Arena — Season 1, Episode 189: Rockaby (Samuel Beckett Season)
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Arena continues the Samuel Beckett Season with a unique record of his new play Rockaby which has just opened at the National Theatre. Premiered in America, it was filmed in rehearsal and performance by the celebrated film maker D.A. Pennebaker. The programme follows Billie Whitelaw's preparations for her latest Beckett role: 'People think because I do this I'm well read and knowledgeable and know what it means. In fact, I have no education at all. Beckett blows the notes... they just come out of me....' Attend the opening night in Buffalo; New York, and see the strange and haunting play, and the old woman rocking herself into death...
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.