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NICHOLAS E. JOHNSON, NEILL O’DWYER, AND ENDA BATES
of the repetition) altered with each production that Beckett was involved in
during the 1960s, based on available technologies as well as local ingenuity
of directors, designers, and technicians. The technological limitations of
how to automate the light and help it to serve its dramaturgical function,
especially whether to use three lights as opposed to one and whether to use
manual or remote control, were regularly discussed in correspondence that
Beckett had about the German, American, French, and British premieres.
Even a small sample of these shows the pressure exerted by the technology
itself, and Beckett’s willingness to adapt and develop his ideas in relation to
these conditions. Writing to Christian Ludvigsen on 22 September 1963,
Beckett noted that the “probing quality, like an accusing finger” would be
best “obtained by a single pivoting spot and not, as in Ulm, by three fixed
independent spots, one for each face, switching on and off as required.” In
the same letter, he imagines that “This mobile spot should be set mechanically
once and for all so as to strike full on its successive targets without fumbling
and move from one to another at maximum speed,” and allows that it could
be done by “electric control from wings or manually from a kind of prompter’s
box below footlights,” provided the operator is “invisible.”® These directions
would have been very difficult to execute at the time, given that “intelligent”
lighting and digital control protocols for theatre illumination were not
available until 1986. Achieving such precision with analogue control or
manual operation and with a single light source, not to mention the added
challenge of the “chorus” sections where all three urns actually do have to
be illuminated together (meaning that the size of a single beam would have
to change at that moment), would prove unsurprisingly to be a point of great
contention in the performance history. Writing to Alan Schneider on 26
November 1963 ahead of the New York premiere, Beckett reports his wife’s
reaction to Deryk Mendel’s second production (in Berlin), referring to the
light as a problem:
Deryk said he had got his spot pivoting and moving fast. Suzanne did not feel much
speed and said there was little visible beam. There should be a pencil (finger) of
light snapping from face to face. But we have been through all this. Deryk worked
out some system which I don’t understand and can’t explain. The man on the light
should be regarded as a fourth player and must know the text inside and out.”
* Samuel Beckett: The Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1957-1965, Vol. 3, George Craig — Martha
Dow Fehsenfeld -— Dan Gunn - Lois More Overbeck (eds.), Cambridge, Cambridge
University, 2014, 574. Emphasis in original.
Beckett: Letters, Vol. 3, 574. Emphasis in original.
° Richard Cadena: Automated Lighting: The Art and Science of Moving Light in Theatre, Live
Performance, and Entertainment, 2™ edition, Burlington, Focal, 2013, 25-31.
7” Beckett: The Letters, Vol. 3, 584.
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