Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In Directing Beckett , Lois Oppenheim presents interviews and essays with twenty-two prominent international directors of Samuel Beckett's work, many of whom worked closely with Beckett, assisting him with his productions or acting under his direction before directing his work themselves. Here they speak openly of their experiences of working with him, and comment on various productions that, in taking great liberties with his work, have raised a number of fascinating legal and aesthetic questions.
In exploring this key figure in the history of theater, Oppenheim's interviews--with such directors as JoAnne Akalaitis, Edward Albee, Herbert Blau, Joseph Chaikin, and Carey Perloff--also address many of the complexities of the director's role, such as the meaning of directorial integrity and fidelity to the playwright's vision--an issue of particular relevance to a playwright whose exactitude, with respect to stage directions, is well documented. Additional highlights include photographs from many of the productions; the unpublished text of a lecture by the late Alan Schneider, Beckett's most accomplished American director; and an interview with the late Roger Blin, the very first director of Beckett's work.
"Directing Beckett is a rare thing--a book both pleasant to read and useful to have . . . it is like listening to the ideal panel, everyone who should be there there and all at their articulate best." --Toby Silverman Zinman, Theatre Journal
"Anyone intending to direct or act in a work by Beckett, or to write about his work, must read this book." -- Choice
Lois Oppenheim is Professor of French, Montclair State University

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Oppenheim provides a forum for 22 prominent directors to explore the special challenges of Beckett's plays and to debate the larger issue of the relationship between the author's text and the interpreter's perspective (an issue also discussed--with reference to Beckett and others--in Playwright Versus Director, ed. by Jean Luere, CH, Dec'94). Roger Blin, director of the original production of Waiting for Godot (1955), couches the matter thus: "You do what [the author] wants, but not in a passive way. Sometimes you have to help him." The key question is, how far would that active help go? In both interviews and essays directors from Blin to Joanne Akalaitis, whose version of Endgame (1958) Beckett publicly denounced, offer diverse responses to that question. The directors range from the respectful, even idolatrous disciple to the antagonistic advocate prepared to abandon Beckett's explicit directions. However, each director sees in Beckett a major 20th-century figure whose influential work deserves great respect and to whom each has sought to be true in his or her fashion. Some have enjoyed the master's approval; others have endured his wrath in the form of law suits and injunctions. All provide insights into Beckett's work and suggest intriguing ways of sharing it with an audience. Anyone intending to direct or act in a work by Beckett, or to write about his work, must read this book. Upper-division undergraduate and above. W. M. Tate; Portland State University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Lois Oppenheim is Professor of French, Montclair State University.