Irish actress Lisa Dwan goes solo for a trilogy of works by her homeland's great playwright, Samuel Beckett; the band Songhoy Blues perseveres after extremists took over Mali; bad reviews didn't deter moviegoers who came out in droves for the superhero action film.
Lisa Dwan: The 'privilege' and 'trauma' of performing works by Samuel Beckett
The Irish actress Lisa Dwan is a descendant, of sorts, of Samuel Beckett’s preferred collaborators: Billie Whitelaw, Beckett’s favorite actress and muse, mentored Dwan; and she’s worked with the longtime Beckett director, Walter Asmus, on her current production. Now, Dwan is bringing that production — three of Beckett’s late plays — to the Broad Stage in Santa Monica.
All three of the short plays explore different aspects of trauma: “Footfalls” is about a daughter pacing outside the door of her ailing mother; “Rockaby” is about an old woman rocking herself to sleep and, ultimately, to her death.
But it’s the opening play, “Not I,” that proves the biggest challenge for both the audience and Dwan. Staged as Dwan's disembodied lips reciting a brutal, breakneck-pace monologue, the piece has provoked panic attacks in audience members and breakdowns in its regular performers.
But Dwan insists that Beckett, though difficult to access for some, was "not a fetishist." Rather, his aim was to give a performance of consciousness itself — to "put the mind on stage." And despite his stringent stage directions, he certainly wanted his actors to imbue their performances with emotion — "all of it."
When The Frame’s John Horn met with Lisa Dwan, he began by asking about how the three plays fit together — and with Beckett's larger body of work.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
I guess [these plays are] all part of the same trajectory that Beckett was working towards. Beckett distilled his poetry, almost taking a kind of homeopathic version to language, where you pare it back to its finer essence. What you're left with is something incredibly potent. And a lot of Beckett's late plays work quite well together.
Did he write these three pieces imagining they would be performed together?
No. In fact, they've never been performed together by one actress. But they fit beautifully together, and that was a gorgeous surprise for us. And I really didn't think it was possible to do anything other than "Not I" in a night.
Because "Not I" was so physically demanding?
It's so demanding.
We should explain the physical staging conceit. You're strapped into a framing device. Imagine a piece of wood with a hole in it. Your face protrudes from it. So all we see is your mouth.
It's like a waterboarding device.
You're blindfolded, you have earplugs. You're strapped into this board.
Yeah. Beckett wasn't a kind of fetishist. What he did want was the mouth to remain in light. It's a very tiny light, so it's very precise. You've never sat in a theater as black as the space that we create. Through the blackness emerges a disembodied pair of lips. In order for me to stay in light, it's necessary for my head to be tied into a kind of head harness. I've got black makeup from just below my cheekbones to under my chin. Then I place a blindfold over my eyes and a pair of tights over my head. Then my arms are placed in these brackets.
What happens in the sensory deprivation, even though you know the lips aren't moving, is they start to oscillate across the stage. And out of these lips is bursting the most kind of violent stream of consciousness, spoken at the speed of thought. And Beckett wanted it to bypass your intellect and play on the nerves of the audience, which is why he wanted it at such speed.
Beckett was famous for the precision of his stage directions. He said about performance, Don't act. No color. What does that mean to you in terms of the freedom to interpret a role when there are certain limits he puts on a performance?
I'm very glad you asked me this question. I think people get really preoccupied with it for all the wrong reasons. Billie Whitelaw told me that one time she was in rehearsals for "Not I" and Beckett said, "Billie — four lines down, three lines in. Can you make those three dots two dots?"
An ellipsis.
Yes. He removed a dot. And that's kind of vital. Most of Beckett is a profound musicality.
You first performed ["Not I"] in 2005, before you met Billie Whitelaw. Do you look back at what you did kind of pre- and post-Billie Whitelaw?
Yeah. I'm extremely lucky that I never met her first, so I found my own access point. Billie Whitelaw helped me in unpacking that often misused direction from Beckett, which is that he didn't want any color. I remember when I first performed "Not I," I was trying to adhere to that. When I met Billie a year later, she noticed that I was putting this bland monotone on it. She said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I heard Beckett didn't want actors acting." She said, "That's rubbish. He wanted all of it. He wanted all the emotion."
You've been doing "Not I" for 11 years now, and you're leaving it behind. What led you to decide you needed to leave it at this point?
Were it not so challenging, I'd love to keep going with it. But it takes its toll. I've damaged my neck. I'm putting my body and my mind into a state of trauma on a nightly basis. I think it's time to move on.
And it's been the most extraordinary, expansive experience. As a young, blonde, blue-eyed woman, it's a gorgeous privilege to have your body removed. What I feel about this piece — I don't hear it as a smooth stream-of-consciousness. It's a cacophony. It's an explosion of thoughts happening all at once. I feel that it's a soundscape of consciousness.
Beckett put the mind on stage. And all of us have an access point to that.
Lisa Dwan will perform The Beckett Trilogy from April 7-10 at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica.
‘Batman v. Superman’: Warner Bros.' DC showdown has $424 million opening weekend
Not even bad reviews and the "sad Ben Affleck" meme could stop “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Global ticket sales for the opening weekend of the Warner Bros. superhero showdown were $170 million domestically and more than $424 million around the world, helped in part by the studio’s biggest opening ever in China.
