A & E

For years, patrons have been asking artistic director Andrew S. Paul when he's going include one of Samuel Beckett's 19 stage plays in a Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre season.

This season, his answer is now.

Ask him which one, and the answer is startling: all of them.

To celebrate Beckett's 100th birthday, Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre will give patrons access to performances of all 19 of his stage plays.

"My answer is that I can now say we have done all of them," Paul jokes. "The real reason -- aside from that his plays are profound and great theater -- is that Beckett has had a profound impact on theater and nearly every writer in the theater owes him a debt."

During the three-week BeckettFest, a 14-member ensemble of actors and directors will perform stand-alone productions of Beckett's "Endgame," "Krapp's Last Tape" and "Happy Days." Fifteen of Beckett's shorter works will be packaged into three programs of five plays each under organizing titles -- "Beckett's Women," "With and Without Words" and "Make Sense Who May."

The plays will run in a schedule of revolving repertory that begins Thursday and continues through Sept. 10.

The celebration will conclude October 19, when Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre hosts a special night in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's presentation of "Waiting for Godot" produced by Dublin's Gate Theatre.

Paul originally planned to conclude his BeckettFest with an all-star reading of "Waiting for Godot," Beckett's best-known play. But he's happy to be collaborating with the Trust on this high-profile event.

"That production will be very compelling," he says. "It's a great way to finish the cycle."

Beckett has a reputation for creating non-realistic plays that some call stark, minimalist, pessimistic and confounding. It didn't help that when mystified observers asked Beckett to explain his work and its meaning, his response was, "I meant what I said."

Others revere him as the man who created an awareness of absurdist drama and are drawn to his works' abundant imagery and sly humor and argue that his message is that the journey of life is difficult but worth the effort.

Paul acknowledges that asking audiences to sign on for the complete Beckett experience is a risk.

He's optimistic that they will, though.

More than a month before the start of BeckettFest, Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre had already sold 750 $30 festival passes, which give patrons entree to all the productions except "Endgame" and "Waiting for Godot."

Nevertheless, "It's not everyone's thing," he says. "My job is to reduce the barriers in people's minds who find Beckett to be obtruse and bleak. ... Our job is to make the plays presentable in a way that the audience will take the journey with us."

To support audiences in their journey, the BeckettFest program contains 24 pages of information and insight covering every play.

"When they do take the journey, they will find (the plays) are full of ideas and imagery. You will find yourself running over in your mind words, phrases and ideas for days and days," Paul says.

He has hired Polish theater director Tadeusz Bradecki to direct "Endgame," which Paul considers the centerpiece of the festival.

"I gave him an impossible task -- what would be ideal would be to see the play in a new light or in an innovative way but at the same time that would in no way offend the spirit of (Beckett)," Paul says.

"Endgame" will feature Larry John Meyers and Simon Bradbury as Hamm, a blind bully of a master, and Clov, his much-abused slave, witnessing the end of the world with a mixture of anticipation and reluctance.

Bradecki has directed plays by Bertolt Brecht at Canada's Shaw Festival and Georg Buchner's "Woyzeck" in Moscow. But this is his directing debut in the United States, and as well as his first time directing a Beckett play.

Like Paul, he knows audiences are wary of the challenge of Beckett's work.

"There is a resistance in the casual arts consumer to this material or anything they think is heady or difficult," Bradecki says. "It's the same problem with Shakespeare. Anybody who has a resistance to Shakespeare, I find unfathomable."

Bradecki decided to place both audience and performers on the stage of the Charity Randall Theatre. Promotional materials say an empty, snow-covered auditorium will serve as background.

Now that he has taken on the challenge, he's become fond of "Endgame."

"It's the beginning of a genre (about) the essentials of human existence written like no one has written about man before," Bradecki says.

He thinks the key to understanding "Endgame" is in one of its lines: "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness."

"With this line, you can see the wonderful, great combination of tragedy and comedy with absurdity," Bradecki says.

Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre night for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's presentation of the Gate Theatre of Dublin's production of "Waiting for Godot" will be at 8 p.m. Oct. 19 at the Byham Theater, Downtown. Tickets: $50. Includes a post-show reception at Bossa Nova. Details: 412-561-6000, ext. 207.

