The Gate Theatre Is Grateful to the Arts Council for Their Continued Support
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CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM November 17–20, 2011 Thursday, November 17, 2011, 7pm Zellerbach Playhouse Saturday, November 19, 2011, 2pm Sunday, November 20, 2011, 8pm Gate Theatre Dublin Zellerbach Playhouse Michael Colgan, Director Gate Theatre Dublin Watt and Endgame PROGRAM by Samuel Beckett Watt by Samuel Beckett Texts from the novel selected by Barry McGovern Anthony Woods Anthony The Gate Theatre is grateful to The Arts Council for their continued support. Anthony Woods Anthony The Gate Theatre productions of Watt and Endgame by Samuel Beckett are presented at Cal Performances as part of Imagine Ireland, Culture Ireland’s year of Irish arts in America, 2011. cast Barry McGovern The Gate Theatre is a not-for-profit organization which is administered by the Edwards-MacLiammóir Trust and funded in part by the Irish Arts Council. creatives The U.S. tour of Watt and Endgame is presented in association with David Eden Productions, Ltd. Director Tom Creed Watt and Endgame by Samuel Beckett are presented through special arrangement with Costume Design Joan O’Clery Georges Borchardt, Inc. on behalf of the Estate of Samuel Beckett. All rights reserved. Lighting Design James McConnell Sound Design Denis Clohessy These performances are made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsors Music Barry McGovern after Samuel Beckett Art Berliner and Marian Lever. Cal Performances’ 2011–2012 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. Watt is approximately 55 minutes in length with no intermission. 16 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 17 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM A Note on Watt Thursday, November 17, 2011, 7pm Friday, November 18, 2011, 8pm amuel beckett wrote of Watt: “It is an After the war, Beckett tried to have Watt Saturday, November 19, 2011, 8pm Sunsatisfactory book, written in dribs and published, but it was rejected by all to whom it Sunday, November 20, 2011, 3pm drabs, but it has its place in the series, as will was sent. One publisher wrote, “What is it that Zellerbach Playhouse perhaps appear in time.” this Dublin air does to these writers?” It was It was begun in Paris on February 11, 1941, eventually published in August 1953 in Paris and not completed until 1945. There are six note- by Olympia Press in collaboration with a group Gate Theatre Dublin books in the University of Texas at Austin which of young American expatriates, led by Richard are full of material that did not end up in the Seaver, called Collection Merlin (or the Merlin PROGRAM published book. These notebooks are extraordi- juveniles, as Beckett called them). Later it was nary manuscripts, full of doodles, drawings and published by Grove Press in the United States designs—mathematical and otherwise—which and by John Calder in Britain. Watt was banned Endgame tell the tale of the book, so long in gestation. The in Ireland in 1954 but, curiously, Ireland was the by Samuel Beckett novel (if that is the word) was written in English, first country to publish extracts from Watt in his last work in that language before turning to the literary magazines Envoy and Irish Writing French. He did, of course, write in both English between 1950 and 1953. It was while touring and French later. Ireland as an actor in Anew McMaster’s compa- Watt is the great transition work in Beckett’s ny in the early 1950s that Harold Pinter read an writing, the bridge between the Joyce-influenced extract from Watt in one of those magazines and early work and the great middle period of the became one of Beckett’s greatest champions. late 1940s and 1950s. Watt is for many a difficult book to read, Most of the writing of Watt took place in not least because of its seemingly endless lists the village of Roussillon in the Vaucluse area of and combinations and permutations. But the southeastern France between 1943 and 1944, perseverance is worth it and those who give it when Beckett was on the run from the Gestapo a chance will find great riches of language and because of his work with the French Resistance philosophy and great cause for laughter. It is one during World War II. He described writing it as of the few books that have made me laugh out “only a game, a means of staying sane.” loud on public transport. The house of Mr. Knott where Watt Watt the show is not Watt the book. It is a Woods Anthony goes to work is based on two houses: mainly distillation of the essence of the book. Much has Cooldrinagh in Foxrock, County Dublin, the had to be left out for an hour-long show. My ear- cast Beckett family home, and, to a lesser extent, the nest hope is that those who enjoy the show, and nearby Glencairn, the former home of Richard particularly those who