Footfalls

Kicks (English Original Title: Foot Falls) is a short play by Samuel Beckett. The premiere took place on 20 May 1976 Royal Court Theatre, London, instead. The German premiere was in the workshop of the Schiller Theater, Berlin on 1 October 1976. It was staged by American director Alan Schneider, in 1963 the world premiere of Who 's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? had worried.

Action

Two old women living under one roof: The ninety year old mother is ill and penniless, her daughter May, also referred to as M, appears to have no contact with the outside world. The same old kicks the daughter be accompanied by the same old question of the mother who sits somewhere in the dark background and plays along just as a voice: " Will you never stop it all back and herzuwälzen? It all. In your poor head? It all. It all. " The mother remains unanswered. The daughter said that she was alone. " I need to hear the steps ," she says. "I go here now. Break. Rather, I come and stand still. Break.. " Come at nightfall from both mouths, repeatedly interrupted by pauses and silence, strange stories of a winter woman and her daughter Amy, who were from one day to the other no longer being addressable, only mindless body. The two seem to resemble May and her mother, especially as the relationship anagrammatical the name ( May / Amy ) also suggests this. Fateful captures something far back Lying M and her mother together, and inevitably end up not wanting it remains their common history.

Form

The piece consists of four sections ( as so often in Beckett's dramas ) are each initiated with a ping. In parallel, the spotlight will be displayed in which M moves equally as in a bright corridor. Each section bell and light are weaker. And the little spot, which focuses on the face of May, when it stops, is dimmed down from time to time on. Beckett has made ​​a point to make it clear that the piece has a rhythmic and musical structure. " Should Be The walking like a metronome, one length must be Measured in exactly nine seconds" (the walk should be like a metronome, each pendulum phase must last exactly nine seconds. ) So the rhythm of these steps could be heard clearly by the audience, the London May- actress Billie Whitelaw had to wear sandpaper on the soles of her soft ballet shoes. And the German actress Hildegard Schmahl said Beckett: "These life-long stretches of walking are the center of the play; everything else is secondary " ( This lifelong pacing up and forms the center of the piece, everything else is of secondary importance. ).

Interpretation

Mechanically like a metronome is M from wall to wall and proceeding as in a dark prison cell the limited horizon of their existence from. Both the back and forth of their exact, always the same movement as well as her ageless appearance symbolize not only the idle their lives and the On - the place -kicking of her consciousness, but also the meticulous pendulum of monotonous running time seems to stand still and yet never stops. Cold, isolation and loneliness determine this still reduced by some additional degrees of Beckett endgame. As a constantly shivering mind wanders May up and down with arms entwined. It seems only a shadow of itself and no longer be of this world. And her mother, who wastes away somewhere invisible in the dark is probably already dead and probably exists only in the imagination of their daughter.

Text output

• Samuel Beckett: Then and kicks. In: Theater Today, Volume 11 (1976 )
• Samuel Beckett: kicks. Q.s. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976.