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Introduction “Exactly As You Envisioned” 1 Notes Introduction “Exactly as You Envisioned” 1 . R a k e s h H . S o l o m o n , Albee in Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 7. Despite his appreciation for Schneider’s work on his early plays, later in his career Albee turned to other directors and, increasingly, to direct- ing his own work. 2 . Three of Beckett’s favored European directors—Roger Blin (Paris), Donald McWhinnie (London), and Deryk Mendel (Berlin)—directed two world pre- mieres each. He also worked closely with George Devine, an actor-manager- director at the Royal Court Theatre in London, although Devine did not stage any world premieres. 3 . Minor works for the theatre include the two mimes (Act Without Words I and II ), the unfinished Rough for Theatre I and II , Breathe , Come and Go , and A Piece of Monologue . 4 . There is considerable speculation about why Beckett never returned to the United States. Schneider himself concluded that New York was “just too far away and too noisy, the job of getting [there] too demanding.” Alan Schneider, “Working with Beckett,” in On Beckett: Essays and Criticism, ed. S. E. Gontarski (New York: Grove Press, 1986), 238. In the following years, plans were occasionally made for a repeat visit, but they never came to fruition. See also Lois Oppenheim, Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 2. Oppenheim argues that Beckett could indulge his reluctance to return to the United States partly because he trusted Schneider to steward his work there. 5 . Schneider to Beckett (January 10, 1964), in No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider , ed. Maurice Harmon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 151. 6 . Martin Esslin, “The Man Who Understood Beckett,” The New York Times , January 26, 1986. 7 . Quoted in Jeffrey Stephens, “Negotiations and Exchanges: Alan Schneider, Our Town , and Theatrical D é tente,” The Journal of American Drama and Theatre 23 (Winter 2011), 43–44. 154 ● Notes 8 . O p p e n h e i m , Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies , 5. 9 . Mark Nixon and Matthew Feldman, The International Reception of Samuel Beckett (London: Continuum, 2009), 5. 10 . Nicholas Johnson, “A Spectrum of Fidelity, an Ethic of Impossibility: Directing Beckett,” in The Plays of Samuel Beckett , ed. Katherine Weiss (London: Methuen, 2013), 152. 1 1 . M a r v i n C a r l s o n , The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). 12 . Schneider, “Working with Beckett,” 239. Schneider articulated this theme often in his writings, including his autobiography, Entrances (New York: Limelight, 1987), 252. 13 . “Role of Director Defined by Panel,” The New York Times , February 9, 1960. 14. See David Bradby and David Williams’s introduction in Directors’ Theatre (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 1–23. 15 . Richard Gilman, “How the New Theatrical Directors Are Upstaging the Playwright,” The New York Times , July 31, 1977. Gilman (1923–2006) was one of the last century’s leading American theatre critics. The author of five books, he taught at the Yale School of Drama from 1967 to 1998. This article signals not just news reporting, but also a significant marker in the zeitgeist shift toward the auteur director. 1 6 . I b i d . 1 7 . L o i s O p p e n h e i m , Directing Beckett (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 55. 18 . Maurice Harmon, ed., No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). Although I was able to view much of the correspondence in person, I will cite the published letters and not the archive directly. Harmon’s editing has been thorough. He grappled (mostly successfully) with the issue of Beckett’s nearly illegible handwriting. While the Beckett estate restricted the publication of some personal material, in the estimation of James Knowlson, “almost noth- ing of real import has been omitted.” See his review in The Journal of Beckett Studies 8, (2), 86. 19 . See Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck, ed., The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 1 (1929–1940) and, with editors George Craig and Dan Gunn, Volume II (1941–1956) (London: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 2011). 20 . The editors of the series, working under constraints set forth by the Beckett estate (and before his death, by Beckett himself), are able to publish only 2,500 out of some 15,000 items of correspondence they have collected. This leaves much work to be done for scholars, who must uncover in archives those items that remain unpublished, and has attracted some degree of criticism for the series. See Aaron Their, “Love, Sam,” The Nation (June 4, 2012), 28–32, and S. E. Gontarski, “A Contrarian Reads the Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1941– 1956,” James Joyce Literary Supplement 27 (2013), 17–18 for two examples. Notes ● 155 Nevertheless, response to the first two volumes has been mostly positive. Enoch Brater labeled it “one of the most important epistolary editing projects of our time” in his review for Modern Drama 55 (Fall 2012), 412. 