Documentation of Samuel Beckett's Not I

The Museum of Viral Memory sponsors the performance troupe UDV. The primary mission of UDV is to audio record the complete works of Samuel Beckett.
As well as audio recordings, the troupe occasionally performs interpretations of Beckett works.
This is from their performance of Not I

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Beckett
• udv
• viral
• memory

[Bigworld]

Why so slow?

[Vime]

When reading the play, and hearing it in my head, I always experienced it that way.

Unlike most versions, which suggest a manic inner dialogue, I hear a desperate, crawling, emotionally vacant voice. Someone dead inside, medicated; stumbling, plodding, lost in her own mind, not racing through it.

I find the slow, cold recitation to be hypnotic. The despair in the piece becomes oppressive and grinding in a reading like this.

[LovableChaos]

@erniehead thats funny.. but IRRELEVANT

[erniehead]

Interesting interpretation. It feels like she's reading this instead of recalling the speech.

Although I don't remember Beckett writing in his description that the speaker should have two giant zits on her chin.

[Syaggedelic]

@Vime sam isnt a fan of 'interpretations'. he isnt even a fan of acting.

[bryngOneOn]

i'm not saying this version is bad or not worth a ganders. but if a student was writing a paper on this play, this is def not the version they should base there view upon. in a way it may even be clever for making the work become something very different from what the original intention was meant to be. i shall watch it and try not to be bias

[bryngOneOn]

i am very recent to beckett, aware of him previously, but never stopped to ponder work, but from what i can gather works of this ilk are about internal dialogue and the obscure tangental meanderings of the messy human mind, so i can fully go along with directors who set beckett at a 100mph, as the mind flies, for that reason i feel this version misses much of the point of what he is aiming for. maybe an ordered mind thinks at this speed, but this is not the ramblings of a level headed individual

[theTroyC]

No where NEAR Billie Whitelaw's version!

And excuse I if I trust that one best, since Beckett himself directed her and told her exactly how to do it.

[nigulat]

That's an interesting version!

Those of you who like this video (and even those who do not) are invited to watch my picture interpretation of this monologue: No, Nope, Nottt!

nigulat