Why is it that down the years so many artists seem determined to present Samuel Beckett's work outside of the medium for which they were written? Why do they want to make films of his stage productions and even worse, stage productions of his radio plays? Writing in 1968 to his friend, American theatre director Alan Schneider, an exasperated Beckett complains: "Oliver & Plowright came up with a hot offer for All That Fall at National. I said no but they came over again and insisted. Larry kept saying: 'It'd make a great show!' However said no again. Impossible in the light. They had worked out some idea with players moving from stage onto screen. They were a bit fed up with me but nice. Same day BBC wanting to do Happy Days on sound radio with Dame Edith Evans! Oh la la! How crossed can garters get?"

Attempts to cross Beckett's garters were seemingly a constant problem throughout his life, from both the famous and the obscure. Forty years ago he was simultaneously defending his radio play All That Fall from a stage production by no less than Lawrence Olivier and his theatrical play Happy Days from BBC radio. Throughout the 1950s for example, Beckett had consistently resisted efforts by John Houston and Peter O' Toole to make a feature film of Waiting for Godot.

In June 1961 however he finally relented and allowed BBC make a television production of Waiting for Godot. (Perhaps it was because Donald McWhinnie, who had been an important instigator in Beckett's early radio play writing, was directing). Beckett, who happened to be in London at the time, watched the transmission with McWhinnie, actor Peter Woodthorpe and his fiction publisher John Calder. As they watched Beckett displayed acute signs of irritation and unhappiness and Calder later described what happened at the end: "…Long silence. Woodthorpe switched off his television set whereupon Sam put his head into his hands and said, 'Thank you Donald, thank you for doing that for me. But, you know it's not right on television. But thank you for doing that'. Another long silence."

Later according to James Knowlson, one of his biographers, Beckett made a revealing comment about the television experiment when he said: "My play wasn't made for this box. My play was written for small men locked in a big space. Here you're all too big for the place."

In the context of the recent decision by the Beckett estate to permit the filming for the first time of all 19 of his theatrical plays, one might usefully echo Beckett's seminal question, is there anything which makes "small men" larger than a film camera? Or indeed why does the instinct for Beckettian "garter crossing" persist?

This film project which includes RTÉ, Channel 4 and Micheal Colgan of The Gate Theatre will see all 19 plays filmed and broadcast in Ireland and the UK in the autumn. Given the documented history of Beckett's life-long struggle to protect his vision from the innovation -- however well meant -- of others, were he still alive, I believe is difficult to imagine him consenting to such a proposition. Equally the decision of the Beckett Estate to permit this innovation is surprising to say the least.

That he did consent in his life to some filmed productions of his plays is correct but (despite his own interest in film) he played no part in their production and later came to regret their production. Certainly with the BBC Godot it seems that once Beckett himself had seen the results, they confirmed his own reservations. Quite simply Godot on stage and Godot on film were two entirely different things.

Beckett's uncharacteristically dictatorial attitude in relation to the production and interpretation of his work is now theatrical history. Time and again he refused to consent to those seeking to add or to subtract to his opus. To his great chagrin, the presumption of many that his work was simply avant-garde and would benefit from benevolent improvisation deeply concerned him. In fact the very opposite is the case.

A Beckett play is more like a musical score than a mere text, utilising theatre in an unconventional catharsis of aesthetic effect. Above all it aims for an intimate personal and subjective response from each member of the audience; consequently Beckett rightly deplores any attempted mitigation between his play as object and his audience as subject. And that must include all attempts to change its genre.

Again in a 1960 letter to Alan Schneider he is explicit about another German attempt: "I dream sometimes of all German directors of plays with perhaps one exception united in one with his back to the wall and me shooting a bullet into his balls every five minutes until he loose his taste for improving authors." As many famous directors and actors were to discover when working with him, "being improved" -- a not unusual aspect of live theatrical performance -- was anathema to Beckett. When director himself, he heard the text in his head and saw the production in his imagination. In short people could only have it all his way or not at all.

