by Peter Brook

Beckett was a perfectionist, but can one be a perfectionist without an intuition of perfection? Today, with the passage of time, we see how false were the labels first stuck on Beckett—despairing, negative, pessimistic. Indeed, he peers into the filthy abyss of human existence. His humour saves him and us from falling in, he rejects theories, dogmes, that offer pious consolations, yet his life was a constant, aching search for meaning. He situates human beings exactly as he knew them in darkness. Constantly they gaze through windows, in themselves, in others, outwards, sometimes upwards, into the vast unknown. He shares their uncertainties, their pain. But when he discovered theatre, it became a possibility to strive for unity, a unity in which sound, movement, rhythm, breath and silence all come together in a single rightness. This was the merciless demand he made on himself—an unattainable goal that fed his need for perfection. Thus he enters the rare passage that links the ancient Greek theatre through Shakespeare to the present day in an uncompromising celebration of one who looks truth in the face, unknown, terrible, amazing…