Excerpts and click for full reviews

"... presented with style and fire ... Like faintly recalled dream fragments, [the] images are often spellbinding. They insinuate themselves into the viewer's mind and heart ..."
T.H.McCullugh, L.A. Times
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"striking ... intensely focused and resonant performances ... a remarkable combination of vocal discipline, emotional depth, and intelligence."
Anna McMullan, Irish Theatre Magazine
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"... the images on stage linger in the mind and some of the more resonant lines remain etched in memory ... one never tires of Boyette's rich, sensitive and almost hypnotic voice ... Saturday night's audience ... gave THE BECKETT PROJECT a standing ovation."
Collette Sheridan, Irish Examiner
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"... stunning performances ..."
Jerri Daboo, Total Theatre Magazine
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"Spare, eliptical ... unexpectedly terrifying ... Each play demands absolute mastery of vocal and muscle control, not to mention the stamina and strength of an athlete. Fortunately, Boyette ... [and] Zarrilli ... know exactly what they're doing. Their consummate success with this daunting material transforms The Beckett Project from a curiosity into one of the don't - miss events of the ... theater season ...'
Paul Hodgins, Orange Co Register
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Reviews in detail (Gilbert Hemsley Theatre, Madison, Wisconsin/USA, September 14-23, 2006)

Isthmus
Lue Allen
September 22, 2006

“The uses of despair: The Beckett Project finds the poetry in grief and loss”

The Beckett Project [is] a group of four remarkable one-act plays by Samuel Beckett…Stylistically enigmatic and spare, these seldom-performed short plays about loss, isolation, grief and failure are surprisingly moving, tender and poetic…The performance is beautifully realized by the Llanarth Group, who have been staging The Beckett Project worldwide for a decade. Director/performers Phillip Zarrilli and Patricia Boyette…have internalized the constraints Beckett placed on his actors…When the characters speak, in their repetitive, musical and often dreamlike way, we hear fragments of narrative that oddly become sufficient, and glacial slowness acquires an acutely intense effect.

Zarrilli and Boyette practice meditation and breathing techniques to create the stamina and control that inform their disciplined performances. Boyette’s “mouth” spews endless, tumbled sentences interspersed with crazed chuckles and a few screams—all with perfect diction and seemingly without drawing a breath. As Zarrilli’s man in the desert futiely grasps at the means to sustain life, he gradually draws all the tension of the scene into his own body, so that when he falls to the ground it is more than a physical fall.

A serious challenging, stimulating evening of theater.



The Capital Times
Michael Muckian
September 16-17, 2006

“Four Beckett works create unique event”

…one of the season’s most unusual and arresting theater experiences. The three-member case populated the four plays…with unusual characters caught in webs of banality, absurdity and fear. The Llanarth Group has been mounting Beckett plays and projects worldwide for a decade with staging strictly governed by the late playwright’s own specifications. The result is an unusually authentic rendering of some of the most absurd situations brought to the stage.



The Daily Cardinal
Annie Williams
September 21, 2006

“Beckett’s vision”

…Not I is…mesmerizing…With acute sensitivity to Beckett’s work, “The Beckett Project” reveals Beckett’s perspective on the human condition.

Reviews in detail (Grove Theater Center, Los Angeles/USA)

L.A. Times
TH McCulloh
"Dreamlike appeal of Beckett's work evident at Grove"

... Three of these plays were written during Beckett latter years (Beckett died in 1989). They are mere thoughtsor, rather, experiences, for thought is not Beckett's message. Like faintly recalled dream fragments, his images are subjective, and often spellbinding. They insinuate themselves into the viewer's mind and heart ...

OHIO IMPROMPTU, directed and performed by Phillip Zarrilli and Peader Kirk, presents a mirror image, two men with flowing gray wigs, heads bent forward and hidden by a supporting hand ... One (Zarrilli) ... reads from a book ... The calm, and the quietude, sink into one as in a dream, onself going back and reliving, going back and reliving.

Zarrilli, with assistance by Kirk, is also featured in ACT WITHOUT WORDS ONE (1956), a mime play in which Zarrilli rushes into the light, is tripped up, rises and dusts himself off. He stares in utter confusion into space, then walks off. Suddenly he rushes back, is tripped up and it begins again. The feeling of a treadmill of life passing the man by each time is indelible and frightening.

