Download media release (doc)

Songbirds mark the G8

THE G8 SONG RECITAL: part of Songs for Saturday-3 free concerts in Enniskillen

The Happy Days Enniskillen International Festival and Northern Ireland Opera present three free special concerts, in advance of the arrival of the G8 summit in Fermanagh.

International opera singer and now Fermanagh resident, Ruby Philogene MBE, heads up this three event Songs for Saturday celebration in Enniskillen on June 15th all in the local cultural spirit for the arrival of the G8.

Ruby has devised a special G8 Song Recital of 8 songs, one song from each of the 8 countries. All lasting a total of 40mins it’s free for all to come at St. Macartin’s Cathedral at 3pm on Saturday June 15th. There’ll be a song by Richard Wagner (Germany), Giuseppe Verdi (Italy), Benjamin Britten (UK), Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russia), Gabriel Faure (France) and a Negro Spiritual (USA), Kosako Yamada (Japan) and the Canadian options are being researched to be rehearsed next week! So it’s been a busy time for Ruby who whilst rehearsing all these songs, has also had to learn Japanese for the first time!

Ruby is a former winner of one of the world’s most prestigious song prizes, the Kathleen Ferrier Award. She has sung at many of the world’s great opera houses and concert stages including the Deutsche Opera Berlin, the Royal Opera House London and La Monnaie Opera House, Brussels as well as with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. She has also sung by special invitation at a Gala for Princess Diana and alongside fellow international singers Bryn Terfel, Ian Bostridge and Jose Van Damm.

On either side of Ruby’s afternoon recital on Saturday June 15th, there are two other opportunities to hear opera arias from Northern Ireland Opera’s best young singer, both of which are free to attend.

• In the morning at Castle Coole at 11am there will be a one hour recital in the grand marbled Entrance Hall.
• In the evening at the Bush Bar at 8pm the Northern Ireland Opera young singers do it different: a 50minute sing of BARias. But this event is only for young audiences and young singers and audiences must be their 20’s to get in! This is an opportunity for young people who have or haven’t experienced opera before, to enjoy an operatic event in a venue usually more associated with music of a different kind!

For Ruby Philogene’s 3pm recital, free entry will be at the door St. Macartin’s Cathedral.
For Castle Coole and the Bush Bar, both are free ticketed events. Tickets are available to be collected from the Bush Bar. Max two per person.

ENDS
Press contact: Éadaoin Love, T: 028 66228158 Mob: 07799 148 196
E:eadaoin@happy-days-enniskillen.com

The post Songbirds mark the G8 appeared first on Happy Days.

Download media release (doc)

COME FLY WITH BECKETT

DANTE’S PARADISO “THROUGH THE CLOUDS” ANNOUNCED AS PART OF THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE

PARADISO – through the clouds
Venue: Edinburgh International Airport to Enniskillen St Angelo Airport
Date: Sunday 25 August 2013 (return Monday 26 August)
Time: 10.00
Tickets: £99.00 return
Box Office: www.edfringe.com 0131 226 0000

A specially-chartered plane will be the auditorium for an on-board live poetry performance as part of the HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, which will take place this year 22-26 August. www.happy-days-enniskillen.com

The plane will fly from Edinburgh International to Enniskillen’s St Angelo Airport on Sunday 25 August.

PARADISO – through the clouds will be a “poetic flight of imagination” and has been programmed as a Fringe First as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme. The plane will bring festival-goers from one festival to another in an unprecedented event that will link the two festivals and celebrate Beckett.

During the hour-long direct flight to Enniskillen, the audience will hear live readings of Dante, Yeats and Beckett poems, and will be served Beckett-style refreshments.

PARADISO – through the clouds will represent the third stage of Dante’s Divine Comedy in a triptych of site-specific events programmed as part of HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival. The events acknowledge the inspiration Samuel Beckett drew from Dante’s Divine Comedy trilogy, which was Beckett’s favourite literary work, and which will be the leading theme in this year’s HAPPY DAYS festival.

The festival will utilise the natural landscape and iconic sites of Enniskillen and the Fermanagh lakelands to present an extraordinary circular journey of site-specific events and art installations and offer a Dantean twist to the Beckett experience.

