Dada, Surrealism, and the Genesis of NOT I

WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE INVISIBLE MR. GODOT HIMSELF — who never materializes on the Board where Gogo and Didi steadfastly await his appearance — none of Beckett's creations for the stage is so literally disembodied as the Mouth who speaks unendingly in Not 1. The play itself is an irreducible simplicity: we see Mouth, faintly lit from close—up and below, the rest of the face in shadow, limited to a rudimentary function: words. They begin even before the audience has had enough time to settle down — as the house lights dim, Mouth is already speaking, a voice at once unseen and unintelligible. "Suddenly, gradually," t9 quote from Mouth itself, a disturbing image confronts an uneasy audience: we see and hear a disembodied mouth, its words now intelligible but only minimally comprehensible. There is, as well, a tall standing figure, faintly lit, "sex undeterminable," enveloped from head to foot in a loose djellaba. Beckett has accustomed us to severe constrictions of physical mobility on stage: Mouth can move only lips and tongue, shaping words, while Auditor makes four brief movements consisting in simple sideways raising of the arms from sides and their falling back, in what the script tells us is "a gesture of helpless compassion." The movement lessens with each recurrence and is scarcely perceptible at the third. Not I ends where it began — the house lights go up, the images on stage fade out, Mouth continues unseen, unintelligible, and finally unheard.