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Monday and Tuesday Evenings, November 2–3, 2015, at 7:30

Post-performance discussion with Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett on November 2 Pre-performance discussion by Keri Walsh on November 3 at 6:30

Beckett Shorts

The End By Samuel Beckett

Conor Lovett , Actor Judy Hegarty Lovett , Director Mike Gunning , Lighting Design Maura O’Keeffe , Associate Producer

“The End” is approximately 80 minutes long and will be performed without intermission.

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 11-02 The End.qxp_GP 10/21/15 12:10 PM Page 2

MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center. Upcoming White Light Festival Events:

Thursday–Saturday Evenings, November 5–7, “The End” by Samuel Beckett is presented through at 7:30 special arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc. Here All Night (U.S. premiere) on behalf of The Estate of Samuel Beckett. All Featuring selected music and texts from across rights reserved. Samuel Beckett’s prose and plays Gare St. Lazare Ireland Directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett

Monday and Tuesday Evenings, November 9–10, at 7:30 No’s Knife (world premiere) Excerpts from Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett Lisa Dwan , Performer and Director Nicholas Johnson , Director

Saturday Afternoon, November 7, at 4:00 in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse White Light Conversation: Language and Human Consciousness John Schaefer , Moderator 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

Friday Evening, 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.

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. 11-02 The End.qxp_GP 10/21/15 12:10 PM Page 3

Note from the Director to return to the city to present two Beckett By Judy Hegarty Lovett works at the White Light Festival.

There are many New York connections with I consider “The End” to be one of Samuel Beckett’s work: the great produc - Beckett’s most complete and haunting tions of Mabou Mines, the wonderful Bill works. It can be seen as a precursor or Irwin, and the late, great Joseph Chaikin; sketch for the characters who inhabit so Irish Beckett actors Jack MacGowran, Barry many of Beckett’s subsequent works, McGovern, and Conor Lovett have all per - whose view of the world is at odds with formed here; Beckett’s U.S. publishers the world’s view of them. For me, though, Barney Rossett and Richard and Jeannette it is an homage to life and the living. A man Seaver are New Yorkers all; playwrights in his later years has fully come to terms Sam Shephard, Edward Albee, and Will with the fact that when all is said and done, Eno all cite Beckett’s influence; and of we have ourselves alone to deal with, to course our hosts here at Lincoln Center have a great history of presenting answer to, to answer for. We are all of us Beckett’s work. Beckett himself shot his kings of our own plot; every life can be cel - only film, called film , here, with his director ebrated and every death commemorated in of choice, the esteemed Alan Schneider, a full breath; we are in, and then out, of it all. and Buster Keaton in the lead role. I would like to dedicate these perfor - Gare St. Lazare Ireland first presented mances of “The End” to the memory of Beckett’s prose works in New York in 1998, Micheline and Albert Sakharoff, two cher - when Molloy played at the Irish Arts Center. ished champions of our company. Since then, we have performed here sev - eral times, and it is an absolute honor for us —Copyright © 2015 by Judy Hegarty Lovett

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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. In no way could Beckett ber 27, 1989 © 1989 The New York Times. All ever be considered an optimist though. In rights reserved. Used by permission and pro - an often repeated story, on a glorious tected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or sunny day he walked jauntily through a retransmission of this Content without express London park with an old friend and exuded written permission is prohibited. 11-02 The End.qxp_GP 10/21/15 12:10 PM Page 5

