Beckett, Samuel

LETTERS: 20 letters, notes and postcards signed, all but one autograph, mostly discussing her roles in Not I, Footfalls, Happy Days, and Rockaby, also referring to television, film and touring productions, 21 pages, Paris, Ussy, Tangier, and the Hyde Park Hotel, London, 7 February 1973 to 28 March 1986, with 19 autograph envelopes; also three draft autograph letters by Whitelaw to Beckett, two about the Royal Court production of Happy Days and the third expressing her desire to include ‘Enough’ in an evening of Beckett's work, 15 April 1977 to [1984]; letters signed by Warren Brown (incorporating a photocopy letter by Beckett to Brown, on the film of Not I), Suzanne Beckett, Barbara Bray, and James Knowlson, to Whitelaw, 1975-1991

[with:] 15 letters by Alan Schneider, theatre director, to Whitelaw, mostly on productions of Beckett plays, together with material relating to a memorial conference, 1973-1990; small quantity of photographs



ANNOTATED PLAYSCRIPTS AND REHEARSAL NOTES, FOR:
PLAY: three copies of a typescript reading script for the part of “W 2”, all with pencil notes and markings by Whitelaw, altogether 9 pages, [1964]; recording script for the BBC Third Programme, mimeograph typescript, pencil annotations and markings by Whitelaw, 9 pages, September 1966; unmarked rehearsal script, National Theatre, [1964]



NOT I: Not I and Krapp’s Last Tape, typescript rehearsal script inscribed by the author (“For Billie with fond love & gratitude from Sam”), Not I extensively annotated with marks and notes in pencil and coloured inks, Royal Court Theatre, [1972-73], pink wrappers, upper wrapper detached; partial typescript with marginal performance notes and underlinings in red ink and pencil, 4 pages, foolscap, lacking first two pages; directorial notes on Not I IN BECKETT'S AUTOGRAPH made after rehearsals before the Royal Court Production, providing a synopsis (“Premature birth | Parents unknown | No love at any time | at age of 70 in a field picking cowslips suddenly finds herself in the dark”), dividing the play into sections, with a list of pauses, 4 pages, folio, headed stationery of Hyde Park Hotel, London, 1972-73; copy of the printed play, Faber, 1973, with a few markings



FOOTFALLS: mimeograph typescript working script, annotated throughout in pencil and coloured inks by Whitelaw with her comments on character (“She was never properly born”) and performance notes, with a final page of typescript blocking notes with further notes on movement on the verso, 6 pages, foolscap, [1976]; Footfalls, Faber, 1976, inscribed (“for Billie with love and wonderment from Sam London May 1976”)



HAPPY DAYS: Happy Days, Faber, 1976, inscribed by the author (“for Billie with fond love & gratitude from Sam 7 6 1979”), Billie Whitelaw’s working copy from the 1979 production at the Royal Court, directed by Beckett, with extensive and detailed performance notes to every page in pencil and coloured ink on movement (“head up”) and diction (“less aggressive”), with autograph cuts to 18 pages in black ink and occasional autograph additions (in Beckett’s “editorial” hand); two lists of textual revisions in Beckett's hand, one with alterations to the text, the other listing pages with deletions, 2 pages, 1979, both sets of revisions marked in Whitelaw's copy of the printed text; notebook (“Moves – Notes etc. Props”), 21 pages of detailed notes on Happy Days(written from the end), and a prop list (at the front), altogether 23 pages, plus blanks, blue cloth, [1979]; “Run Through Wednesday May 9^th”, pencil notes on the text, 2 pages



ROCKABY: photocopy typescript rehearsal script, extensively annotated in pencil and coloured ink, 5 pages, crudely repaired with adhesive tape, final two leaves stuck together



EH JOE: notebook with Whitelaw's notes on a meeting with Beckett, including a simple diagram in Beckett’s hand, 4 pages, 12mo, blue wrappers



EMBERS: typescript with notes by Whitelaw for performance as "Ada", for a production at the New York International Radio Festival, directed by Everett Frost, 20 pages, 1989



AUDIO: audio cassette with recordings made by Whitelaw of two telephone conversations, c.9 minutes and c.28 minutes in length, between her and Beckett (Beckett's voice faint throughout) discussing Rockaby, the second including Beckett's instructions on her performance and readings of passages from the play by both Beckett and Whitelaw, 27 February 1981



COSTUMES: Whitelaw's costumes for Footfalls, full length dress stitched with pieces of blue and grey lace, and Rockaby, full length black dress stitched with sequins, both used in Three Plays, television production directed by Walter Asmus for RM Arts, 1988

J. Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (1996)
B. Whitelaw, Billie Whitelaw ... Who He? (1995)

THE THEATRICAL PAPERS OF SAMUEL BECKETT'S FAVOURITE ACTRESS. Billie Whitelaw's first performance of a work by Beckett was as W[oman] 2 in the premiere of Play at London's National Theatre in 1964. The production was overseen by Beckett, who, together with the director, George Devine, insisted that the actors spoke in a rapid monotone - a demand viewed with some horror by Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Tynan (the theatre's literary manager). Achieving this distinctive delivery required that the actors work very closely with Beckett over rhythm and emphasis, and the results of these post-rehearsal meetings can be seen in Whitelaw's multiple marked-up scripts for the play.