don’t, will read the book. Hamm Owen Roe “Boss” Croker, a retired Irish-American politi- It is unlike anything else you will have read. Clov Barry McGovern cian, and, more recently, the residence of the This stage version of Watt is dedicated to the British Ambassador to Ireland. Watt’s journey memory of my good friend the great New York Nell Rosaleen Linehan on the train is from Harcourt Street Station in publisher and book lover, Dick Seaver, who died Nagg Des Keogh Dublin City to Foxrock on the old Harcourt in 2009 and who, more than anyone else, was Street railway line, most of which is now a tram- responsible for publishing Watt. creatives line. The racecourse is Leopardstown. Barry McGovern Director Alan Stanford Set Design Eileen Diss Costume Design Joan O’Clery Lighting Design James McConnell Endgame is approximately 90 minutes in length with no intermission. 18 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 19 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES beckett at the gate he gate theatre is synonymous with 1931 1950 1975 Tthe works of Samuel Beckett, having toured Performance of his first dramatic work, Le Kid, Death of his mother. Directs Waiting for Godot at Schiller Theatre, productions throughout the world from Beijing a parody of Corneille, at the Peacock Theatre. Berlin, assisted by Walter Asmus. to New York, Sydney to Toronto and London Proust, his only major piece of literary criticism, 1953 to Melbourne. published. Resigns his lectureship in Trinity. World premiere in Paris of En Attendant Godot 1976 In 1991, the Gate became the first theater at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris. That Time and Footfalls performed in London. in the world to present a full retrospective of all 1932 Ends and Odds published in London and 19 stage plays and, later, repeated the festival at Lives for brief periods in Kassel, Paris, London 1954 New York. Lincoln Center in New York and at the Barbican and Dublin. Waiting for Godot, translated by Beckett is pub- Centre in London. The Gate also played a major lished by Grove Press in New York. 1978 role in the 2006 Beckett Centenary Festival. 1933 Publication of Mirlitonnades, a collection of In 2007, the Gate toured a critically ac- Death of his father. 1957 short poems. claimed season, entitled Gate | Beckett, to the World premiere of Fin de Partie in French at the Sydney Festival and the following year toured 1934 Royal Court Theatre, London. 1980 it to Lincoln Center Festival in New York. In Publication of More Pricks Than Kicks. Publication of Company, a novella. 2008, the Gate completed an historic tour of 1958 its landmark production of Waiting for Godot, 1935 World premiere of Krapp’s Last Tape in London. 1981 which sold out 40 venues throughout the coun- Echo’s Bones, a cycle of 13 poems, published. World premiere of Rockaby and Ohio Impromptu try in the first ever all-Ireland tour. 1959 in America. 1937 Receives an honorary degree from Trinity Moves to Paris. In November, testifies in Dublin College, Dublin. Embers, a radio play, wins the 1982 beckett chronology at the libel trial of Oliver St. John Gogarty. Italia Prize. Catastrophe, dedicated to the imprisoned Czech dramatist Václav Havel, is performed in France. 1906 1938 1961 Quad is premiered on German television. III Samuel Barclay Beckett born on Good Friday, Stabbed on the street by a Parisian pimp named World premiere of Happy Days in New York. Seen III Said is published in London. April 13, at Foxrock, Dublin, the second son of Prudent. Murphy, his first novel, is published in William Mary Roe Beckett. London after 42 rejections. 1963 1983 World premiere of Play in German translation What Where? is premiered in New York. 1920–1923 1942 in Ulm. Educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen. French Resistance group in which Beckett is ac- 1984 tive is betrayed to the Gestapo. Beckett escapes 1964 Collected Shorter Prose, 1945–1980 is published 1923–1927 and flees to Roussillon, near Avignon, where he Film, made in New York starring Buster Keaton. in London. Reads French and Italian at Trinity College, remains for the next two years. Dublin. In B.A. examinations placed first in 1968 1986 class in Modern Literature. Spends 1926 sum- 1945 Come and Go performed for the first time in Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works mer vacation in France on a bicycle tour of the Awarded the Croix de Guerre for his work in the English at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin. published in London. Châteaux of the Loire. Resistance movement. 1969 1988 1928 1946 Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature. “What Is the Word” is published in Grand Street, Exchange lecturer at École Normale Supérieure Begins writing the trilogy of novels Molloy, New York. in Paris. Meets James Joyce. Malone Dies and The Unnamable in French.