Rockaby

Rockaby

Rockaby is a short, one woman play. It was written for the British actress Billie Whitelaw in 1980, in English, and premiered in 1981.

A woman sits in a rocking chair and listens to a recording of her own voice, her only companion. The voice recounts a story much like her own - perhaps it is her own - of an old woman who is alone at the end of yet another long day. The old woman is ridiculous and pathetic at once. The brief play is a meditation on the lack of human company and the loneliness of dying in solitude, knowing that there is indeed noone there.

"I just feel she's fading away, or fading off somewhere. And it's all part of the lullaby." — Billie Whitelaw

Many of Beckett's later works are minimalist, to say the least. One in fact doesn't have any actors in it at all. Another confines itself to a well-lit mouth jabbering away.

Bert Nubile plays the old woman in Rockaby

Roberta Nubile

is Woman and Voice

Roberta has been involved with Vermont theater in various companies and capacities since the early nineties and her first role with the late, great Garage Theater Company. She has done original multimedia performances at the Royall Tyler Theater and the Flynn, in collaboration with other Vermont artists, including Oliver Kiehl, a puppeteer. She performed in English theater in Munich in a favorite role as Ruth in Cosi. In addition to parenting two daughters who attend the Waldorf grade school and volunteer work, Bert is now transitioning into a writing career, following twenty-two years as a registered nurse. She lives in Charlotte with her family.