? not ?she? specifically, one single woman, but there were so many of those old crones, stumbling down the lanes, in the ditches, besides the hedgerows.?[5] That said, Beckett did not demand that the part be spoken with an accent, his one concession to Whitelaw when tutoring her. Schneider put ten questions to Beckett, indicative of his bafflement. Beckett responded: ?I no more know where she is or why thus than she does. All I know is in the text. ?She? is purely a stage entity, part of a stage image and purveyor of a stage text. The rest is Ibsen.?[6] The visual image of the mouth was, according to Beckett in a letter postmarked 30 April 1974, ?suggested by Caravaggio?s Decollation of St John in Valetta Cathedral.?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_I

This production is downloaded from website ubu.com and recreates Billie Whitelaw's 1973 Royal Court Theatre performance.

Eh Joe is a piece for television, written in English by Samuel Beckett, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author?s fifty-ninth birthday, 13th April 1965, and completed by 1st May. ?It [was] followed by six undated typescripts (numbered 0 - 4 and ?final version?).?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eh_Joe

This production was directed by Walter D. Asmus and features Klaus Herm as Joe and Billie Whitelaw as Voice

Rockaby is a short, one woman play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in 1980, in English, at the request of Daniel Labeille who produced it on behalf of Programs in the Arts, State University of New York, for a festival and symposium in commemoration of Beckett's 75th birthday. The play premiered on April 8, 1981 at the State University of New York at Buffalo, starring Billie Whitelaw and directed by Alan Schneider. A documentary film, Rockaby, by D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus records the rehearsal process and the first performance. This production went on to be performed at the Annex at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club,[1] and, in December of 1982, at the Cottesloe, Royal National Theatre, London.
As with all Beckett?s later plays it is clear he has drawn again on personal memories. ?There was the frail figure of his maternal grandmother, ?little Granny?, Annie Roe, dressed in ?her best black?,[43] sitting in a rocking chair at the window of Cooldrinagh, where she lived out the final years of her life. The woman in the play gazes out at other windows for ?another living soul?, as Beckett himself sat, often for hours on end, staring at the rows of cell windows on the grey Santé prison?[44] which backed his apartment in the Boulevard Saint-Jacques.[45]
Needless to say, knowing Beckett to be the art lover he was, one can catch glimpses of a number of paintings he was familiar with: Whistler's Mother, van Gogh?s La Berceuse [1] or Rembrandt?s Margaretha Trip (de Geer) [2]. A favourite of his, Beckett owned a copy of Jack B Yeats?s exhibition catalogue, which included one entitled Sleep, a painting of an old woman a sitting by the window, with her head drooped low onto her chest.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockaby

This production was directed by Walter D. Asmus and featurs Billie Whitelaw as Woman and uses the orignal taped Voice from the world premiere performance at the State University of New York.

Footfalls is a play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English, between 2 March and December 1975 and was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre as part of the Samuel Beckett Festival, on May 20, 1976 directed by Beckett himself. Billie Whitelaw, for whom the piece had been written, played May whilst Rose Hill voiced the mother.

Beckett?s mother, also called May, had ?difficulty sleeping through the night, and there were often times when she paced the floor of her room or wandered through the darkened house as silently as one of the ghosts which she swore haunted it? She [also] removed the carpets in some areas? so she could hear her feet no matter how faint they fell.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfalls

This production was directed by Walter Asmus and features Billie Whitelaw as May and Christine Collins as Voice