Note on Beckett’s Prose determining to quit the stage in favor of the page. He wrote to his French publisher By Dan Gunn Jérôme Lindon, in November 1969, after protesting that he should not be counted I am in acute crisis about my work (on on for any new dramas: “There is also and the lines familiar to you by now) and have decided that I not merely can’t but above all the fact that I must work, and had won’t go on as I have been going more promised myself, to that end, to stay away or less ever since the Textes pour Rien from the theater for at least 2 years.” [Texts for Nothing ] and must either get back to nothing again and the bottom of It is in prose written to be read, rather than all the hills again like before Molloy or plays to be performed, that Beckett felt he else call it a day. could be most exploratory and most uncompromising, pushing back the bound - The Samuel Beckett who wrote these aries of his aesthetic of “indigence” far words, in November 1958, to his friend and beyond what he considered performable on intimate Barbara Bray, had been far from stage—however “dispeopled” or constrain - unproductive during the seven years since ing he might make that stage (requiring as completing the original French of Texts for it inevitably did actors, voices, live bodies). Nothing ; these were years which saw him And within the pantheon of his prose, “The write the second of his long plays, End” holds a vital place: Begun in 1946 in Endgame , his first play for radio, All That English, it was completed in French, and Fall , as well as his monologue master - was the first of the “four stories” that, piece, Krapp’s Last Tape . Why, then, did he along with the novel Mercier et Camier , feel the need to upbraid himself for inactiv - inaugurated the greatest and most produc - ity? One week earlier, to his New York pub - tive years in Beckett’s writing life. So lisher Barney Rosset, having issued a simi - strongly did Beckett care about his story lar declaration of determined intent, he that when Simone de Beauvoir published wrote: “It’s not going to be easy, but it’s its first part in Les Temps Modernes but definitely the only last gasp worth trying to then declined to publish the second part, he pant as far as I’m concerned. So if all goes wrote to her one of his very few genuinely well no new work for a long time now, if angry letters, appealing to her in the follow - ever.” A clue to what Beckett was driving ing terms: “You are giving me the chance to at is given by the “new work” that he was speak only to retract it before the words about to embark upon, surely one of his have had time to mean anything. There is most challenging and least read: Comment something nightmarish about that.” c’est (How It Is ). If it is barely a novel, then it is surely a fictional work in prose, a work The key place, within the sequence of the written not—above all not—for theater. prose works, held by Texts for Nothing , is clearly intimated by Beckett’s belief that he However surprising it may be to those who required years to move beyond it—through know Beckett best through his plays, what How It Is . With the third novel in his “tril - his letters make abundantly clear is that for ogy,” the formidably difficult but absolutely him the fullest exploration of what he was central The Unnamable , Beckett felt, as he trying to achieve in language was possible put it to Lindon, that he had got himself only, if at all, in fiction; only there, and in into “a sorry state,” a state beyond which the quiet enjoyed by the solitary reader, nothing could be said, with no place left could he really hope to “get back to noth - from which to say it. Texts for Nothing ing again.” From the moment his plays were his attempt to write himself out of became popular, Beckett was forever that “sorry state”: The original French title

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catches up the musical sense of a momen - respond: “Frankly I can’t see how the TV tary silence (a bar “for nothing”), but also pieces, especially Ghost Trio , can be trans - the sense contained in Beckett’s words to ferred to the stage without severe loss. Bray about his urgent need to “get back to But you know what authors are. Texts for nothing again.” Nothing perhaps. Seated. Head in hands. Nothing else. Face invisible. Dim spot. And these two works, written purposefully Speech hesitant. Mike for audibility. But for the page, are now to be produced on don’t let this thought discourage yours. For stage? Famously, Beckett was almost you know what authors are.” always hostile to proposals for adaptations of his work—radio to stage (as it might be), Dan Gunn, co-editor of The Letters of stage to television, television to stage… Samuel Beckett , is Professor of Compar a- Yet, after issuing his almost invariably neg - tive Literature and English at the American ative verdict, he very often did allow him - University of Paris. He is author, most self to be persuaded that adaptation might recently, of the novel The Emperor of Ice- be viable. So it was that he did permit the Cream . fourth and probably best known of his “four stories,” “First Love,” to be drama - —Copyright © 2015 by Lincoln Center for the tized, while pleading that it be done as un- Performing Arts, Inc. theatrically as possible. So it was that, late in his life, when approached in 1980 by the American actor Joseph Chaikin, who had For more on Samuel Beckett’s impact on proposed to stage Ghost Trio , he could literature, turn to page 26. 11-02 The End.qxp_GP 10/21/15 12:10 PM Page 7

Illumination

(Untitled) by Samuel Beckett

Age is when to a man Huddled o’er the ingle Shivering for the hag To put the pan in the bed And bring the toddy She comes in the ashes Who loved could not be won Or won not loved Or some other trouble Comes in the ashes Like in that old light The face in the ashes That old starlight On the earth again.

—Poems from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF SAMUEL BECKETT by Samuel Beckett, copyright © 1930, 1935, 1961, 1977, 1989 by Samuel Beckett. Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of Samuel Beckett. Copyright © 1978, 1992 by Samuel Beckett/Editions de Minuit. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third-party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.

For poetry comments and suggestions, please write to [email protected].

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Meet the Artists Deed , and he was nominated for Outstanding Solo Performance in the 2013 Lucille Lortel Awards. He was an Irish Times Theatre Award nominee for Best Actor for Moby Dick in 2010 and for the judges’ special prize for First Love and The End in 2009.

