My Interpretation of Samuel Becket’s Not I
In the video performance of Not I by Samuel Becket, the theater is completely dark. All the audience can see is a mouth of a woman. Her face is painted black leaving only her lips and teeth their natural color. There is a spot light on only her mouth. The most interesting part of this performance of Not I is the message it sends the audience. The pace of the script implies the stream of consciousness people have running through their heads. The fact that the only light in the theater is the spotlight on the mouth frightens some members of the audience because it forces them to encounter the idea of the subconscious constantly thinking.
If I were to take the role of the director with this piece I would want to go more in the direction of an art exhibit. My goal in taking this position would be to have the audience encounter the subconscious in a less daunting form. I would want multiple screens of different sizes creating a wall a few feet from the end of upstage but encompassing the entire width of the stage. I would have recordings of the original performance of Not I (the one we watched in class) on every screen but the lips would all be different colors. Only one screen’s audio would be played at one time and there would be no light in the theater other than that of the screens. The significance of the different color lips is that it makes the piece seem less menacing and it symbolizes the different streams of consciousness between all people of the human race. This relates to the original performance’s message of the train of thought. The reason only one screen’s audio would play at a time is again to make it less overwhelming than it would be to have them all playing at once and also to signify the different aspects of our brain activating at different times of our thought processes throughout our life which is much like how the original performance repeats certain movements with the lips and repeats phrases. Lastly, the idea of having all the screens playing the same version of the performance would be to unify the piece the way all people are similar in a way. I think this adds unity to the performance that is not as abundantly clear in the original. In the original piece there is supposed to be a figure on stage that only moves at random times in the play. This may seem random to the audience and I would want to have the cohesiveness of the piece be a little more clear. I want to keep the message of the piece but make it more accessible and I believe taking it in this direction would do just that.
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