To the extent that most acting problems are in some fashion also directing problems I have been dealing all along with the task of directing Beckett, at least with the part of it that relates to character development. As is well known, however, there is another side to directing involving the problematic exercise of interpretation, which does not primarily concern actors.

Even more than with other authors, the subject of directing Beckett is inextricably bound up with questions of faithfulness to text, mostly because this ordinarily reticent author has been extraordinarily vocal in his objections to faithlessness. Not entirely by accident, he had the good fortune of seeing many of his premieres staged by two paradigms of loyalty – Roger Blin and Alan Schneider – who not only adhered to the very specific instructions in his scripts but also made frequent public comments about the propriety of that strictness.