This film project is the latest in a long association between the Michael Colgan's Gate and Beckett's work. In 1991 in festival in Dublin they produced all of Beckett's plays and again in London last year. Deservedly they earned comprehensive and international critical acclaim for their achievement and particularly for the way in which they endeavoured to perform within Beckett's own vision of his work. Nor are there any questions about the ability of the Gate to dramatically interpret Beckett's work except for two fundamental questions overshadowing this entire project: can theatrical productions of Beckett work as feature films and therefore should they be attempted?

It is a very important question because in asking is it possible to re-create in another medium the "Beckettian effect" achieved on stage, we ask fundamental questions about the synthesis of Beckettian drama. I believe that everything we understand about the "Beckettian effect" on stage -- as against the intrinsic nature of film -- suggests that is it impossible. What will emerge will probably look and sound like Beckett but it will not be Beckett's drama. It will be an approximation, unfortunately masquerading down the years ahead as Beckettian drama.

In the first instance this project ignores the fundamental differences of art forms between theatrical production and film. There are fundamental dichotomies between a live and a recorded dramatic performance; for example are these films to be recorded in front of an audience? If not how can a play realise performance without an audience, especially of all things, a Beckett play?

Then there is the central problem with film of the intrinsic meditation of the camera; i.e. the director. In theatre each audience member is a priori their own "director," selecting, focusing and choosing their own personal interpretation. Within the given space of the theatre they make their own montage of meanings and create their own individual edit of what they see and hear. In vivid contrast in the cinema, the audience member's interpretation is by definition already limited by the vision imposed by the director's interpretation. Every single choice of shot, angle or movement of the camera, every sound effect and montage, is driven by the director's choice of meaning. Narrative drives film and the significance of the how, when and why of every moment accordingly. There could hardly be a more stark contrast then with Beckett, where the prime casualty in his experiment with disintegrating language is the collapse of narrative not to mention the wider implications of this collapse for meaning.

And this of course brings us to the quintessence of the dilemma that filming Beckett's plays creates -- the question of meaning itself. Meaning or otherwise is at the heart of critical concern with Beckett, it has created its own international cottage industry. Ruefully I might suggest that only directors who are totally unaware of the complexity involved could attempt such a proposition. Certainly ego is required for the profession of directing film but imagine the prospect of engaging in the act of directing a play as theatrically seminal as Godot for example and thereby, omnisciently dictating its meaning by every single choice of shot, focus pull, montage and edit? Has the auteur theory of cinema ever had a moment as dizzy as this?

The unavoidable truth is that a filmed Beckett stage play cannot by definition have the same meaning as one witnessed on stage and in performance. And for the elemental reason that Beckettian meaning as such, is intrinsically an aesthetic product of its theatrical staging and its interplaying subjective relationship with the audience member. In other words the "eye of the mind" and the "eye of the film director" cannot be one and the same thing -- since when has the deictic camera and the subjective delineator approximated? Perhaps we should remember Beckett's response when once asked what he most valued in his own work -- "What I don't understand" was his reply.

One might as well argue that a photograph of a Picasso painting is the artistic equivalent to standing in front of one and looking. Perhaps the cruellest irony about this film project is that it will by definition be representation and representational of Beckettian theatre at that. The perils of this artistic approach should be measured against the fact that Beckettian attempts to obliterate conventional representation are in themselves primary impulses in his dramatic opus.

Given the status of his achievement his demands are surely minimal, no more than the freedom and the right to have his work presented exactly as he wanted -- no more, no less. Opposing an American version of Endgame he said: "My play requires an empty room and two small windows. The American Repertory Theatre, which dismisses my directions, is a complete parody of the play as conceived by me."

The danger of Beckettian parody underlies this whole project and complications are bound to arise between the artistic integrity of the Gate's staged Beckett and the Gate's filmed Beckett. In future time will they come to assume equal value to a wider audience? For future generations of Beckett students will his plays become a mere collection of VHS cassettes. If so, far from making an important artistic contribution or bringing Beckett to a wider television audience, this result will actually inflict grave damage on Beckett's own definitive canon of theatrical priorities; something he devoted an artistic life to defending and something that was at the very apotheosis of his very genius. How on earth do you film what he described as "To and fro in shadow, from outer shadow to inner shadow. To and fro, between unattainable self and unattainable non-self."