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11-05 Here All Night.qxp_GP 10/27/15 4:11 PM Page 1 Thursday–Saturday Evenings, November 5–7, 2015, at 7:30 Post-performance discussion with Conor Lovett, Judy Hegarty Lovett, and Bill Irwin on Friday, November 6 Beckett Shorts Here All Night (U.S. premiere) Featuring selected music and texts from across Beckett’s prose and plays Gare St. Lazare Ireland Conor Lovett , Actor Melanie Pappenheim , Singer Christopher Allan , Cello John-Paul Gandy , Piano Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh , Hardanger d’amore Chorus : Margery Daley, Madeline Apple Healey, Margaret Lias, Kate Maroney, Heather Petrie, Jamet Pittman Judy Hegarty Lovett , Director Paul Clark , Composer and Musical Director Mike Gunning , Lighting Design Maura O’Keeffe , Producer Here All Night is approximately 65 minutes long and will be performed without intermission. Here All Night was created by Paul Clark, Judy Hegarty Lovett, Conor Lovett, and Caoimhín Ó’Raghallaigh. These performances are made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater Please make certain all your electronic devices at the West Side YMCA are switched off. WhiteLightFestival.org 11-05 Here All Night.qxp_GP 10/27/15 4:11 PM Page 2 MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center. Upcoming White Light Festival Events: Saturday, November 7, at 4:00 in the “Here All Night,” based on “Watt,” “First Love,” Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse and “The Unnamable” by Samuel Beckett, is White Light Conversation: Language and presented through special arrangement with Human Consciousness Georges Borchardt, Inc. on behalf of The Estate John Schaefer , Moderator of Samuel Beckett. All rights reserved. With Joan La Barbara , Colum McCann , Steven Pinker , and Gary Tomlinson Performance extract of Gare St. Lazare Ireland’s work in progress of How It Is by Samuel Beckett, performed by Conor Lovett, with director Judy Hegarty Lovett Monday and Tuesday, November 9–10, at 7:30 No’s Knife (world premiere) Excerpts from Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett Lisa Dwan , Performer and Co-director Nicholas Johnson , Co-director Friday, November 13, at 7:30 in the Bruno Walter Auditorium White Light on Film: Waiting for Beckett— A Portrait of Samuel Beckett Directed and produced for Global Village by John L. Reilly, produced by Melissa Shaw-Smith. 1994. 86 minutes. Friday and Saturday, November 20–21, at 7:30, and Sunday, November 22, at 3:00 at New York City Center A Sadler’s Wells London Production Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music (U.S. Premiere) Thomas Adès, Piano and Conductor Orchestra of St. Luke’s Wayne McGregor , Choreographer Karole Armitage , Choreographer Alexander Whitley , Choreographer Crystal Pite , Choreographer THOMAS ADÈS: Concentric Paths, Life Story, Piano Quintet, Polaris Presented in association with New York City Center For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit WhiteLightFestival.org. Call the Lincoln Center Info Request Line at (212) 875-5766 to learn about program cancellations or to request a White Light Festival brochure. Visit WhiteLightFestival.org for full festival listings. Join the conversation: #LCWhiteLight We would like to remind you that the sound of coughing and rustling paper might distract the performers and your fellow audience members. In consideration of the performing artists and members of the audience, those who must leave before the end of the performance are asked to do so between pieces. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in the building. 11-05 Here All Night.qxp_GP 10/27/15 4:11 PM Page 3 Note from the Director opted for Here All Night . Most exciting for us four was the music that Beckett himself By Judy Hegarty Lovett wrote and which features in his novel The first play I saw in my early teens was Watt. Over several years and with the addi - Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Ivernia tion of original compositions and arrange - Theatre in Cork. Since then, I have loved ments by Paul, the inventiveness of Samuel Beckett’s writing. His influence and Caoimhín, and Conor as a leading inter - brilliance continues to ripple across the arts preter of Beckett’s work, I had the experi - worldwide. With Gare St. Lazare Ireland, ence of sculpting this immense fountain of I’ve directed over 17 Beckett productions talent. We put together the current ensem - covering Beckett’s novels and plays. ble of musicians and singers in 2012 and performed at the Brighton Festival in 2013. It was while I was directing Beckett’s It was a very special time. The busy sched - seven radio plays for RTÉ, Ireland’s national ules of our virtuoso team meant that this is radio, in 2006 that I spoke with Paul Clark our