Siân Phillips and Samuel Beckett

This rather cool photograph from 1966 shows Siân Phillips working with Samuel Beckett on his 20 minute monologue, Eh Joe. Although only a very short piece it took Phillips two weeks of painstaking preparation to get it right with Beckett himself overseeing proceedings. He was a notoriously harsh taskmaster issuing instructions on the exact amount of time that each comma and full stop in the text represented. He alarmed Phillips by beating out time with his arm like a human metronome. The monologue was eventually recorded at the BBC.

*The above photograph is © Michael Peto.