Patricia Boyette appears in two of the pieces, NOT I, in which only her illuminated mouth is seen, with breathless speed recalling a life that is rushing to its doom without understanding, without sense. A similar moment is captured in ROCKABYE, with Boyette as an aging woman fighting her way through memory and pain and boredom toward her oblivion, as her voice laconically drones on, pauses. When the voice pauses, the woman says, "More," and continues rocking into her eternity.

All three of these performers are wellversed in Beckett ... All three understand Beckett's intent and present these minimal works with style and the fire Beckett provides ... It is a gratifying evening ...



Orange County Register
Paul Hodgins
An evening of the Absurd: A talented trio reminds us of the importance of Beckett's legacy    

THE BECKETT PROJECT ... is not for theatrical lightweights ... Spare, elliptical, devoid of almost any movement, [these four plays] are the theatrical equivalent of Japanese noh theater. And, like noh, they're unexpectedly terrifying; they share its sense of silent, hysterical desperation.

... the audience's abilities are nothing compared with the skills required of the performers. Each play demands absolute mastery of vocal and muscle control, not to mention the stamina and strength of an athlete.

Fortunately, performer - directors Patricia Boyette, Phillip Zarrilli and Peader Kirk know exactly what they're doing. Their consummate success with this daunting material transforms THE BECKETT PROJECT from a curiosity into one of the don't - miss events of the theater season ... They work the playwright's slender scripts like virtuosos playing a delicate instrument.

In OHIO IMPROMPTU ... the text is fragmented, repetitive. It seems to deal with sadness and loss. Halfway through, you realize the people referred to by the reader in the third person may be this strange, lonely pair. The scene ends with an action of almost unbearable beauty: with glacial slowness, the two figures let their hands fall from their faces and look at each other.

In NOT I ... the disembodied mouth talks constantly, frenetically, as if she fears that silence is death. Again, the character seems to be referring to herself, although she denies it in an oft - repeated refrain: What? Who? No! She! It's a hypnotic, disconcerting piece of absurdist theater.

ACT WITHOUT WORDS I is a silence scene for two actors. Zarrilli plays a confused man in a dark suit who stumbles violently onstage. Each time he attempts to leave, the action repeats itself. Kirk plays a silent character who presents him with puzzling options: an umbrella to shade him, a pair of scissors to experiment with. But nothing erases the suited man's constant puzzlement with his world.

ROCKABYE appears to be an act of slow suicide ... finally, she stops rocking, her head slumped over.

... performances this brilliant force us to assess the playwright anew. His themes are universal, his means of expressing them staggeringly unique. We can't afford to let Beckett fade from our performance culture. Thanks to ... Boyette, Zarrilli, and Kirk, he won't.



Reviews in detail (Granary Theatre, Cork/Ireland)

The Irish Examiner
Colette Sheridan
June, 2004

"... the images on stage linger in the mind and some of the more resonant lines remain etched in memory ..."

"[In] Rockaby [Boyette] plays an elderly Victorian-looking lady rocking on a chair, totally alone with a recorded commentary ... slowly marking time. And this is very much a piece about time, its slow but determined nature which, from an old lady's linear perspective, ends 'at the close of a long day.' While the lines of recorded commentary are often repeated, one never tires of Boyette's rich, sensitive and almost hypnotic voice., Her lines are beautifully enunciated.

"And the casting is spot on. When the commentary speaks of 'famished eyes', one can't help but notice Boyette's hollow eyes stare which continues 'until her end came. Off her head, they said, but harmless.'

"There is great humanity in Beckett whether he is describing loneliness, boredom, futility, or desperation. Not I ... features nothing more on stage than a pair of red illuminated woman's lips appearing on a totally blacked out stage apart from a hooded 'auditor'. The mouth belongs to Boyette and the auditor, who does nothing except receive the increasingly frantic statements from the mouth, is played by Regina Crowley.

"The mouth is incredibly verbally dexterous, spewing out what seems to be the story of a lifetime, a premature baby turned wait, turned old person. There is reference to a constant 'buzzing' in the brain and while the imagery on stage is minimal, the outpourings conjure up desperation. But does the mouth take succour from its comment, at the end, that 'God is love', one wonders?

"Bernie Cronin plays May in Footfalls: a woman dressed in what suggests grey, musty cobwebs, she paces the stage while a disembodied voice (Mairin Pendergast) carries on a conversation with her. The voice is that of May's mother who says that there is no sleep so deep that she could not hear her. 'Would you like me to inject you again," says May to her mother. She mentions dressing bed sores, providing a bed pan and praying with her mother. It is a bleak existence acknowledged by the mother, who apologises for having given birth to her daughter so late in life, thereby growing old, useless and in need of care.