BeckettFest

Seventeen plays by Samuel Beckett are organized into five productions in revolving repertory on two stages at the Stephen Foster Memorial Theatre.

• "Krapp's Last Tape," Henry Heymann Theatre, 8 p.m. Aug 25 and 27, 2 p.m. Aug. 26

• Beckett's Women: "Play," "Not I," "Come and Go," "Footfalls" and "Rockaby," Henry Heymann Theatre, 8 p.m. Aug. 29, 31 and Sept. 2

• With and Without Words: "Catastrophe," "Rough for Theatre II," "A Piece of Monologue," "Rough for Theatre I" and "Act Without Words II," Henry Heymann Theatre, 8 p.m. Sept. 3 and 5, 2 p.m. Sept. 9

• "Happy Days," Charity Randall Theatre, 8 p.m. Sept. 7

• Make Sense Who May: "Act Without Words I," "What Where," "Breath," "That Time" and "Ohio Impromptu," Charity Randall Theatre, 2 p.m. Sept. 10

Admission: $15 each program; $10 each program for students. A $30 Festival Pass provides admission to all BeckettFest plays except "Endgame."

Samuel Beckett highlights

1906: Samuel Barclay Beckett is born on Good Friday, April 13, in Foxrock, an affluent Protestant neighborhood in Cooldrinagh, Ireland.

1920: Begins attending Portora Royal School, where Oscar Wilde also was educated.

1923: Enters Trinity College, Dublin, to study for an art degree. While there, he learns Italian and French and develops a lifelong affection for the poetry of Dante Alighieri.

1927: Graduates first in his class with a BA in foreign languages.

1928: Moves to Paris and becomes part of a literary circle that includes James Joyce, who becomes a lifelong friend.

1929: Meets Suzanne Descheveaux-Demensil, whom he will marry in 1961.

1930: Publishes his first separate work, the poem "Whoroscope."

1930: Makes his only stage appearance in three performances of "Le Kid" at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin.

1937: First significant attempt to write a play. It's titled "Human Wishes" and based on the final years of Dr. Samuel Johnson's life.

1947: Writes first full-length play, in French, "Eleutheria."

1948-49: Writes "En attendant Godot" -- "Waiting for Godot" -- between October and January.

1953: "Waiting for Godot" debuts in French at the Theatre de Babylon in Paris. Reviews are mixed but sympathetic. Translates the play into English for his American publisher, Grove Press.

1956: American debut of "Waiting for Godot" at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami. It is not well received.

1957: "Fin de Partie" -- "Endgame" -- is produced in French at the Royal Court Theatre in London after the Theatre de l'Oeuvre backs out.

1961: Marries Suzanne Descheveaux-Demensil. Begins translation of "Happy Days" into French. "Waiting for Godot" is broadcast on BBC television.

1964: Makes what will be his only visit to the United States when he travels to New York City for the filming of his only screenplay, "Film," which stars Buster Keaton.

1969: Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, beating out that year's favored candidate, Norman Mailer.

1975: Directs "Waiting for Godot" in Germany. Begins "Footfalls" and directs a French production of "Not I" -- "Pas Moi."

1976: "Footfalls" and "That Time" are performed at London's Royal Court Theatre as part of a 70th birthday celebration for Beckett, who directs his friend British actress Billie Whitelaw in "Footfalls."

1977: Directs "Krapp's Last Tape" in Berlin.

1981: "Ohio Impromptu" has its world premiere in Columbus, Ohio, as part of a symposium that honors his 75th birthday.

1982: Writes and translates "Catastrophe," which is performed in France at the Avignon Festival.

1989: Dies on Dec. 22. His wife, Suzanne, had died July 17. They are buried next to each other in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.

1991: Dublin's Gate Theatre stages the world's first BeckettFest when it presents a full retrospective of all 19 of Samuel Beckett's stage plays over a three-week period.

Source: "The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett" by C.J. Ackerley and S.E. Gomtarksi, Grove Press, 2004.

• Most Read
• Most E-mailed
• Latest News