Samuel Beckett's play Not I from 1972 pushes many theatrical boundaries
by placing a character onstage called MOUTH, who is, literally, just a
mouth. MOUTH belongs to a seventy-year-old woman whom we cannot see, and
who cannot see her audience. Everything except her mouth is cloaked in
blackness. MOUTH delivers a stream-of-consciousness monologue, broken only
by enigmatic gestures from a black shrouded figure onstage with her, while
in a twilight moment between life and death. The monologue includes the
woman's sensations of dying, along with vivid vignettes of her life from
birth until the moment when she falls unconscious in a field. When I was
cast as MOUTH in October 2001, with Black Dog Productions, in Sudbury,
Ontario, I soon learned that the role required me to push physical, intellectual,
emotional and psychological boundaries within myself, unlike any other
role had. This resulted in a personal experience of terror that soon encompassed
rehearsals and performances alike! My acting journal became the recipient
of the tortuous process I went through.
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