"Act Without Words I is acted by Phillip Zarrilli who is tortured by an unknown presence. His facial expression compensates for the total absence of language in this piece. Saturday night's audience at the Granary gave THE BECKETT PROJECT a standing ovation."



Irish Theatre Magazine
Anna McMullan
May, 2004

THE PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL DEMANDS of performing Beckett are legendary. Billie Whitelaw has recalled the excruciating experience of performing in Not I and Footfalls, and Beckett's emphasis on restraint: "Too much colour, Billie, too much colour." Practitioner and teacher of Asian martial arts and yoga, Phillip Zarrilli, has developed a psychophysical approach to performance which, in "The Beckett Project", he and actress Patricia Boyette have applied to productions of Beckett's late drama. Initiated in 1995 and launched at the Grove Theatre in Los Angeles in 2000, "The Beckett Project" took up residence in Cork in May 2004. Zarrilli and Boyette engaged in intensive training with five Ireland-based actors (four from Cork) culminating in a week of public performances of Beckett's shorter plays. The first of the two programmes presented Ohio Impromptu, Play and Eh Joe, and the second Not T, Footfalls, Act With-out Words I and Rockaby, the programmes running on alternate evenings, with one double-bill performance. The intimacy of the Granary Theatre served "The Beckett Project" well. The audience was ushered out of the theatre between each play, re-entering to find the actors already in place, like an installation. While this made for a long evening on the occasion of the double bill, it enabled each of these short but perfectly self contained dramas to inhabit the theatre space and engage the audience anew. It also made palpable a kind of suspended stillness and silence in the plays - one of the real achievements of "The Beckett Project".

The double-bill began with Ohio Impromptu which exquisitely captured the restrained energy and visual chiaroscuro of this 'dramaticule'. The interplay between Andy Crook (Listener) and Zarrilli (Reader) gave full weight and resonance to the movements and to the pauses and repetitions. The striking attention to visual detail and precision of movement was also characteristic of other pieces, especially Rockaby, where the sole image on stage was of a rocking chair and the tiny figure of Boyette as the prematurely old 'W'. Costumed in a high-necked full-length sequined dress, 'W' remained an object of visual fascination as her recorded voice told of her eventual renunciation of the search to glimpse and communicate with another living soul.

To each of her performances (Rockaby, Eh Joe and Not I) Boyette brought a remarkable combination of vocal discipline, emotional depth, and intelligence. While she has consulted with Billie Whitelaw, who worked closely with Beckett, and has clearly learned a great deal from this magnificent Beckett actress, she has developed her own distinctive style of delivery She conveyed the effort of will and self control needed by both character and actress to simultaneously evoke and restrain vistas of loss, vulnerability and, in the case of the female voice in Eh Joe, what Whitelaw referred to as 'suppressed venom'.

In performing Beckett, discipline is a survival strategy for beings on the edge of trauma or erasure. It is the sense of the human creature within the framework that is compelling, revealing what Beckett described in a 1938 essay on the Irish poet, Denis Devlin, as "the need which is the absolute predicament of particular human identity" I missed that aesthetics of vulnerability in Footfalls, where Bernie Cronin achieved an admirable corporeal control, but did not convey to me the anguished determination of May's attempts to prove her own existence - through dialogue with her Mother's voice (evocatively delivered by Mairin Prendergast), the articulation of her own narrative, or even the sound of her footfalls. Devoid of the concept of need, the disciplined body as a focus of performing Beckett may convey simply technique, and occasionally I felt this was the case here. For the most part, however, the corporeal restraint which characterized "The Beckett Project" did not reduce the expressive vocabularies of the actor's 'bodymind', but opened up a range of shades otherwise imperceptible.

I had quibbles about some of the design and directorial decisions in individual productions. Play was well performed by Cronin, Crook and Regina Crowley, but the visual image of three urns in limbo was cluttered by packing cases, as if the urns had been abandoned in some warehouse, which I found visually and conceptually distracting. Act Without Words I, again characterized by disciplined performances, rendered visible as a hooded figure the normally unseen agent. While this foregrounded metatheatricality, it also dispersed the dramatic focus.

On the whole, however, I was impressed by "The Beckett Project"'s detailed attention to the visual aesthetics of the stage, and the intensely focused and resonant performances it achieved.

Anna McMullan is Lecturer at the School of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and author of Theatre on Trial: The Later Drama of Samuel Beckett.