INFERNO – into the caves will take audiences 50 metres underground into the famous Marble Arch Caves located 12 miles south of Enniskillen. This completely immersive experience through a land of mad souls will begin with a boat journey on the underground river, and a performance of Beckett’s NOT I, and a guided procession past crouching readers reciting the 33 cantos in several different languages. The underground journey will conclude with a live performance by the mezzo soprano Ruby Philogene who will sing Dido’s Lament from Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas.

Actors Lisa Dwan and Chicca Minini will alternate in the role of “the mouth” in NOT I. The role was first played in the UK exactly 40 years ago by Billie Whitelaw, who described the experience as “falling backwards into hell”. Minini will play the role in Italian. The un-translated performance alludes to Beckett’s comment that the play was above all, a sound experience.

PURGATORIO – to the islands will reprise last year’s very popular early morning boat journey and Beckett readings on Lough Erne. Recalling the early Irish purgatory pilgrimages, there will be three trips on three consecutive days stopping at isolated islands for readings of Beckett short prose.

Sean Doran, Festival Founder and Artistic Director said: “We are excited to be programming this special triptych of events, which will recognise Beckett’s love of Dante’s seminal work. PARADISO – through the clouds will realise what Dante could only have imagined when he wrote Paradiso. For this reason we’re inviting all festival visitors who are flying into Northern Ireland from elsewhere to bring with them a copy of The Divine Comedy and read a canto or two while they are airborne”.

Continuing the Divine Comedy theme, Mount Purgatory will be represented by Forthill Park in Enniskillen. Visitors will climb the steep conical hill up to the Coles Monument, passing the seven terraces of sin, and up the 108 steps to the top of the Monument – the highest point in Enniskillen. An adjoining underpass will be re-imagined as Ante-Purgatorio.

A series of art installations will lead visitors in a circle back to Inferno. Romeo Castelluci’s installation Paradiso, is the third part of his trilogy La Divina Commedia – Inferno, Purgatorio e Paradiso, named by Le Monde as best play and one of the ten most influential cultural events in the world 2000-2010. Tomoko Mukaiyama & Jean Kalman’s Falling, inspired by Beckett’s short prose work Worstward Ho and Robert Wilson’s Happy Days video portrait of Wynona Ryder will represent Purgatorio and Ante-Purgatorio in this schema.

The final descent into Inferno will complete the circle with Neil Jordan’s multi-screen installation NOT I, featuring Julianne Moore.

The Divine Comedy theme will extend through the festival through a series of talks, readings and the Dante-Beckett Sunday Carnivale parade.

The full programme for the HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival will be announced in June.

Keep up-to-date with events as they go on sale and buy tickets from mid-June at www.happy-days-enniskillen.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @HappyDaysEnnisk or call the Festival office on 028 6622 8158.

ENDS

EDITORS’ NOTES

About HAPPY DAYS
The HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival was founded in 2012 by Sean Doran as the first annual multi-arts festival to celebrate the life and legacy of Nobel Prize winning writer Samuel Beckett. It was supported in its first year by the London 2012 Festival and represents the only legacy project from London 2012. The inaugural festival was received to critical acclaim in local, national and international media and attracted visitors from far and wide. 70% of visitors came from outside Northern Ireland from as far away as Japan, Australia and the USA, with 40% from Republic of Ireland. The festival has been estimated to have generated economic benefits of £2.5m to Enniskillen.

The post Come Fly with Beckett appeared first on Happy Days.

The post Beckett Basement appeared first on Happy Days.

Download media release (doc)
For further information and images please contact:
UK & International: Anna Vinegrad: press@annavinegrad.com 0207 609 8905 | 0781 3808 487
Northern Ireland & Republic of Ireland: Eadaoin Love: eadaoin@happy-days-enniskillen.com 07799148196

HAPPY DAYS ENNISKILLEN INTERNATIONAL BECKETT FESTIVAL
22-26 AUGUST 2013

FIRST DETAILS FOR 2013 PROGRAMME ANNOUNCED
The organisers are pleased to announce first details of the second HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, which will take place 22-26 August 2013, in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. www.happy-days-enniskillen.com

The HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival is the world’s largest annual multi-arts celebration of Irish Nobel Prize writer, Samuel Beckett, who attended Portora Royal School in the island town. The inaugural festival took place in August 2012 to critical acclaim and full houses, attracting audiences from far and wide with an estimated economic benefit of £2.5m.

