Beckett 3B in concept, direction of Ersie Pitta

The recommended play is the result of long-term team work based on the actors’ research on Beckett’s “texts about nothing”. The texts were written in 1950 and reflect the writer’s most intense psychoanalytic period. Following an extensive, analytical study of the text, the actors expressed themselves through physical theatre practice which is, moreover one of the writer’s aims since he has also written theatrical plays without words which constitute a type of pantomime. 

In this particular case the actors re-composed the texts, turning them into a real-life experience and integrating both the tragic and comic elements within their framework of expression. Just like a circus where performers do not need a special script in order to act; this is replaced by an intensely physical presence such as, for example,  the good and the bad clown, who manage to exist in time as symbols of a specific relationship in which the spectator becomes involved without realizing it.

Texts about nothing are in prose with a strong poetic element. The actors mold images and energize them through action. The repetitive use of the same group of words in a variety of transformations leads both the actor and the audience into realizing the changes from one concept to another: Birth is death ,when I died, I don’t know, but I don’t know when I was born.

The Production
Facial expressions have been perfected by the actors so that the face becomes a mask which reflects the void. In other words it encompasses absence. But the movements of the rest of the body refers viewers to another  sensation, allowing them to fill this void with something of their projection developing thus a relationship with the actor behind the mask.

The voice, a tool most necessary to the actor, often produces the very silence which creates images that emit both tension and artistic beauty. Yet the voice can become an inarticulate destructive cry which acts as a distorting mirror on the subject – the body.

In this play the actors pose serious questions, which identify themselves with the writer: “Where would I go if I could? What would I be if I could? What would I say if I had voice?”
The title we recommend for the play is Beckett 3B. As a point of reference on both Bion, Beckett’s psychoanalyst, and Bacon whose work has given incentives to the actors.

Synopsis
A large cylinder! It could contain humanity itself. Six actors inside. Bodies that abhor contact.
They twist, crash, rise up in a recurrent movement, the main feeling being parchedness and impending asphyxiation; breathing becomes uncoordinated. Death is imminent. The cylinder returns many times during the play as a motif for stalemate. The rest of the action unravels through various images from different perspectives which often coexist.