Judy Hegarty Lovett Conor Lovett Judy Hegarty Lovett is joint artistic director Conor Lovett is joint artistic director of of Gare St. Lazare Ireland with actor Conor Gare St. Lazare Ireland with director Judy Lovett. She has a bachelor’s degree in fine Hegarty Lovett. He trained at École art from the Crawford College of Art & Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Design (Cork, Ireland), and studied dra - Paris. Mr. Lovett has performed 17 matherapy at the University of Hertford shire Beckett roles in 24 Beckett productions (UK), as well as theater with Philippe Gaulier internationally, including Vladimir and in London. Ms. Hegarty Lovett joined Gare Lucky in Waiting for Godot , Hamm in St. Lazare Players Chicago in Paris in 1991 Endgame , Bim in What Where , The Man in as an assistant to the artistic director, Bob Act Without Words 1 , B in Act Without Meyer. In 1996 she directed Conor Lovett Words 2 , and solo performances of in Molloy by Samuel Beckett in London, Molloy , Malone Dies , The Unnamable , and so began Gare St. Lazare Ireland . Texts for Nothing , First Love , and The Calmative. In the Gare St. Lazare/RTÉ co- Ms. Hegarty Lovett has directed 17 production of the Beckett radio plays, Mr. Beckett titles, including Waiting for Godot , Lovett has played roles that include Mr. Rockaby , the Beckett trilogy ( Molloy, Tyler in All That Fall , Henry in Embers , and Malone Dies , and The Unnamable ), Words in Words and Music . Lessness , Enough , Texts for Nothing , Worstward Ho , All That Fall , and Here All Other non-Beckett roles include the man in Night , a creation with music and texts by Title and Deed by Will Eno, the thief in The Beckett and original music by Paul Clark. Good Thief by Conor McPherson, Army in Requiem for a Heavyweight by Rod Serling, Other directing credits include Copenhagen and Gus in The Dumb Waiter by Harold by Michael Frayn (Rubicon Theatre), Title Pinter. On television Mr. Lovett has and Deed by Will Eno (Gare St. appeared in Endeavour (ITV), Charlie (RTÉ), Lazare/Signature Theatre Company co- and Father Ted (Channel 4), among other production), Moby Dick adapted by Ms. shows . His film credits include Inter - Hegarty Lovett and Conor Lovett (interna - mission , The Kings of Cork City , Small tional tour), Swallow by Michael Harding, Engine Repair , L’Entente Cordiale , and Moll Tanks a Lot, co-written by her and Flanders . Mr. Lovett has also worked with Raymond Keane (Project Arts Centre), and Druid Theatre Company and the Gate The Good Thief by Conor McPherson (Dublin), the Gate (London), Signature (Rubicon Theatre) . Theatre Company (New York), and Rubicon Theatre (Ventura, California). Ms. Hegarty Lovett’s work has toured to more than 150 theaters in Ireland and Mr. Lovett’s awards include the Stage cities around the world. She has won Award for Acting Excellence at the 2014 awards for Moby Dick in China, Molloy in Edinburgh Festival Fringe for Title and Germany, and The Good Thief in the U.S. 11-02 The End.qxp_GP 10/21/15 12:10 PM Page 9

In 2013 Title and Deed was nominated for Beckett in the repertory, the company has Outstanding Solo Performance at the built a reputation as the leading exponent Lucille Lortel Awards. This year Ms. of the Nobel Prize–winning Irish author’s Hegarty Lovett was a Best Director nomi - work, with a particular emphasis on his nee for the Off West End Theatre Awards prose and novels. for Beckett’s First Love . The company has performed in more than Mike Gunning 80 cities in 25 countries worldwide. Gare Mike Gunning’s (lighting design) theater St. Lazare has forged strong links with fes - credits include Alice Underground (Emma tivals and theaters in Ireland and abroad, Brunjes Productions), The Drowned Man including the Kilkenny Arts Festival, Dublin (punchdrunk), Macbeth (Siren Productions, Fringe Festival, the Rubicon Theatre in Dublin), Dangerous Lady (Theatre Royal Ventura, California, and Signature Theatre Stratford East), The Second Mrs. Company in New York. Gare St. Lazare’s Tanqueray (Rose Theatre, Kingston, UK), First Love was performed at the Dublin The Wizard of Oz (Royal Festival Hall), The Theatre Festival and in 2013 the company Jew of Malta and Aunt Dan and Lemon co-produced Waiting for Godot with the (Almeida Theatre, UK), Julius Caesar and festival. That production has since toured School for Scandal (Barbican Theatre and to Belfast, Boston, Shanghai, and most international tour), Medea (Broadway), recently New York. The company’s first Tales from the Vienna Woods (National presentation of a Beckett prose work in Theatre), Shakespeare: The Man from New York was Molloy , at the Irish Arts Stratford (Ambassador Theatre), Kafka’s Center, in 1998. In 2009 First Love was per - Mon key and Eurydice (Young Vic), Richard III formed at Under the Radar at New York’s and Henry V (Royal Shakespeare Com - Public Theater, and in 2012 Title and Deed , pany), and Romeo & Juliet (HOME specially written for the company by Will Theatre), which won Best Design at the Eno, ran for six weeks off-Broadway in a recent Manchester Theatre Awards. co-production with Signature Theatre Company. The show played at the 2014 Mr. Gunning has also worked on operas Edinburgh Festival Fringe to rave reviews. such as The Magic Flute (English National Opera), Il trovatore (Royal Opera House– Though primarily associated with Beckett, Covent Garden), Dido and Aeneas , Gare St. Lazare has also produced plays by Rigoletto , and Tristan und Isolde (ENO), Michael Harding and Conor McPherson, and Madame Butterfly and L’elisir d’amore and in 2009 it created an adaptation by (Opera Holland Park). Dance credits Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett of include The Five and Boy Blue (Barbican) Moby Dick by Herman Melville, with live and 5 Soldiers (Rosie Kay). In music Mr. fiddle by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh. Gunning has worked with the Cork Gamelan Ensemble and Grace Jones White Light Festival (inter national tour). I could compare my music to white light, which contains all colors. Only a prism can Gare St. Lazare Ireland divide the colors and make them appear; Gare St. Lazare Ireland is an Irish theater this prism could be the spirit of the listener. company run by joint artistic directors Judy —Arvo Pärt. Celebrating its sixth anniver - Hegarty Lovett and Conor Lovett. Since sary, the White Light Festival is Lincoln its inception in 1997, the company has Center’s annual exploration of music and toured work in Ireland and around the art’s power to reveal the many dimensions world. With over 17 titles by Samuel of our interior lives. International in scope,