The festival will present the first major exhibition of material pertaining to Beckett’s work since 2007 (Centre Pompidou, Paris). “Was I sleeping, while the others suffered” Samuel Beckett: Witness to the Twentieth Century, will be curated by Conor Carville and Mark Nixon (Beckett International Foundation, University of Reading) and will explore the hidden politics of Beckett’s work and life through manuscripts, memorabilia and letters.

The festival organisers are delighted to be working with the Irish Museum of Modern Art to present Neil Jordan’s multi-screen installation Not I, featuring Julianne Moore. Further installations will include Romeo Castelluci’s Paradiso, and Tomoko Mukaiyama & Jean Kalman’s Falling, and Robert Wilson’s Winona Ryder video portrait.

The Beckett International Theatre Series will present productions of Beckett plays from Portugal, France, Australia and Ireland. Two Portuguese companies, Teatro Plastico and Espaco das Aguncheiras will each present a Beckett Cycle of short plays: Rough for Theatre 2, What is the word and What Where; and Rockaby, Come & Go, Words & Music, Ohio Impromptu and Footfalls.

Wits’ End Theatre (Australia) and Blue Raincoat Theatre (Ireland) will present two opposing performances of Endgame. In a groundbreaking event, Aboriginal Australia and Ireland will meet as cultural nations in Two Nations Waiting for Godot, A First Reading, the initial part
of a festival commission for 2014.

Words without Acts will feature a series of readings in unusual places of Beckett’s much-neglected short prose works, including one of the earliest tales, Dante and the Lobster. “Words Without Acts” will stage some thirty unrehearsed readings in unusual places in and around Enniskillen. “Tellers” of the tales will include Juliet Stevenson, Diana Quick and Neil Pearson.

This year’s literary programme, entitled Writers & Artists The Talks (WATT), will include contributions from Beckett biographer Anthony Cronin alongside Tariq Ali, Margaret Drabble, John Gray, A.C Grayling, Kathleen Jamie, John Montague, and Tom Paulin, who will share their memories, recollections, thoughts and ideas about Beckett’s life, work and influence.

Further exhibitions will include Parallel Lines, paintings by William Scott and texts by Beckett, two schoolboy sons of Enniskillen, and a series of Jocelyn Herbert’s theatre designs for Beckett’s productions. There will be another chance to see Antony Gormley’s Tree for Waiting for Godot and Joseph Kosuth’s installation, Texts for Nothing (Enniskillen).

The Vienna Piano Trio returns to HAPPY DAYS to open the proceedings with a performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. The festival’s annual recital of Schubert’s Winterreise, will be performed this year by Florian Boesch (baritone) and Roger Vignoles (piano).

Dante’s Divine Comedy trilogy, Beckett’s favourite literary work, will be one of the inspirations for this year’s festival. Audiences will be invited to descend into Inferno, journey through Purgatorio and rise up to Paradiso in a series of art, music and extraordinary site-specific literary events staged in unusual and surprising places including underground caves, outlying islands, grand castles, subterranean walkways and hilltop schoolhouses.

The FAB Programme (Fooling Around Beckett) will be in a new strand this year that will acknowledge the inspiration Beckett drew for his stagecraft and tragicomedy from the world of mime, cirque, clown, music hall, slapstick and buffoonery. Acts of French mime and clown, and English comedy and music-hall will culminate in the inaugural The Happy Days Beckett-Dante Carnivale, a Sunday tragicomic street parade of Beckett and Dante characters and themes, with the participation of local residents and festival contributors.

Sean Doran, Festival Founder & Artistic Director said:
“Following last year’s inaugural success, I am delighted to be announcing the second HAPPY DAYS festival. This year’s festival will be every bit as ambitious as the last, permeating the fabric of Enniskillen and its environs in a celebration of Beckett that goes far beyond the usual treatment of his work. Dante’s Divine Comedy which so inspired Beckett, has been our inspiration also, and has given shape to what I believe will be an enticing programme
and an extraordinary five days in “Beckett Town”.”

Tourism Minister Arlene Foster said: “Last year’s inaugural HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival was a huge success in terms of numbers of festival-goers, ticket sales and the quality of performances. It set incredibly high standards and I am very confident that 2013 will see the bar raised further still. The diverse nature of the programme of events ensures that there is something for everyone, from Beckett aficionados to those who are experiencing his works for the first time. The rich cultural heritage of Fermanagh, and indeed Northern Ireland, is increasingly attractive to visitors and events such as the HAPPY DAYS Festival can only enhance our tourism offering.”