Beckett was impressed with Whitelaw both as an actor and for her personal qualtities: he was "bowled over by the rich vibrancy and musicality of her voice, her sensitive delivery of his lines and her remarkable flexibility as an actress ... Beckett was very susceptible to physical beauty in a woman. But, in Billie Whitelaw, he saw something that he identified more closely with a beauty of the spirit. And he found this extremely moving." (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, p.518) 

However, the two did not work together again until the production of Not I at the Royal Court, which premiered 16 January 1973 in a double bill with Krapp's Last Tape starring Albert Finney. This demanding monologue by a female "Mouth" had Whitelaw immobilised high above the stage swathed in black cloth. The production was intensely draining, but equally intense in its rewards. Chief among these for Whitelaw was the increasingly close collaboration with Beckett, and her surviving papers relating to the production include not only scripts marked up following post-rehearsal meetings with Beckett but also notes made by Beckett during his stay in London to help her get on top of the difficult script. In her memoir, Whitelaw recalls how she came to understand Beckett's aims during these crucial weeks of rehearsal:

“He wanted to get to some unconscious centre. Yet the moment I started imposing myself on the text, the moment I became aware of playing the role I realise that I was making a comment on the piece, instead of allowing its essence to come through...” (Whitelaw, p.120)

The resulting production was a huge critical success, and some three years later came Footfalls. Beckett wrote to Whitelaw in October 1975 asking to meet, and the next month admitted in another letter that “I have a little play for you that I’d like to put in your fair hands”. The text itself - the first written specifically with Whitelaw in mind - followed soon after, and in February 1976 Beckett wrote that he wanted to direct her himself and provided a few words of advice on both the performance (“...The pacing is the essence of the matter, to be dramatized to the utmost...”) and the text itself (“...The text: what pharmacists call excipient [i.e. an inert vehicle]...”). The play was performed at the Royal Court, and once again Whitelaw's surviving annotated scripts and notes provide exceptional detail about her close working relationship with Beckett and his detailed engagement with the performance of his script.

Beckett and Whitelaw's final collaboration at the Royal Court was the 1979 production of Happy Days. He revised the text of the play for this production, and Beckett's own lists of cuts and rewritings are preserved in Whitelaw's papers. The project had a long gestation: Beckett began to discuss it soon after the success of Footfalls, but Whitelaw insisted on a delay to avoid invidious comparison with Peggy Ashcroft's performance in the same play at the National Theatre in 1977. Beckett's letters from 1977 and 1978 all contain thoughts on the forthcoming production. Happy Days is, once again, an extremely demanding text for the actor and Whitelaw found rehearsals particularly gruelling. Beckett also found the process difficult, and later wrote to apologise for having been "stupidly fussy at times over trivia. When I said one day – which so shocked Jocelyn – that I couldn’t stand the play, I simply meant that if some things were not satisfactory it was the fault of the work alone” (17 September 1979).

In April 1981 Whitelaw appeared in yet another new work by Beckett, Rockaby. The author himself was less closely involved in the production, however, in part because of his age (by 1983 he was writing to Whitelaw “No more theatre for me for now. If ever”), but also because the piece premiered not in London or Paris but as part of a Beckett festival in Buffalo, New York. However, Whitelaw recalls that “I spoke to Sam about Rockaby on the phone. As usual he gave me the one decisive note I needed. He wanted the play to have the quality of a lullaby” (Whitelaw, p.174). Remarkably, Whitelaw's own recording of these telephone calls survives. Whitelaw's recording was almost certainly made to assist her in the rehearsal process without Beckett's knowledge as Beckett "hated to have his voice recorded” (Whitelaw, p.140). The tape preserves a unique record of their working relationship, as well as being a rare example of Beckett reading his own work.  

Whitelaw continued to appear in Beckett plays throughout the 1980s. She reprised Rockaby on tour - for example the archive includes letters from Beckett supporting her should she decide to walk out of an Australian production - and met with Beckett to discuss her roles, as can be seen in her notes on Embers and Eh Joe. She stopped performing Beckett after the author's death, but continued to lecture about her work with him throughout the 1990s.