Beckett's 'Not I' at the BrickBox — no escaping the inner scream

All the audience sees on stage in Samuel Beckett's short play "Not I" is a disembodied Mouth suspended about eight feet high to the right of the stage.

Mouth, a woman, is telling stories in a fast stream of consciousness occasionally laced with sarcastic laughs (when referring to "merciful—" and "God') and screams. She talks about an abandoned baby and then a 70-year-old woman picking flowers in a field. But Mouth interrupts the monologue with "what? … who? … no! … she! … (pause and movement)," as if to say that the woman in the stories she's been telling is not her. Not I. Then it's on to the next story before another "what?"

"That's the question of the play," said Paul Shields, a Beckett scholar and associate professor of English at Assumption University.

"The Mouth is talking about the events that happened in a life, but the voice is denying that it happened to her," Shields said. "Who did this life happen to?"

What happens to us? — we might add. From "when I was a young child am I that person now?" said Shields. "Whose memories are these inside our heads? Who is the I that we speak of?" 

"Not I" was written in 1972, and Shields has organized a 50th celebration for the first week of November in Worcester.

From Nov. 2 to 4 there will be academic sessions held at Assumption University (the public is invited).

At 8 p.m. from Nov. 3 to 5 "Not I" and another short Beckett play, "Rockaby Baby," will be staged at the BrickBox Theater at the Jean McDonough Arts Center.

Shields is calling the occasion "Not I: 50th Annyversary," misspelled purposefully. Letters written by Beckett indicate that he thought Mouth should have certain problems with vowel sounds, like "any" sounding like "anny," Shields said.

Regardless of pronunciation, Mouth in "Not I" is regarded as one of theater's most challenging roles.

For the "Not I" production at the BrickBox, actress and director Clara Simpson will be behind curtains and suspended so that only her mouth is visible eight feet high.

Simpson is the daughter of the late Irish theater director Alan Simpson, who staged Becket's works. Clara Simpson is now based in France.

She recently performed "Not I" in a cave in Ireland.

"I am excited that she will be performing it for Worcester audiences," Shields said. "She's really great. The audiences will love it."

Shields said he is building a contraption to raise Simpson based on specifications from the production in Ireland. "The greatest challenge is constructing the set."

"Not I" was first performed in 1972 in Lincoln Center, New York, starring the late Jessica Tandy as Mouth. Other prominent performers have include the late Billie Whitelaw and Lisa Dwan. Julianne Moore starred in the film version of "Not I" for the 2000 Beckett DVD project.

Whitelaw once recalled that at the first performance she appeared in there was a lot of "bum shifting … 'What is this?' " from the audience.

But what Becket did was "put a state of mind on the stage in front of people and performed it ... An inner scream and no escaping it," Whitelaw said.

Beckett (1906-89) was an Irish playwright, poet and novelist who spent many years in France, including during the Nazi occupation, during which he served with the Resistance. In post-war Europe, his play "Waiting for Godot" struck a nerve. Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting for a person named Godot on a barren road by a leafless tree. Godot never comes. Beckett's other plays include "Endgame" and "Krapp's Last Tape." Bleak settings and absurdist characters suffering and/or in despair are constants, as is ambiguity, making Beckett difficult to define, as labels have abounded such as modernist, postmodernist, and theater of the absurd.

The image of Mouth in a way is classic Beckett.

Meanwhile, the length of "Not I" depends on the person who is performing Mouth, Shields said.

"Becket wanted it at a fast pace. It can go 14 minutes, but it's been done in nine minutes (by Lisa Dwan). You could do it in over an hour if you slowed everything down," Shields said.

For the audience the fast pace may mean not understanding the story but the play is "playing on the nerves of the audience," Shields said.

Shields acknowledged it took him a while to fully appreciate "Not I."

"It was never overwhelming to me when I was a student," he said. But Shields, who is also an independent director and producer, directed a staging of "Not I" last year at the Worcester PopUp. Amelia Thompson took on the role of Mouth.

"It wasn't until I decided I wanted to direct it I started to see the value of it. Now my appreciation is such that I decided to have a whole 50th anniversary celebration," Shields said.

"Not I," perhaps not surprisingly, has brought forth a number of different interpretations from critics.

"It is a short but difficult dramatic work. Scholar Katherine Kelly has noted connections between 'Not I' and the story of Orpheus, and Corinna Salvadori Lonergan asserts that Mouth is in Dante's Purgatory," Shields said.

"I think it's about a lot of things, but I think that memory and self-hood is a big part of it."

"Not I" and also "Rockaby" are both productions with a woman protagonist, so Beckett can also be seen to be tackling "some of the crises that women have been put through in history," Shields said.

In "Rockaby," first performed in 1981 and starring Billie Whitelaw, an elderly woman sits in a rocking chair and listens to a pre-recorded voice recounting fragmented details of her own life. The woman prompts the voice by saying, "More."

"Basically, this is an evening of two plays that put women in the spotlight. Both deal with what's going on in their soul and their older age," Shields said. "These are very focused on women. The stories of women. The trials of women."

"Rockaby" is about 15 minutes in length, Shields said. The production at the BrickBox Theater is being performed by AnomalousCo, a New-York based group. "Rockaby" will star Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva and is directed by Diana Zhdanova. Simpson will be self-directing herself in "Not I." 

"I am working in the capacity of production manager," Shields said.

At the end of the production there will be a Q&A . "I hope people will have lots of questions," Shields said.

The three days of academic discussions at Assumption University Nov. 2 to 4 will include a conversation with Clara Simpson, and special guest renowned Beckett scholar S. E. Gontarski, who knew and worked with Beckett.

Shields has taught at Assumption University since since 2005. He studied Beckett as a graduate student at Florida State University under the direction of Gontarski.

The celebration is sponsored by Assumption University's D'Amour College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Office of the President, and HumanArts. Grove Atlantic, Beckett's American publisher, is also sponsoring the event by providing a prize for a raffle.

Shields said he hopes that the staging of "Not I" and "Rockaby" will draw people into looking at more of Beckett's work.  

Thirty-three years after his death, "I think he's incredibly relevant still. During COVID I started seeing editorials evoking Samuel Beckett." One headline, playing on "Waiting for Godot," said "Waiting for the Vaccine."

"In these moments of crisis, Beckett comes up as a very important voice who dealt with crisis," Shields said.

Since 2020 there has been a lot of uncertainty and anxiety in the world, Shields noted. Beckett "taps into this human experience … Where is this suffering coming from? Why is it taking place? Certainly the answers are not to be found but it's certainly presented."

When "Not I" was staged at the Worcester PopUP last year, there were plenty of thoughts shared in the Q&A afterward, Shields said.

"I learned a lot from the questions," he said. "I think Beckett and 'Not I' speak to a lot of people, but to some people it speaks very loudly. Sometimes the Q&A is my questioning."

For more information on the "Not I: 50th  Annyversary" visit: https://noti50th.wixsite.com/mysite/grove-atlantic

Not I: 50th Annyversary Presents "Not I" and "Rockaby" 

When: 8 p.m. Nov. 3, 4 and 5

Where: BrickBox Theater, Jean McDonough Arts Center, 20 Franklin St., Worcester

How much: $16.50. www.jmacworcester.org

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Beckett's 'Not I' at the BrickBox - no escaping the inner scream