Noirin McKinney Director of Arts Development at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland commented: “The Arts Council is delighted to support the HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival.  With a packed programme featuring a range of quality visual arts, local and international theatre, film, music and literary events, there’s certainly something to suit all tastes and I would encourage everyone to go along and support this impressive festival.”

Neil Morton, Headmaster of Portora Royal School, Enniskillen said:
“We are delighted to be associated again with an International event of such prestige which celebrates the contribution to world culture of one of our past students. The Festival acknowledges not only the formative influence of the school on Sam Beckett but the central role the school has played in the county of Fermanagh”.

Chairman of Fermanagh District Council Thomas O’Reilly said:
“Fermanagh District Council is delighted that the Enniskillen International Beckett Festival – HAPPY DAYS – has confirmed its return in 2013. Last year’s festival exceeded all expectations and we look forward to another tremendous weekend where visitors and residents can experience the very best of all things Beckett. We recognise that the festival is an ideal platform on which to showcase Enniskillen as a centre for the arts, culture and heritage. As well as being Ireland’s only island town we are convinced that the festival will make Enniskillen world renowned for being Beckett town”

The full HAPPY DAYS programme will be announced in June 2013. Tickets will be available from www.happy-days-enniskillen.com.

ENDS

EDITORS’ NOTES

About HAPPY DAYS
The HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival was founded in 2012 by Sean Doran as the first annual multi-arts festival to celebrate the life and legacy of Nobel Prize winning writer Samuel Beckett. It was supported in its first year by the London 2012 Festival and represents the only legacy project from London 2012. The inaugural festival was received to critical acclaim in local, national and international media and attracted visitors from far and wide. 70% of visitors came from outside Northern Ireland from as far away as Japan, Australia and the USA, with 40% from Republic of Ireland. The festival has been estimated to have generated economic benefits of £2.5m to Enniskillen.

Samuel Beckett and Portora Royal School
In his rich and complex life Samuel Beckett excelled in many areas: he was a gifted sportsman, a fluent linguist, a doughty advocate of human rights, a resistance fighter, a considerable art historian with a profound knowledge of the whole European visual tradition, a highly accomplished pianist and musician and, as is perhaps better known, a novelist, a playwright, and a poet.  In recognition of his literary achievements he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in Dublin, his background was metropolitan and bourgeois, comfortable and Protestant. Like many young men of his class and background, he was sent away to boarding school. In Beckett’s case the felicitous choice was Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, the county town of Co. Fermanagh and it was here in 1920, in this small but remarkable provincial school (which had already educated one great writer, Oscar Wilde) that the foundations of the future writer’s literary, intellectual and sporting capacities were developed.  While he was at Portora, Beckett’s sporting skills shone in rugby, cricket, rowing, boxing and cross country among others. His love of literature developed, his linguistic facility deepened and his knowledge of the rural and human nature was augmented. The school provided much of the intellectual and spiritual bedrock for his lifelong literary work and subsequent activities (social, political and aesthetic).  It is due to this later schooling connection with the writer that the town of Enniskillen was chosen as the venue to host the HAPPY DAYS Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, the world’s first international annual multi-arts celebration of the writer.

Arts Council Northern Ireland
The Arts Council is the lead development agency for the Arts in Northern Ireland, providing the main support for artists and arts organizations throughout the region through a range of funding opportunities. The Arts council distributes public money and National Lottery funds to organisations that develop and deliver arts programmes across all of society.

The post Media Release May 2013: Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival appeared first on Happy Days.

The Observer, Clare Brennan, Sunday 2 September 2012

Happy Days: International Beckett festival – review

The first multi-arts Samuel Beckett festival ended with neither a bang nor a whimper but on a soaring high note from the throat of mezzo-soprano Ruby Philogene. Her French and German song recital (“perfect lieder phrasing”, in the view of one specialist critic) concluded with a set of spirituals speckled with piquant jazz inflections. Beyond the walls of Castle Coole the sound of the standing ovation joined the swelling echoes of applause that reverberated for five days round the hills of Fermanagh and began with the renowned Irish author Edna O’Brien‘s remembrances of Beckett as both friend and writer.