second-ever outing for Here All Night, and Conor Lovett about exploring the and we are delighted to have with us a cho - music in Beckett’s work. An accomplished rus of six local singers, making it a unique pianist, Beckett loved music, and the evi - New York event. dence is ever-present in his gorgeous prose. The seemingly effortless flow of his We continue to develop Here All Night writing is full of rhythm and musicality, knowing its endless potential. We always counterpoint and harmony. One of his learn so much from bringing the work to a short stories, “First Love,” is mapped out live audience and genuinely feel it is the across the same terrain as Schubert’s audience who completes the work. It is an Winterreise (Winter Journey). absolute honor to share Here All Night with the White Light Festival audience. In 2010 Paul, Conor, Caoimhín Ó Ragh - allaigh, and I compiled, collated, and We wish to dedicate the U.S. premiere to explored music across Beckett’s plays, Christopher J. Herbert and Nancy Welch, novels, stories, and poetry. This resulted in who celebrate ten years as patrons of Gare a work we almost titled Love and Per - St. Lazare Ireland. mutations , however for reasons that will become clearer as the evening unfolds, we —Copyright © 2015 by Judy Hegarty Lovett WhiteLightFestival.org 11-05 Here All Night.qxp_GP 10/27/15 4:11 PM Page 4 Samuel Beckett a feeling of joy. The friend said it was the kind of day that made one glad to be alive. By Mel Gussow Beckett responded, ‘‘I wouldn’t go that far.’’ Samuel Beckett (1906 –1989) was a tower - Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in ing figure in drama and fiction who altered Foxrock, a suburb of Dublin, on Good the course of contemporary theater. His Friday, April 13, 1906 (that date is some - plays became the cornerstone of 20th- times disputed; it is said that on his birth century theater beginning with Waiting for certificate the date is May 13). He majored Godot , which was first produced in 1953. in French and Italian at Trinity College, As the play’s two tramps wait for a Dublin. At school he excelled both in his salvation that never comes, they exchange studies and in sports, playing cricket and vaudeville routines and metaphysical rugby. He received his Bachelor of Arts musings—and comedy rises to tragedy. degree in 1927 and his Master of Arts degree in 1931. At the root of his art was a philosophy of the deepest yet most courageous pessimism, In 1938, while walking with friends on a exploring man’s relationship with his God. Paris street, he was stabbed with a knife With Beckett, one searched for hope amid by a panhandler. A young piano student despair and continued living with a kind of named Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil stoicism, as illustrated by the final words of came to his rescue and telephoned for an his novel, The Unnamable : “You must go ambulance. One of his lungs was perfo - on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” Or as he wrote rated and the knife narrowly missed his in Worstward Ho , one of his later works of heart. Beckett fully recovered from the fiction: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” wound but it left psychological scars. When he asked his assailant the reason for Beckett wrote six novels, four long plays the assault, the man replied, “Je ne sais and dozens of shorter ones, volumes of pas, Monsieur.” More than ever, Beckett stories and narrative fragments, some of became aware of the randomness of life. which were short novels. He wrote poetry The episode had one other long-ranging and essays on the arts, including an essay effect: He began a lifelong relationship about Marcel Proust (one of his particular with Deschevaux-Dumesnil, whom he favorites), radio and television plays, and married in Folkestone, England, in 1961. prose pieces he called residua and disjecta. With her, he chose to remain in France dur - In 1969 the Irish author, who wrote first in ing World War II rather than return to the English and later in French, received the safety of Ireland. Nobel Prize in Literature. In the last year of his life, Beckett lived in a For more than 50 years Beckett lived in his small, barely furnished room of a nursing adopted city of Paris. Though he wrote home. He had a television set on which he most of his work in French, he remained watched major tennis and soccer events, definably Irish in his voice, manner, and and several books, including his boyhood humor. Even in his final years, when he copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy in Italian. lived in a nursing home in Paris, he joined He died on December 22, 1989. friends in a sip of Irish whisky, which seemed to warm his bones and open him to —Excerpted from The New York Times , Decem - greater conviviality.