Total Theatre Magazine
Jerri Daboo
April 2004

Standing Still while not Standing Still

Jerri Daboo looks at Phillip Zarrilli's use of Asian martial arts in approaching Beckett.

Beckett's Act Without Words I, written as a score of physical actions, contains the line: 'Does not move.' How can we physically act 'Does not move'? What do we do, if we don't move? But this is specifically written as a seperate action, so it must be performed as an action. Watching international director and teeacher Phillip Zarrilli performing 'Act Without Words I' there is clear moment when he is lying on the floor where he communicates:'Does not move'. He explains that he achieves this through focusing on the breath, keeping his awareness through his feet, hands, eyes and ears, and the clear thought of the line itself. He needs to fill in the white space of the moment, to embody the thought, feeling and action of the decision to not move. Although there is no outer movement, he appears to express a clear inner choice: 'Does not move'. It is through the connection with the bodymind and the breath, states Zarrilli,that 'thought takes shape as action', even if the action is to remain still.

Zarrilli has been developing a unique psychophysical approach to actor training and performance for over 25 years. He utilises a selection of Asian cultivation practises: yoga, tai chi chuan, and the fast and flowing south Indian martial form of kalarippayattu. He has trained in, and written extensively about, kalarippayattu abd the Indian dance-drama form of kathakali since 1976. It might well be asked, how can a form as dynamic as kalarippayattu be of use to an actor in performing Beckett, where they are often so physically restricted? If there needs to be stillness, of what help is the flow of movement and energy in martial arts? It is this very need for outer stillness, but a stillness filled with 'inner life', that Zarrilli states makes his training so relevant for Beckett. He quotes the late A.C.Scott's phrase relating to tai chi, the need to 'stand still while not standing still'. Even though there may be little movement externally, the bodymind needs to be 'filled out' from the inside to keep the performer engaged with the action, and give life to the moment of performance.

Yoga and martial arts have been used in actor training for many years. Stanislawski adapted exercises from yoga for use with actors in the First Studio at the Moscow Art Theatre from 1912. His use of Eastern practises has influenced many key practicioners since, Micheal Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski, and Eugenio Barba. Training in yoga and tai chi is now not uncommon in drama schools in Britain and America. However, these forms of training are often used as preparatory exercises to relax and focus thee actor, and are practises in isolation to rehearsals. They become a warm-up, something useful for the opening of a session, but not of real relevance to the western actor in the context of rehearsing a play. What makes Zarrilli so significant is that his use of martial art goes beyond an initial training period, and has direct importance in not only thee embodIment of the actor in the performance but also,in case of Beckett, in an enhanced understanding of dramaturgy of the play, and how this can be actualised.

This was demonstrated in 'The Beckett Project in Ireland', which took place in May 2004 in Cork, and consisted, of the performance of seven of Beckett's short plays:
'Ohio Ipromptu', 'Play', 'Eh Joe', 'Not I', 'Footfalls', 'Act Without Words I', and 'Rockaby'. They were performed by a company of six actors, including the renowned American actress Patricia Boyette, and directed by Zarrilli. The actors had begun the rehearsal period with one week of intense training with Zarrilli in the forms he teaches, after which the rehearsals were preceded by one and a half hours of training every day. Even though some of the actors had worked with Zarrilli before, it is clearely not possible for them to be able to fully learn the forms in a few weeks. When Zarrilli teaches in a university context, there is a one to two year training programme, during which tme students can begin to have a deeper understanding and embodiment of the techniques. With a much shorter time in which to work, Zarrilli focuses on the ways in which the cultivation of the bodymind through the forms can be of benefit for the actor. The formma all focus fundamentally on the breath, and a development of awareness, concentration, grounding and a sense of 'interiority' which is actualised in outer movement, thus connecting inner and outer in such way that can lead to complete embodiment of the performative action in each moment.

Zarrilli explains that when directing or performing, his point of entry into a particular dramaturgy is through 'problem-solving' using psychophysical approaches. This includes the basic principles from the training, such as control of the breath, awareness, grounding and focus, but also finding the specific demands for each play. In 'Footfalls', the character of May, played in 'The Beckett Project' by Bernadette Cronin, repeatedly turns and walks in a set number of steps. In order to fully embody this action throughout the play, she needs to retain a sensory awareness in the act of walking, and in rehearsal learned to focus her attention on her feet. When not walking, her spoken text is describing her steps, so she needs to keep this awareness in her feet through her voice, creating a resonance of the movement which can help to embody the text.