read more…

Financial Times, Alexander Gilmour, September 1, 2012

Waiting for Beckett

A new festival honouring the Irish playwright aims to break boundaries – and put Enniskillen on the cultural map

read more…

The New York Times, Roslyn Sulcas, August 27, 2012

Happy Days, of All Kinds, for a Town in Ulster

ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland — “Happy Days!” said the waiter as he neatly deposited plates of the “Beckett Special Antipasti” (chicken and foie gras terrine, a curried soup with mussels, smoked haddock fish cake) at our table. As this phrase is the title of Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play, and also of a new Beckett festival in this small town, he might well have been joking. But he wasn’t. “Happy days,” as it turns out, is a commonly used salutation in these parts.

read more…

The Guardian, Helen Meany, Sunday 26 August 2012

Krapp’s Last Tape – review

White-faced, open-mouthed, and spattered with shards of white light, Robert Wilson’s Krapp might already have passed over to the other side. His performance, in his own production of Beckett’s play, seems spooked, full of sudden starts and backward glances. Anyone worried that Beckett might have been getting a little sentimental in this memory play, in which a 69-year-old man listens to tape recordings of his younger self, will be reassured by Wilson’s determinedly chilly staging.

read more…

The Guardian, James Knowlson, Tuesday 21 August 2012

Samuel Beckett the sportsman – from cricket to Krapp’s Last Tape

Samuel Beckett was first a cricketer, and then a writer. His biographer James Knowlson recalls an avid sportsfan who turned theatre into an extreme physical feat.

read more…

The post Press reviews 2012 – Happy Days International Beckett Festival appeared first on Happy Days.

Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival.

Welcome to the world’s largest annual multi-arts celebration of Nobel Prize winning writer Samuel Beckett. Samuel Beckett attended the Portora Royal School in Enniskillen 1920-23, hence our sitting this new festival in this beautiful part of the world, Ireland’s only island town surrounded by the Irish Lake District.

Our 2013 Festival dates are confirmed for Thursday August 22nd-August 26th in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. We will be announcing a number of events through April and May 2013 with the full programme and brochure to be released the week of June 12th 2013.  The August 2013 Festival will have much that was familiar to last year’s highly acclaimed (see press 2012) inaugural festival with events again spanning theatre, literature, classical music, visual arts, exhibitions, film and comedy.   In addition this year we will be bringing in new art forms such as cirque & mime, clown & variety, singer-songwriters and street theatre.   A wide range of international work will be presented with artists from France, Portugal, Australia, Poland, America and of course Ireland and the UK.  More of Fermanagh’s idyllic tourism destinations will be brought in to the festival experience as site-specific venues, particularly for readings of Samuel Beckett’s short prose and short plays.  Last year’s festival had over 100 presentations over 5 days, the 2013 festival will have no less….   Do pencil the dates in your diary and watch this space over the coming weeks and months for programme announcements and ticket sales.

Happy Days.

Sean Doran

Founder & Festival Director

The post Message from the Festival Director appeared first on Happy Days.

Our Festival Director Sean Doran, before he took life too seriously, was the original co-author for the Rough Guide to Ireland (1989). So here’s Sean’s ‘quick and cheerful’ guide through through Enniskillen’s serpentine single street of 4 names, up and over two little hillocks Town Hall & Cathedral/Churches, surprise, surprise. This is Enniskillen’s answer to Edinburgh’s Royal Mile (a wee mile) with its own busy hubbub of 14 restaurants (some bars), 12 bars, 10 cafes and 10 hairdressers! Also check out the shop window displays along the street. For August, come to the new Edinburgh and Ireland’s BECKETT TOWN.

