BILLIE WHITELAW

Billie Whitelaw started working as a child actress on radio at the age of eleven. As a youngster she joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop Company.

She has appeared in over two hundred stage plays, films, and plays for television and radio. In 1960 she won the Variety Club’s Best Actress Award, and both in 1960 and 1972 was voted TV Actress of the Year.

Billie Whitelaw’s long association with the works for Samuel Beckett began in 1964 at the National Theatre with the production of Play. She also appeared in Come and Go (Royal Festival Hall), and in Not I, (1973 and 1976) and Happy Days (1979), the latter directed by Beckett himself at the Royal Court Theatre. In 1976 Beckett also directed Billie Whitelaw in Footfalls, which he had written for her.

In 1981 she first performed in the United States, in Beckett’s Rockaby and in 1984 opened the Samuel Beckett Theatre in New York with a triple bill of Beckett works, Enough, Footfalls, and Rockaby, directed by Alan Schneider and produced by Daniel Labeille. She performed the same plays at the National Theatre and the Riverside Studios in London, the Mark Taper Theatre in Los Angeles, and the Adelaide Festival during a tour of Australia. The Penne Baker Productions of the TV documentary on the preparations for Rockaby has been shown all over the world.

As a member of the National Theatre Company, she played opposite Laurence Olivier in Othello and in productions of Hobson’s Choice and Trelawney of the of the Wells. Other early theatre appearances include David Mercer’s After Haggerty, Michael Frayn’s Alphabetical Order, and Simon Gray’s Molly. For the Royal Shakespeare Company she appeared in The Greeks and Passion Play. More recently, Billie Whitelaw returned to the National Theatre for Christopher Hampton’s Tales from Hollywood, which won the Evening Standard Comedy Award. She also appeared in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Young Vic.

As a film actress she has starred with Albert Finney in Charlie Bubbles (1968) and Gumshoe (1970). For the first film she won the US magazine critics award and the British Film Academy. Other films include: No Love for Jonnie, Twisted Nerve, The Adding Machine, Start the Revolution Without Me, Leo the Last, Hell is a City, Payroll, Eagle in a Cage, Frenzy, Nightwatch, The Water Babies, No Job for a Woman and The Omen, which won her the evening news film actress of the year (1977) award, Shadey, Dark Crystal (voice only) and The Dressmaker for which she won the 1989 BAFTA Film Actress of the Year award. Her most recent films include Jane Eyre directed by Franco Zefferelli, The Krays, directed by Peter Medak for Parkfield Entertainment, Lorna Doone directed by Andrew Grieved for Working Title Films, Quills, directed by Philip Kauffman, Last of the Blonde Bombshells, and Dinner of Herbs.

Films for television include Duel of Love directed by John Hough for Gainsborough Films and Murder of Quality for Thames Television, directed by Gavin Miller. For television, Billie appeared in Born to Run for BBC. Channel Four has presented the filmed version of the Beckett Triple Bill of Footfalls, Rockaby and Eh Joe. On US television she has appeared in The Poet Game, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Tale of Two Cities, The Secret Garden and Camille. Recent TV appearances include The Picnic, The Chain, Jamaica Inn, The Fifteen Streets and Firm Friends.

Billie has also written her autobiography, Billie Whitelaw…Who He?, which was published in 1996 by Hodder and Stoughton.

PIERRE CHABERT

Pierre Chabert was an actor in the prestigious Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud Company where he performed plays in the classic and modern repertories, before he became a director in the eighties, especially in the Théatre du Rond-point de Champs Elysèes.

Although his name is very often associated with that of Beckett, Pierre Chabert is also a great finder of texts and new authors: Arrabal, Robert Pinget, Raymond Cousse, Rezvani, Witckiewicz, the American Jean Claude Van Itallie, the Spanish Alfonso Sastre and Jose Sanchis Sinsterra, the Catalan Benet i Jornet, among others.

A friend of Beckett for more than twenty years and a well-known connoisseur of his work, Pierre Chabert has been directed by the author himself in Robert Pinget’s Hypothesis (L’Hypothèse)—the only time Beckett directed a play that was not written by him—as well as Krapp’s Last Tape (La Dernière bande), first in the Thèatre d’Orsay (in the same bill Madeleine Renaud was performing Not I). Beckett also advised him when he played the character of Hamm in End Game in the Paris 1981 Autumn Festival and for his one-man show, Beckett’s Voices (Thèatre du Rond-point, ’87).

From 1983 on, he directed a great number of shows including Beckett’s last plays and a few theatrical adaptations of his novels (with Beckett’s collaboration), with big stars of the French theater (Jean-Louis Barrault, Michael Lonsdale, Pierre Dux, Denise Gence, Claude Evrard): Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, What Where, Mecier and Camier, Company, in the Theatre du Rond-point, then Happy Days in the Thèatre National de la Colline (1992-1994). He discussed the many different aspects of the direction with Beckett who was always present “to help out” during the last rehearsals.

Pierre Chabert has re-directed most of his shows in English with the Gate Theatre in Dublin, Lincoln Center in New York, and the Barbican in London, and in Spanish several times in Madrid and Barcelona. He has done a lot of tours around the world and in many capitals with Krapp’s Last Tape, giving at the same time, lectures, readings, and workshops.

Pierre Chabert also is the Associate Director of the research group on the aesthetic of contemporary arts of the CNRS (National Center on Scientific Research). He has written numerous articles on contemporary theatre as well as on his work as a director, especially with Samuel Beckett and about Thomas Bernhard. For Samuel Beckett’s eightieth birthday, Pierre Chabert directed an issue of the aesthetic journal entirely devoted to Beckett’s work (487 pages, with many illustrations, 1990, nd Ed, Jean-Michel Place, Paris). Pierre Chabert is also director of a company “For a contemporary Repertory,” performing in Paris and Avignon and touring across France and abroad. Recently, Pierre Chabert performed The Loser that he adapted for theatre in association with Barbara Hutt. They have also edited a study on Bernhard (Minerve ed. Paris, 2002, 500 pages, illustrated with a lot of “inèdits” in French) which is a big success in France (reviews and audience).

RUBY COHN

Ruby Cohn notes that she has been a Beckett reader ever since she was fortunate enough to attend the 1953 Paris production of En Attendant Godot, and her decades of scholarship have been based on reading and rereading Beckett’s unique works, in both French and English. A Beckett Canon (2001), Just Play: Beckett’s Theatre (1980), Back to Beckett (1973), and Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut (1962) are a brief sample of her contributions to scholarship in Samuel Beckett and the theatre of the modern and postmodern eras.