21 . S. E. Gontarski, “Greying the Canon: Beckett in Performance,” in Beckett after Beckett , ed. S. E. Gontarski and Anthony Uhlmann (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), 145. Gontarski also notes that Beckett’s authoritative voice on his own work was heard by Schneider more than most other directors and collaborators, 143. 22 . Beckett’s production notebooks show a similar formal approach to textual analysis and division, albeit a more precise and exacting one. See The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Becket, Volumes I–IV , published by Grove Press and Faber and Faber between 1992 and 1999. 23 . Schneider, “Working with Beckett,” 246–247. 2 4 . I b i d . , 2 4 4 . 25 . This was the case in the filmed version of Not I for the Beckett on Film Project, Blue Angel Films, 2001, directed by Neil Jordan, with Julianne Moore playing Mouth. 26 . Stanton Garner, Bodied Spaces (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 54. 27 . Ruby Cohn, “Animateurs de Beckett,” in Samuel Beckett Revue d’Esth é tique , ed. Pierre Chabert (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1990), 193. 2 8 . S . E . G o n t a r s k i , “ R e i n v e n t i n g B e c k e t t , ” Modern Drama 49 (Winter 2006), 430. 29 . It took Roger Blin three years to find a theatre for the world premiere of Godot in Paris: see David Bradby, Modern French Drama 1940–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 51. Peter Bull, who played Pozzo in the original London production directed by Peter Hall in 1955, described the opening-night audience as “hostile.” See Ruby Cohn, ed., Casebook on Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 41. This is to say nothing of the first American audience’s response, which I address in chapter 1 . 30 . C. W. E. Bigsby, Modern American Drama, 1945–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 125. 31 . Including Schneider himself, who studied for a time with Lee Strasberg. 3 2 . W e i s s , The Plays of Samuel Beckett , 196. 33. S. E. Gontarski, “Within a Budding Grove: Publishing Beckett in America,” in A Companion to Samuel Beckett (West Sussex: Wiley/Blackwell, 2010), 23–31. 3 4 . L o r e n G l a s s , Counter-Culture Colophon: Grove Press, The Evergreen Review, and the Incorporation of the Avant-Garde (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), 12. Glass’s book is an excellent look at Rosset’s life and includes a detailed discussion of his involvement in off-Broadway theatre; see chapter 2 , “Publishing Off Broadway,” 65–99. 35 . In addition to Glass’s work, Gontarski has done much to demonstrate the centrality of Rosset’s role. 156 ● Notes 3 6 . X e r x e s M e h t a , “ G h o s t s , ” i n Directing Beckett, ed. Lois Oppenheim (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 170. 37 . See his foreword to Joseph W. Zeigler’s Regional Theatre: The Revolutionary Stage (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1973). 38 . Schneider to Franklin Heller, October 16, 1979, Schneider to Franklin Heller, 1975–1984, Alan Schneider Papers, Box 64, Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego. Heller was one of Schneider’s editors for his autobiography Entrances . 39 . Mark Matousek, “Schneider on Beckett, Understanding Differently,” The Village Voice (July 3, 1984), 97. 40 . Beckett to Schneider, February 1, 1961, Maurice Harmon ed., No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 79. 4 1 . S c h n e i d e r , Entrances , 250. 42 . Beckett to Schneider, January 14, 1971, Harmon, No Author Better Served, 244. 1 The Laugh Sensation of Two Continents! 1 . The New York production was still billed as a premiere for several reasons. First, the Miami run was technically an out-of-town preview for the Broadway production. Second, even though the New York production had a (mostly) new cast and a new director, it retained the same producer, who viewed the Miami opening as a fiasco and reimagined the New York opening as the offi- cial premiere. Third, because the run in Miami was abbreviated and because of New York’s significance as theatrical capital sine qua non, the New York opening was viewed as the more significant “premiere” for the playwright. 2 . David Richards, “Staging the Inner Life: Director Alan Schneider and His Theater of Humanity,” The Washington Post , May 4, 1984, B1, Alan Schneider Clippings File, Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard University.
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