BAM 2014 Next Wave Festival #EMBERS

Brooklyn Academy of Music

Alan H. Fishman, Chairman of the Board

William I. Campbell, Vice Chairman of the Board

Adam E. Max, Vice Chairman of the Board

Karen Brooks Hopkins, President

Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer Embers By Samuel Beckett Pan Pan Theatre

BAM Harvey Theater Sep 17—20 at 7:30pm

Approximate running time: 55 minutes, no intermission

Directed by Gavin Quinn Sculpture by Andrew Clancy Lighting design by Aedín Cosgrove Sound design by Jimmy Eadie

With Henry Andrew Bennett Ada Áine Ní Mhuirí

American stage manager R. Michael Blanco

Season Sponsor: Presented in association with Irish Arts Center

Embers by Samuel Beckett presented through special

arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of Time Warner is the BAM 2014 Next Wave the Estate of Samuel Beckett. All rights reserved. Festival Sponsor

Major support for theater at BAM provided by: The Francena T. Harrison Foundation Trust Stephanie & Timothy Ingrassia Donald R. Mullen Jr. The Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund The SHS Foundation The Shubert Foundation, Inc. 2014 Next Wave Festival

ABOUT EMBERS

“Silence in the house, not a sound, only the fire, no flames now, embers. Embers.”

Henry sits on a beach, remembering and imagining stories and incidents from his life. Tormented by his father’s suicide, his own dysfunctional family history, and his failure as a writer, hallucinations and reality merge as he attempts to stoke the fire of his creativity.

First broadcast on radio in 1959, Embers takes us on a journey into the haphazard world of Henry’s imagination, a world of ever-shifting mental leaps, ruminations, and ambiguities where creative story- telling and unfinished memories both real and unreal coalesce into one. Was Henry’s father washed out to sea while taking his evening swim, or did he commit suicide?

“We never found your body, you know…”

Excerpts from THEATER IN AN EXPANDED FIELD? EMBERS REIMAGINED BY PAN PAN

Embers is in a sense an installation of sculpture with words . . . You look at something and you hear words, so it’s an experiment in those two parts coming together. Basically it’s the elements of light, sculpture, and words all oscillating and happening at the same time. —Gavin Quinn, 2013

Embers is staged within the more familiar setting of a traditional theater space, and in this respect it departs somewhat conceptually from its predecessor [All That Fall]. It also includes two live actors, although the audience is largely unaware of their presence, as they remain mostly hidden for the majority of the performance. Despite these arguably significant changes in form (actors and theater), the central elements that go into constructing the works are strikingly consistent: a pre-recorded soundscape, a pre-programmed lighting system, and a carefully engineered listening environment. And yet with Embers, in a move that seems to signal that they are determined to further undermine the disciplinary boundaries of theater, Pan Pan introduces yet another unexpected material element, that of sculpture.

On the stage of Embers sits a four-meter-high wooden skull. It has been fashioned out of 222 layers of individually cut crenellated plywood and has deep slatted eyes and smoothed out teeth. The slats on the eyes open and close like the bars of an old radio, providing the audience with a rare glimpse of the actors who are housed inside. During the course of the performance a series of different lighting effects are projected onto the skull’s undulating surface, making it behave like an LED screen or a digitally rendered image.

Surrounding the skull are 562 miniature disc-shaped speakers. The speakers have been attached to a series of transparent polycarbonate strips and are extended floor to ceiling. Not merely an aesthetic device, the speakers perform a real and necessary function within the work. Pushing sound waves out onto the audience with considerable force, they create what Pan Pan’s audio designer Jimmy Eadie characterizes as a fully immersive sound environment (2013). Once again utilizing the term instal- lation to justify the construction of this very particular and fully embodied audio experience, Quinn contends: “[the speakers] hang as a kind of sound installation. So, it makes you aware of Beckett and makes you aware of the medium of sound” (2013, lecture).

—Judith Wilkinson, Journal of Beckett Studies, 2013 #EMBERS Photo courtesy Pan Pan Theatre Pan Photo courtesy Pan Who’s Who

