Beckett - Eisenstein -Meyerhold

Samuel Beckett once wrote a letter to Sergei Eisenstein. He wanted to go study film making at the Gerasimov Institute in Russia where Eisenstein had been busy teaching and still making history and fame. This was before Beckett himself of course had reached any such status, just after his college days, and after his father had passed away, and during a time when his mother was encouraging him to get out of the house and get a job, around 1936. The letter apparently never reached Eisenstein.

I don't know to what extent Beckett knew of Eisenstein's work, but obviously he must have seen it and been influenced enough to write the letter. And Beckett being the studious and curious type, must have known of some of the theory and history of Eisenstein's work with Meyerhold and Biomechanics. Beckett certainly had read Pudovkin's thoughts on acting and filmmaking.

That brings me back to the recent Beckett production I saw at Rogue Theatre, specifically Act Without Words. Now Beckett conceived of and wrote that piece for a dancer/mime friend of his and also based part of it on behavioral experiments he had witnessed involving gorillas and the stacking of boxes. Beckett's brother wrote music for the original production which was used to underscore the piece.

If you have seen Biomechanics training, you know many of the exercises, the more advanced ones, are usually based around a little scenario, a little story of activity. In that regard, it's easy to imagine Act Without Words functioning, played out, under the ideas, principles and aesthetics of Biomechanics. Its admittedly a jump at this point to say an influence of Meyerhold's Biomechanics had a conscious and immediate effect in that particular Beckett work. But its not a far fetched or impossible leap to say a long lingering infatuation and remembrance of it was combined with other influences to spur its creation. Act Without Words overall premise and style, along with the particulars of the activities themselves carried out by the actor, make it ideal for Biomechanics at its most mature.