This application of psychophysical approaches to the voice is particularly important to Beckett. Billie Whitelaw, a long-term collaborator with Beckett, has dicussed the importance of using 'no colour' in approaching his texts. Rather than having a psychological notion of the idea of a 'character', the focus instead should be on the musicality and rhythm of the text. This is especially difficult for performers who are used to attempting to be as expresssiv as possilbe. However within Beckett, the 'problem' for actors is the necessitiy of cutting away all unnecessary movement and vocal expression. But this does not mean that the voice is 'empty' or monotone: the task is again how to find the fullness within the 'no colour'. Patricia Boyette needed to find this for herself whilst playing the Voice in 'Eh Joe'. Whitelaw, whom Boyette has consultedseveral times, suggested that she feel her voice like a 'Chinese water torture', each phrase being a drip of water in Joe's head. Zarrilli additionally suggested she could sense that each phrase is a sewing-needle going under and through the skin. Zarrrilli, playing Joe, responded to the sound of Boyette's Voice through a series of psychophysical devices. the text states that Joe wants to 'squeeze' the voice out of is head, and Zarrilli tries to suggest this 'squeezing' by listening to the voice whilst not blinking. This is physically very difficult, and Zarrilli achieves it by feeling his feet on the floor, and connecting this with his breath, and then putting his awareness into his lower eyelids, which helps to stop his eyes from blinking. Since this is physically exhausting, the release of his breath each time the Voice stops speaking is directly communicated to the audience. I found Zarrilli's performance of Joe to be extremely affecting, with the sewing-needle metaphor made very real: each time the Voice began speaking, I felt as if a just-healed scar was being scratched open.

While watching all seven plays, I had this same pysical, visceral response to each piece. Boyette, in particular, gave stunning performances of the immensely difficult and taxing 'Not I' and 'Rockaby'. Whitelaw had told her that she needed to find an individual voice for each part, and through using a psychophysical exploration of resonance in different parts of the body, she certainly offered very distinctive vocal qualities in her three performances, each with different shadings of 'no colour'. Overall, even though the actors were not necessarily overtly 'doing' much, the intensity of their innner connection and involvement was very present.

The means used to produce the performance is itself not obvious on stage. The ausience need have no knowledge of the inner processes of the actor in actualising each moment, nor of the intense training methods that have led them to cultivate it, in order to feel their presence. This is another important factor in the use of Zarrilli's work, in that the actor can use concrete tools and devices to find complete embodiment in the action of the play, which remain 'invisible' to the audience who only need to see that which is relevant for the dramaturgy. having seen 'The Beckett Project in Ireland', I feel that even after a short period of experience of the martial arts training and methods that Zarrilli uses, there is a possibility for finding the resonance, rhythm, musicality and 'no colour' in Beckett's work through a psychophysical exploration of performance that fills each action with inner life, and enables the performer to 'stand still, while not standing still'.



The Irish Times
Mary Leland
May, 2004

'... sophistocated presentation ... standards subtle but high ...

'A scabrous lace dress catches the gothic miseries of Footfalls, where a mother's voice (enriched by the trance-like tones of Mairin Prendergast) measures the paces of her captive daughter (Bernie Cronin); a beseeching shade provokes a cataract of reminiscence from someone reduced to a mouth (Patricia Boyette and Regina Crowley) in Not I; Zarrilli himself is the man repeatedly offered and denied the essentials of life in Act Without Words I; and the programme enters tenebrae with Patricia Boyette in the freighted silences of Rockaby.'



Cork Evening Echo
Liam Heylin
May, 2004

'Zarrilli's direction ... brings a stillness to the plays, expertly lit by Kath Geraghty to a superb costume design, particularly in Footfalls and Rockaby by Heidi Love ... [Beckett's] voice is well served ... Play is like a verbal pinball machine, lighting up to the story of a love triangle that is burning out ... The discipline of the actors is to be marveled at as Bernie Cronin, Andy Crook, and Regina Crowley appear like three coiled springs of verbal energy ... In Not I Boyette's staccato burst of speech is like being brought off in a literary ghost train. Bernie Cronin brings a dreamlike quality to her performance in Footfalls ... [as she] catches the quality of an isolated life disintegrating into itself and gives real resonance to line like, 'Will you never have done revolving it all in your poor mind?' ... Rockaby is like a Godless prayer by an old woman nearing the end.'


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