GAVIN QUINN ANDREW CLANCY Director Sculptor

Gavin Quinn is the joint artistic director of Pan Andrew Clancy is a sculptor. His work is in Pan Theatre, which he founded with Aedín both public and private collections and over Cosgrove in 1991. His productions include the last 20 years he has exhibited widely. He his own play A Bronze Twist of Your Serpent also designs and builds sets. He has designed Muscles (named best overall production at for about 25 productions including Pan Pan the 1995 Dublin Fringe Festival); Cartoon; his Theatre’s Deflowerfucked, Macbeth 7, One- own play Standoffish at the Adelaide Festival; healing with Theatre, and Oedipus Loves You. Deflowerfucked; Mac-Beth 7; One: Healing With Theatre; The Playboy of the Western World in Beijing and Dublin, in Mandarin; Oedipus Loves You, which he co-wrote with Simon Doyle; The Crumb Trail; The Rehearsal: Playing the Dane, which won Irish Times Theatre Awards for best production and best set design in 2010; All That Fall at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, and BAM; Do Di Zhu (‘Fight the Landlord’) at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre and at the 2011 Shanghai Expo; A Doll House at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, and the Brisbane Powerhouse; and Everyone Is King Lear In His Own Home at last year’s Dublin Theatre Festival. His opera directing credits include Tom Johnson’s The Four-Note Opera, Ian Wilson’s Hamelin and Carmen for the Opera Theatre Company (OTC); The Magic Flute for OTC and English Touring Opera (ETO); The Abduction from the Seraglio for ETO at the Hackney Empire, London; and Così fan tutte for Opera Ireland. Who’s Who

AEDÍN COSGROVE JIMMY EADIE Lighting designer Sound designer

Aedín Cosgrove co-founded Pan Pan Theatre Jimmy Eadie works in sound design and with Gavin Quinn in 1991. Her design credits production. He released four albums with the for the company include The Playboy of the band Into Paradise, and a solo album under the Western World in Beijing; The Crumb Trail; name Amusement, and was a member of the The Rehearsal: Playing the Dane at the 2010 Dublin band the Idiots. He has released many Dublin Theatre Festival, where it won Irish Times collaborative works with Irish artists, and has Theatre Awards for best set design and best worked closely with the Crash Ensemble since production; Do Di Zhu (“Fight the Landlord”) 1997. As a sound designer, he has worked at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre and the with Rough Magic Theatre Company, Cois Ceim Shanghai Expo; All That Fall, for which she won Dance, Dadgha Dance Company, and RTÉ. the Irish Times Theatre Award for best lighting Presently he works at Bow Lane Recording design in 2011; A Doll House at the Smock Alley Studios in Dublin where he has engineered Theatre, Dublin; and Everyone Is King Lear In and produced albums for numerous acts. He His Own Home, Dublin Theatre Festival 2012. teaches at Trinity College Dublin and Windmill Her recent designs for opera and dance include Lane Academy. Eadie has worked with Pan Pan Falling Song and Five Ways to Drown for Junk Theatre since its early productions. Ensemble; and Don Pasquale, Così fan tutte, and Carmen for the Opera Theatre Company.

Photo: Ros Kavanagh Who’s Who

ANDREW BENNETT ÁINE NÍ MHUIRÍ Henry Ada

Andrew Bennett’s previous work with Pan Pan Áine Ní Mhuirí began her career at the Abbey includes Everyone Is King Lear In His Own Theatre, Dublin, where she appeared in The Home, All That Fall, Mac-Beth 7, Oedipus Loves of Cass Maguire, The Plough and the Loves You, and The Rehearsal, Playing the Stars (with which she toured the US), and The Dane. His work with the Corn Exchange Field. Her engagements elsewhere include The Theatre includes Freefall, Cat on a Hot Tin Voices of Shem at the Gate Theatre, Dublin; Roof, Everyday, Lolita, The Seagull, and Foley. Exiles and Juno and the Paycock for the Work with the Abbey/ Peacock includes The Royal National Theatre; Dirty Dusting on tour; Importance of Being Earnest, The Playboy of Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer for the Western World, Translations, The House, Rough Magic; Philadelphia Here I Come! on Tarry Flynn, and Fool for Love. He has worked tour with the Second Age Theatre Company; with Druid, Rough Magic, Passion Machine, John Gabriel Borkman at the Focus Theatre, and Bedrock. Film and television credits include Dublin; and A Doll House and All That Fall for Angela’s Ashes, Paths to Freedom, Pure Mule, Pan Pan Theatre. Her films include The Lonely Prosperity, Garage, Your Bad Self, Pentecost, Passion of Judith Hearne, The Field, Playboys, Chris O’Dowd’s Moone Boy, Foyle’s War, Damo The Run of the Country, Puckoon, Blind Fight, and Ivor, Noble, and The Stag. and Boy Eats Girl. Her television credits include Teems of Times, The Irish RM, The Price, Fair City, The Clinic, and Jack Taylor for RTÉ; and Ballykissangel for BBC Television, for which she received a CFT Excellence Award (USA). Who’s Who

