Kinetic set for Samuel Beckett's Endgame

at Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh

NO MORE PAINKILLER

(text, which was intended for "Endgame" brochure)

Three years ago we were swept away by Theatre Workshop production Threepenny Opera and suggested Robert Rae to build a set for the Endgame to be played by Nabil Shaban and Garry Robson. Miraculously it has coincided with his plans.

Our emotional response to Theatre Workshop production, which was expressed in my lengthy review in St.Petersburg Theatre Magazine as well as attempts to bring the show to Russia, had a very personal reason: for us “disability” was a metaphor of much bigger and wider issue of being different.

We grew up and spent most our lives In Soviet Union, where being different was extremely dangerous. Communist ideology was based on the idea of the power of the mass, so all kind of minorities were seen as a threat and treated accordingly: dissident political views led to barbaric psychiatric treatment, homosexuality resulted in prison sentence, being a Jew crippled a professional career, writing or painting outside of “socialist realism” framework turned an artist into an outcast, holding any religious beliefs led to different degrees of punishment. No wonder, disable people were hidden from the public eye, confined to their homes or institution. Often parents felt ashamed of disable children or just could not cope with the pressure - and abandoned them. Very few of those born with disability survived to adulthood.

The hate of those, who are different, is based on existential fear of the unknown, and embedded in our nature as a survival instinct. Of course, communists were far from unique in promoting the hate toward the different “others” - this hate motivated aggressive crowds for as long as mankind has existed, but the number of victims of the communist regime exceeded even those of Nazis.

Our experience of the life under that regime made us the emotional supporters of Theatre Workshop’s stand on equal rights of creativity for disable people. Unique creative personalities like Nabil and Garry are striking examples of what is missed by societies, which do not permit – or just do not support - a difference. 

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The first time Sharmanka tackled The Endgame was in 1990 in Russia.  Eduard built a set  for my production of the play in the small theatre “Four Little Windows” (1)The main feature was a cage–cum-fortress, where Hamm had barricaded himself against the whole world. Clov was running around with his own smaller cage on the wheels, into which he sometimes escaped from his master’s endless orders.  The most important feature was a door, through which Clov made his exit at the end. It was the time of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, one was stuck and starving in the old cage, other took a chance to venture in unknown...

As a real classic, The Endgame gets under your skin and evolves with your life, influences it, reflects it, predicts it, follows it. The part of the set later became a kinetic sculpture “The Dreamer in The Kremlin”, one of those purchased by Glasgow Museums in 1993 – and among other things paved Sharmanka’s way to Scotland.

Working on the objects for Theatre Workshop production in a close dialogue with Nabil and Gary – as well as growing older - led us to the deeper and more universal meaning of the play . It is really all about the end of the game, when life is confronted with death.  It is about the fear of unknown, we mentioned before -   as the biggest unknown is the death. And it is about all and any of us – as we all are mortal and we all are afraid.

These four people in the room, who happen to be the last at the end of the world, - or maybe they are just trapped in some forgotten corner, - behave as a typical family.

Hamm is blind  - as are most of us living with our eyes wide shut. He lives in the cage (2) - because very few of us could survive in the open. All our life we are busy building our own spaces - a home, a shelter, a workshop, a studio, a shell, a cave… Sooner or later it is taken from us – and we are naked in front of  the unknown…

When hardly out of the childhood we all are trying to distance ourselves from the parents,– because not like them we expect to live a happy life for ever. We discard their experience, rubbish their memories– and put them into more or less comfortable bins well before they gone.

As civilised people, we care for ill and dying – as Clov was taught to do - but it is so difficult to talk to them, as they are contaminated with death. As long as possible we pretend that the world around them is still the same – like Clov is going to great length to sustain Hamm’s illusions. But how can he tell them that there are no more pain killers?

The objects for actors to play with and within were built in an intensive creative dialogue with them - from the scrap, produced by our civilisation – most of it was picked up not far from our workshop – and mixed with bits and pieces of our and their lives, thoughts, memories and feelings.

At the beginning of the work  we did not know how different our political views were from  what Robert Rae believes, so it was sometimes a bumpy ride, but these fantastic actors and  Beckett’s eternal play formed enough of the common ground for collaboration of Sharmanka and Theatre Workshop. Nabil’s and Garry’s vivid imagination, acute awareness, playfulness, courage and humour exceeded all our expectations. We enjoyed the process and looking forward to see the outcome.  

T.Jakovskaya

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 (1) actors of this theatre helped to build the first Sharmanka performance hall and featured in the opening show playing alongside Eduard’s kinetic sculptures.

(2) according Beckett  stage directions Hamm is in the armchair on castor wheels

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Press:

Beckett's absurd, tragic story is played out on a set made up of Bersudsky's mechanical sculptures, created from scavenged junk. There is a clock with a rose instead of hands and a sad-eyed Eeyore toy which winches towards the floor as it ticks, a "telescope" which seems to be made of vacuum cleaner parts and a Dalek-shaped dog with a phone dial for a nose. Centre stage is "Hamm's house", a birdcage-like structure furnished with a typewriter and thermos flask, a fusion of kitsch and something much darker.

SUSAN MANSFIELD, The Scotsman

Like everything else on stage, Hamm's rusty gilded cage is designed by Eduard Bersudsky's Sharmanka workshop in a floridly exotic Heath Robinson style that's both poignant in its sense of a civilisation living off its own scraps and slightly distracting from the spare outlines of Beckett's text.
JOYCE McMILLAN , The Scotsman

The kinetic sculptures designed by Sharmanka may be beautiful works of art in themselves, but here look inappropriately shoe-horned into a play perfectly capable of speaking for itself.

NEIL COOPER, The Herald