East

• Start from just off the east bridge with the Horseshoe & Saddlers pub (good food upstairs), on corner at junction. Dunnes, Tesco, Asda and Erne Shopping Centre  all nearby.
• This end you’ll also find most of the town’s takeaways clustered together (great prices).
• Molloy’s fish shop, a cracker for fresh fish and oysters from the Donegal coast. And O’Doherty’s famous Black Bacon shop (don’t leave without some in your suitcase) some of the best meat in town.
• Uno’s cocktail bar in vicinity of Hepburn’s clothes shop! Think dolce vita.
• Fermanagh Herald Offices. Pop in and tell them you have come all this way for the Beckett Festival. (If you’re a local, pretend you’re from Australia).
• You cross onto the island just by the Clinton Centre (the hostel, nice cafe wifi for a small fee). The lovely orange building opposite is the old orange hall. They teach Irish language classes there now. The walls have ears…
• Magee’s Spirit Store. And eerily established by a Patrick Magee namesake. Raise a glass to the great Northern Irish actor who world premiered Krapp’s Last Tape.
• Health Food Store. Beckett’s wife Suzanne had a very health conscious regime for her husband. Feel free to follow suit…
• Flo’s Restaurant (piping hot hearty food). Have a rest and a whisper on the bench outside. Her younger friend Frou Frou just a few doors down (best cakes in town but see the dentist on Belmore St. after, best in UK we hear).
• The Impartial Reporter – give them your very opinionated thumbs up for Happy Days.
• The Bush Bar (free wifi), nice modern bar, its interior runs right to the back with lookout to the River Erne (where the baby cot ride on the back river might be). Corner Bar next it.
• The Linen Hall (Wetherspoons). Your only chance for an English Ale. Cheapest hot food and beer prices in town. Free wifi at the back.

Centre

• Pat’s Bar (opp Town Hall), nice bar and free wifi available.
• Down Street by Town Hall it’s cosmopolitan Enniskillen – Three Greek, Indian and Italian restaurants. Look up from any of them and you’ll see the Joseph Kosuth Exhibition (the one with rubber floors and neon – children friendly!)
• Buy a Beckett book in Eason’s, EK’s one serious lonely bookshop (not for long…). Newspapers here and Centra across road.

West

•  The Anglican Cathedral (St. Macartins) and Catholic Church (St. Michaels) stare each other down 20 paces apart. And the blushing pink Methodist Church a few doors away, a beauty inside. They all look back down on Blakes (likely where Beckett may have sipped his first whiskey and Guinness) and Charlies Bars (hosts literary meetings, so support it!) in the hollow below.
• Stewart’s butchers. If you’ve had enough of the radishes, carrots and turnips.
• Library on street down by Cathedral. Free computer use, if you join.
• Absolutely do not miss Headhunters Railway Museum, nostalgia. Only barbers in Ireland where bald people don’t feel out of place.
• For the tiring (and retiring) thespians returning from Portora, grab a coffee in the Darling St. coffees shops – Devenish (wifi), Aisling Centre, Russell & Donnelly’s (nice delicatessen, best wine store north of the border) and Jolly Sandwich.
• Grab a cab taxis, bottom of Darling Street.

Some Other Tips:

• Seek out local restaurants with new menus from Beckett ingredients in his works and vote for the most innovative and Beckettian one.
• Don’t miss chef Billy’s lunches in the Portora dining hall where Beckett fed. A Divine Comedy 3 course lunch (inferno, purgatorio, paradise), a cross between a 1920s canteen lunch and haute cuisine! All for only £13
• There’s an amazing free conference by the grand Improbable theatre, Devoted & Disgruntled, in the Clinton Centre to debate theatre. It’s FREE. You’d be mad not to join in if you like making theatre. Sat & Sun.

The post Rough Guide to Enniskillen appeared first on Happy Days.

THE HAPPY DAYS EFFIE* AWARDS Enniskillen Footfalls of International Entertainers

Footfalls is the name of a Samuel Beckett play. Footfalls descending on Enniskillen is what the new Beckett Festival is seeking to bring to the town on an annual basis each summer starting this August Bank Holiday weekend.

To help bring the town into the spirit of Beckett, the man and work, the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival is launching a fun set of awards for:

1. Best Beckett Shop Window

2. Best Beckett Menu

3. Best Beckett Hairdresser & Haircut

The winners of each category will receive a limited edition sculpture of a footprint of a chosen festival artist. The footfall sculpture will be fired in white clay by Fermanagh ceramicist Ann McNulty.

The 3 winners will be selected by Happy Days Team and announced at the end of the festival.

Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival 23rd-27th August 2012 www.happy-days-enniskillen.com Box Office Tel: +44 (0) 28 66322658EDITOR’S NOTES

* The award name Effie also recalls Beckett’s favourite novel Effie Briest by Theodore Fontane (published 1895) which is referred to in his major plays Krapp’s Last Tape and All That Fall, two of the leading plays presented at the 2012 Happy Days Festival.

Competition judging criteria are characteristics that echo’s Beckett’s writing and themes – wit, playfulness, pared back/economy, humour, irony.

