BECKETT on

BECKETT

On Theatre:

“The things! There are so many things; the eye is incapable of comprehending them as the mind

of grasping them. So a person creates his own world, a universe apart, to withdraw into when one

gets tired ... in order to get away from the chaos into a simpler world ... The crisis started with the

end of the seventeenth century, after Gallileo. The eighteenth century has been called the century

of reason. I’ve never understood that: they’re all mad, ils sont tous fous, ils deraisomnent! They give

reason a responsibility which it simply can’t bear, it’s too weak. The Encyclopedists wanted to know

everything ... But that direct relation between the self and as the Italians say, ‘lo scibile’, the

knowable, was already broken. Leonardo da Vinci still has everything in his head, still knew every-

thing, the tie between the self and things no longer exists ... One must make a world on one’s own in order to satisfy one’s need to know, to understand, one’s need for order. There for me lies the value of theatre. One turns out a small world with its own laws, conducts the action as if upon a chessboard ... Yes, even the game of chess is still too complex.”

On Endgame:

“It’s my favorite of plays. Endgame is like a burnt-out hearth from which flames break out from time to time to sink back again into the ashes.”

Bud Thorpe(Clov) on Beckett’s Direction:

“Conducting ... It was rhythm and music. Sam said to us ‘Now I am going to fill my silences with sounds.’ And added ‘For every silence there will be sounds, be they shuffling feet, steps, dropping of things, and so on.’”           **from “Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett “ by James Knowlson

cast

Hamm            Rick Cluchey

Clov                Bud Thorpe

Nagg              Alan Mandell

Nell                  Teresita Garcia-Suro

Director           Samuel Beckett/Alan Mandell

Film Director   Robert Bilheimer