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the multidisciplinary Festival offers a broad free and ticketed events, performances, spectrum of the world’s leading instrumen - tours, and educational activities annually, talists, vocalists, ensembles, choreogra - LCPA offers 15 programs, series, and fes - phers, dance com panies, and directors tivals including American Songbook, Great complemented by conversations with Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, artists and scholars and post-performance Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer White Light Lounges. Night Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the White Light Festival, as well as the Lincoln Center for the Performing Emmy Award–winning Live From Lincoln Arts, Inc. Center , which airs nationally on PBS. As Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts manager of the Lincoln Center campus, (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presen - LCPA provides support and services for ter of artistic programming, national leader the Lincoln Center complex and the 11 res - in arts and education and community rela - ident organizations. In addition, LCPA led a tions, and manager of the Lincoln Center $1.2 billion campus renovation, completed campus. A presenter of more than 3,000 in October 2012.

Lincoln Center Programming Department Jane Moss, Ehrenkranz Artistic Director Hanako Yamaguchi, Director, Music Programming Jon Nakagawa, Director, Contemporary Programming Jill Sternheimer, Director, Public Programming Lisa Takemoto, Production Manager Charles Cermele, Producer, Contemporary Programming Kate Monaghan, Associate Director, Programming Mauricio Lomelin, Producer, Contemporary Programming Julia Lin, Associate Producer Regina Grande, Assistant to the Artistic Director Luna Shyr, Programming Publications Editor Madeleine Oldfield, House Seat Coordinator Kathy Wang , House Program Intern

For the White Light Festival Avancy Inc., Production Services Stefanie Lehmann, Company Manager 11-02 The End.qxp_GP 10/21/15 12:10 PM Page 11

Gare St. Lazare Ireland Administration Judy Hegarty Lovett and Conor Lovett, Artistic Directors Maura O’Keeffe, Associate Producer Christine Monk, Publicist (Ireland)

Gare St. Lazare Ireland is supported by Culture Ireland, UCC School of Music and Theatre, Everyman Theatre Cork. Gare St. Lazare Gold Circle Funding Patrons: The Sakharoff Family Foundation, Christopher J. Herbert & Nancy Welch.

In Memoriam: Micheline Sakharoff 1923–2015.

Gare St. Lazare wishes to acknowledge the support of the following supporters with thanks for their generosity and belief: Madison Cox, Virginia Gelder, Barbara & Steven Isenberg, Georganne Aldrich Heller, John and Suzann O’Neill, Jean Stein, Steve Fagin, Molly and Sean Lynch, Nancy Newhouse, Sheila Lynott, Gail Gregg, Eloisa Haudenschild, Anthony and Mary Smith, Kathleen Allaire, Linda Healey, Charles and Jill Crovitz, Rose Marsh Boyle, Kerry & Olga English.

Special thanks to Jane Moss, Jon Nakagawa, Mauricio Lomelin, and the White Light Festival team; the Irish Consul General to New York, Barbara Jones, Christine Sisk (Culture Ireland), Nik Quaife, Pauline Turley & Aidan Connolly at Irish Arts Center, Georganne Aldrich Heller, Barbara & Steve Isenberg, Jim Houghton, Mel Mercier, Julie Kelleher, Michael Harrington and NYU’s Skirball Center, Glucksman Ireland House NYU, D. Kern and Elisabeth Holoman, Molly Grogan Lynch, Linda Purl, Brian and Melissa Ormond, Catherine and Mark Reid, Stephen Dillane and Naomi Wirthner, Orla Flanagan and the Brighton Festival team.

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