Hello my name is Joe Murphy, I'm the co-director on No's Knife.
We've been in a workshop this week with the brilliant Lisa Dwan who is the
the performer, and co-director on it with me.
What is it about these texts that attracted you?
No's Knife is a selection
from Texts for Nothing, which was thirteen short stories that Samuel Beckett
wrote after his trilogy of novels, his famous trilogy - Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable.
They're a real exploration into the self, into who we are
and identity. And for me, as a woman, to be given these ideas, today in
this environment, as an immigrant, is so exciting.
Particularly as Beckett was writing these at a time when Europe was trying to understand itself
again after the war and I think the Europe we're in today is grappling to
understand itself again.
That sort of leads onto the next question
what is it about Samuel Beckett's work that attracts you?
Maybe about when you first got into him and what excited you?
I first discovered Samuel Beckett when I was at home, in Ireland, 12 years of age.
I remember hearing Eh Joe on television, walking in and seeing this haunted man's
face with this voice, this ghost-like viper, relentless weapon of a voice
that Sian Phillips was performing so amazingly and I've never forgotten it.
There's a great boundary-less quality about Beckett. It's very democratic in
a lot of ways. An awful lot of people think Beckett's for the intellectuals or
the academics. I think Beckett's a lot more visceral and immediate and more guttural than that.
And it was when I first got cast, years ago in 2005, and like most people
you're sent a script you see Beckett and you say: 'oh, Jesus! I'm never going to understand this.'
'I'm going to need some sort of intellectual pickaxe to tackle this
impenetrable mountain.' So with the pressure for the audition mounting I
just sat down and read. And what I saw was a transcript of how my mind works.
He's also beautiful. I mean he is, above all, a stunning poet. Everything is so
economical and perfect and perfectly placed. And the humour is so quick and he
just turns on his heel and the throwaway lines are just so poignant.
And I guess Beckett is very similar to Shakespeare. The big
fundamental questions he's asking. But what I love about Beckett he doesn't try
to tidy them off. There's nothing to sell here. He's not
offering a polemic or a story to entertain us.
He's simply standing there in all of this confusion and putting his hand on the wound.
As you say, it's Beckett's prose and we haven't got his incredibly
detailed stage directions and his visual poetry, so we've had to find a visual
way into the pieces because Beckett didn't give us those
but the bog has always been such a
central image for you and such a central point about how the play should be set.
Well on the key lines is: 'I am down in the hole the centuries have dug,
centuries of filthy weather, flat on my face on the dark earth sodden with the creeping
safran waters it slowly drinks.' And you don't want to have a too literal
interpretation of Beckett's work nor do you want to impose too much.
I think what I'm trying to do is take his ethos
into creating the visual and not impose too much, to leave space for the
audience to look at these wastelands, these raw wastelands that look like an
open wound and examine their own wounds.
These are interesting times in Europe about identity and nationality.
'Where would I go if I could go?'
'Who would I be if I could be? What would I say if I had a voice?'
That's No's Knife.