And that’s good news for parent company Time Warner, as “Batman v. Superman” is the starting point for an expanded DC comics universe with many more films in the pipeline. The Frame's host John Horn spoke with Ben Fritz at the Wall Street Journal to get more on Warner Bros.' latest superhero blockbuster. Ben started out by detailing what the studio has riding on the success of the DC universe.
DC is really the number one hope for Warner’s film business right now. They’re kind of in the midst of a needed comeback post-“Harry Potter,” post-“Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit.” And they have 10 DC movies planned over the next five years. They’re very much trying to replicate the success that Disney has had with Marvel. And I think their theory is, Well, the DC superheroes like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman — they’re better known than Marvel superheroes like Iron Man and Captain America. So there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be as— or more — successful on the big screen.
How important is it for Warner Bros. to seed the clouds with this movie so that these future films are established?
It’s really become a successful formula for Hollywood studios where you connect the characters so they live in the same fictional universe and they visit each other in the movies. That way even films that feature new characters are kind of like sequels, they’re kind of like a continuing story that carries audiences along. Again, this has really worked for Marvel. People have really gone from Iron Man to Captain America to Thor to Avengers to Guardians of the Galaxy and so on because they all know each other, they all live in the same universe, so it feels like one big story. It doesn’t feel like each movie is starting from scratch as its own thing.
Is there a potential for one of these films to bomb catastrophically?
Well, actually, we have had one big bomb. Remember last summer “Fantastic Four” was a debacle and Fox lost a lot of money on that. Because what’s happening now is that there are so many superhero films that they don’t all feel like events. It can’t be an event if it happens every month. It used to be, Oh my god, "Avengers," I’ve never seen that before. Now we’ve seen it. We’ve seen three “Iron Man” [movies] and two “Thors” and two “Captain Americas” and now another “Batman” and “Superman” movie. So audiences are not impressed by the fact that they exist, so they all have to be good. And, as we know, it’s very hard to make a good movie. So I certainly think you’re going to see more bombs in this genre going forward.
Let’s talk a little bit more about whether or not a movie has to be good, because the reviews from “Batman v. Superman” have been brutal. Do those reviews matter even just a little bit?
I think fan reaction I’ve been hearing is mixed at best. The question is [whether] people really going to like it [and] keep coming back to see it maybe two or three times. And then are they going to be excited to see the next DC movie after this with the “Suicide Squad,” and then see “Wonder Woman” and then see “Justice League” and so on. Or are they going to see this movie and be kind of turned off? It’s tough to say. There are times like “Fantastic Four” when critics seem to mirror what audiences think. But you know, all the “Transformers” movies have grossed a billion dollars plus despite being loathed by critics. So it’s not a guarantee.
How much of the success of a film like this can be measured with domestic box office? Or do we really have to look globally?
The global number is really what matters. Warner Bros. is very much trying to establish DC as a franchise that appeals to audiences around the world. Certainly you can’t have it fail in the U.S., [which] is still the number one most lucrative market where they make the most money and it’s very important to do well here. But it can’t just do well here. It’s got to be appealing in Russia, in China, in Brazil, in Korea, in Germany and so on. And certainly Warners has pulled out all the stops around the world to hype this film.
With music banned in much of Mali, Songhoy Blues tries to fight the power
The term “struggling artist” is thrown around a lot — especially about musicians in Los Angeles. But for the band Songhoy Blues, being an artist in Mali has become nearly impossible.
In 2012, the band had to abandon its hometown of Timbuktu after Islamic extremists banned music from being performed. Songhoy Blues relocated to Mali’s capital, Bamako, and released its debut album, “Music in Exile.”
The band is featured in the new documentary, “They Will Have To Kill Us First.” The film focuses on the fight to keep music alive in Mali after the jihadist takeover of the country.
They Will Have To Kill Us First
The Frame's Oscar Garza spoke with lead singer Aliou Touré and guitarist Garba Touré (no relation) about their debut album and the documentary. (The band's manager, Mark Antonine Moreau, served as interpreter.)
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
How important is music to the people of Mali?
Garba: Mail is very into music and the music unites the people to get everybody together, so music is very important.
When the extremists moved into Northern Mali, they banned Western music. You play modern music, but it's traditional as well. Is this kind of music also banned in Northern Mali?
Aliou: Yeah, they stopped everything, just about every cultural activity was banned and stopped, even sports. Every radio station was stopped. You could not do anything.
Songhoy Blues - Al Hassidi Terei
I read one description of the band saying, "It's as if Ali Farka Touré and John Lee Hooker had a love child." What have been your influences? Have you listened to American blues music and do you hear the connection to Africa when you listen to American blues?
Garba: There's no doubt that there's a link between the American blues and the blues that's played in Mali, and especially because all of those big blues musicians all have African roots. So it's really connected and for us it's close.
You've collaborated with several people. One of them is Nick Zinner of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the song "Sabour." How did this collaboration come about?
Garba: We have a project named Africa Express, and this project set up a project in Bamako. The idea was to show that the music was not banned and that a new generation of music was coming. So we played and Nick Zinner was there, saw the band and really liked us. So we decided to record together and this was the first track we recorded for the album, "Music in Exile."
Are you already thinking about your next album?
Garba: Yes, absolutely. It's almost everyday that we think of it and we've got plenty of new tracks to show to the people.
Do you think you'll record the next album in Mali or here in the United States?
Garba: We'd love to record it in Mali to keep the traditional roots of what we're doing.