PAN PAN THEATRE R. MICHAEL BLANCO American Stage Manager Pan Pan Theatre was formed in 1991 by Gavin Quinn and Aedín Cosgrove. Over the last 21 R. Michael Blanco has been the stage manager years, the company has developed an individual at BAM for Karole Armitage’s The Predator’s aesthetic, which has grown from exploring new Ball; Jonathan Miller’s St. Matthew Passion forms, approaches, and experiments with time, and Così fan tutte; Playing Shakespeare USA space, music, and performance. Pan Pan’s with John Barton; Sydney Theater Company’s recent productions include a Mandarin-language White Devil and Hedda Gabler; Donmar adaptation of Synge’s The Playboy of the Warehouse’s Uncle Vanya/Twelfth Night; the Western World in Beijing and an original musical RSC’s Don Carlos,A Midsummer Night’s Dream, take on a familiar myth in Oedipus Loves and Hecuba;Watermill/Propeller’s Merchant of You, Gina Moxley’s The Crumb Trail, and the Venice; andVesturport Theatre’s Metamorphosis award-winning The Rehearsal: Playing the and Faust:A Love Story; the Young Vic’s A Dane. The Chinese co-production Fight the Doll’s House; Chichester Festival Theater’s Landlord sold out in August 2012 in Darwin and King Lear. At the Metropolitan Opera: Kirov Melbourne, while their Everyone Is King Lear In Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, and Robert Wilson’s His Own Home stunned audiences at the 2012 Le Martyre de Saint Sebastian. Dublin Theatre Festival. All That Fall by Samuel Beckett won Best Lighting Design (Aedín Cosgrove) and Best Sound Design (Jimmy Eadie) in the 2012 Irish Times Theatre Awards and enjoyed a highly successful run at the 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival, Edinburgh International, and Sydney Festival. The Beckett radio play, Embers, received awards and five-star reviews at the Edinburgh International Festival 2013.

The actors are appearing with the permission of Actors’ Equity Association. The American stage manager is a member of Actors’ Equity Association.

L-R: Amy Burke, Andrew Clancy, Aedin Cosgrove, Gavin Quinn, Andrew Bennett, Áine Ní Mhuirí. Photo: Ros Kavanagh Embers

SAMUEL BECKETT CHRONOLOGY

1906 Samuel Barclay Beckett born on Good Friday, April 13, in Foxrock, Dublin,

the second son of William and Mary Roe Beckett.

1920—23 Educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen.

1923—27 Studies French and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin. In BA examinations

placed first in class in modern literature. Spends 1926 summer vacation in

France on a bicycle tour of the chateaux of the Loire.

1928 Exchange lecturer at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Meets James Joyce.

1930 First separately published work, a poem, Whoroscope. Appointed assistant

lecturer in French, Trinity College.

1931 Performance of his first dramatic work, Le Kid, a parody of Corneille, at the

Peacock Theatre. Proust, his only major piece of literary criticism, published.

Resigns his lectureship in Trinity.

1932 Lives for brief periods in Kassel, Paris, London, and Dublin.

1933 Death of his father.

1934 Publication of More Pricks Than Kicks.

1935 Echo’s Bones, a cycle of 13 poems, published.

1937 Moves to Paris. In November, testifies in Dublin at the libel trial of Oliver St.

John Gogarty.

1938 Stabbed on the street by a Parisian pimp named Prudent. Murphy, his first

novel, is published in London after 42 rejections.

1942 French Resistance group in which Beckett is active is betrayed to the Gestapo.

Beckett escapes and flees to Roussillon, near Avignon, where he remains for

the next two years.

1945 Awarded the Croix de Guerre for his work in the Resistance movement.

1946 Begins writing the trilogy of novels Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable

in French.

1949 Finishes writing En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot).

1950 Death of his mother. Embers

1953 World premiere in Paris of En Attendant Godot at the Théâtre de Babylone.

1954 Waiting for Godot, translated by Beckett, is published by Grove Press,

New York.

1957 World premiere of Fin de Partie in French at the Royal Court Theatre, London.

1958 World premiere of Krapp’s Last Tape in London.

1959 Receives an honorary degree from Trinity College, Dublin.

Embers, a radio play, wins the Italia Prize.

1961 World premiere of Happy Days in New York.

1963 World premiere of German translation of Play in Ulm.

1964 Film made in New York starring Buster Keaton.

1968 Come and Go performed for the first time in English at the Peacock

Theatre, Dublin.

1969 Awarded Nobel Prize for literature.

1972 World premiere of Not I at Lincoln Center.

1975 Directs Waiting for Godot at Schiller Theatre, Berlin, assisted by Walter Asmus.

1976 That Time and Footfalls performed in London.

Ends and Odds published in London and New York.

1978 Publication of Mirlitonnades, a collection of short poems.

1980 Publication of Company, a novella.

1981 World premiere of Rockaby and Ohio Impromptu in America.

1982 Catastrophe, dedicated to the imprisoned Czech dramatist Vaclav Havel, is

performed in France. Quad is premiered on German television.

III Seen III Said is published in London.

1983 What Where? is premiered in New York.

1984 Collected Shorter Prose, 1945—1980 is published in London.

1986 Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works published in London.

1988 “What is the Word” is published, Grand Street, New York.

1989 Stirrings Still is published in London and New York and as Soubresauts in

Paris. Beckett dies in Paris on December 22.