1. The Best Beckett Window Award can be for any shop, business or domestic window.

2. The Best Beckett Menu needs to be derived from any set of ingredients found in Beckett’s plays, prose and poems. A list of these ingredients can be found on the festival website.

3. The Best Beckett Hairdresser Haircut. See Festival website for Beckett haircut styles from the 1920s to 1980s. Send through the photo of your haircut to happydays.tom@gmail.com

For further details contact: mattmcfrederick@gmail.com

Samuel Beckett Food Ingredients
The Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival is launching a competition for the restaurant or cafe which provides the Best Beckett Menu 2012. We invite local restaurants and cafes to use these ingredients listed below, in their menus during the month of August and especially during the Festival week from 23rd-27th August. The winner will be the restaurant or cafe that provide the most innovative and committed response to the Beckett ingredients. We encourage all restaurants to be as creative as possible in their menus which may relate to Beckett’s work, his influence, his schooldays, his biography and the Happy Days Festival itself. Happy cooking!

Carrots (Waiting for Godot)

Biscuit (Endgame)

Eggs (Endgame)

Hamm (A character in Endgame)

Clov (A character in Endgame)

Lobster (Dante and the Lobster)

Blancmange (All That Fall)

Hake (All That Fall)

Pale Ale (All That Fall)

Green Tea (Play)

Olives (Play)

Bananas (Krapp’s Last Tape)

Gooseberries (Krapp’s Last Tape)

Radishes (Waiting for Godot)

Chicken (Waiting for Godot)

Wine (Waiting for Godot)

Turnips (Waiting for Godot)

Grapes

Sugar Plum/ Bonbons (Endgame)

Turkish Delight (Endgame)

Gobstopper (All That Fall)

Bread (Waiting for Godot)

Tarragon (Estragon is a character in Waiting for Godot and this word’s English translation from French is tarragon)

Lamb

Pig (Waiting for Godot)

Fish Bones (Waiting for Godot)

Samuel Beckett Haircuts

The Schoolboy Swagger…

Samuel Barclay Beckett attended Portora Royal School, Enniskillen from 1920-23. At Portora, Beckett excelled at Cricket and Rugby, representing the school in both sports. In 1923, he helped the school’s 1^st XV reach the Ulster Schools Cup Final. As a scrum half he was known to be ‘Blind without his spectacles, but bold as a lion behind the scrum.’ Beckett was renowned as a fine batsman for the school’s 1^st XI and is the only Nobel Laureate to have their name in Wisden. Beckett famously orchestrated a dinner time Sing-Song with around 90 Portorans, which reduced the teacher in charge Thomas Tackaberry to tears.

The Sophisticated Student…

After Portora, Beckett studied French and Italian at Trinity College Dublin, where he finished First in his class, winning the Gold medal for Modern Literature in 1927.

 Beckett returned to Trinity in 1959 to receive an Honorary Doctorate.

Today the University honours him with the Samuel Beckett Theatre on the main campus and the annual Samuel Beckett Summer School which runs in July.

Beckett in the Early 1930s

Cool, calm collective. Beckett spent much of the 1930s in between Dublin, Germany and Paris. It was when he showed early signs of his writing career. In the 1930s Beckett wrote his novels and stories Dream of Fair to Middling Women, More Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy. This was prior to his involvement in the French Resistance during World War II, for which he was awarded Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance by the French government.

Beckett in 1950s

The 1950s was when Beckett’s career really kicked off. On 3^rd January 1953, arguably Beckett’s most important play Waiting for Godot, premiered at the small Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. This play in which ‘nothing happens, twice’ changed the face of contemporary drama. Godot was voted, in the National Theatre London’s Poll, as the most significant English Language play of the Twentieth Century. 

A Man of Mode…

After the success of Godot, Beckett continued his work in the theatre with key plays in the 1950s and 1960s such as Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape, Happy Days and Play. In 1969, Beckett was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature…and to think 46 years before he was educated in Enniskillen!

Gel it like Beckett?

Beckett’s distinctive facial features have added to his reputation as a literary icon. This photo demonstrates his iconic look and ability to gel his hair. Does he gel it better than Beckham? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter-@HappyDaysEnnisk. Also feel free to post your Beckett Haircut on our Facebook page.

Out of bed look?

Even the greatest playwright in the world had days when he was happy with the out of bed look.

Samuel Beckett died in Paris at 1pm on Friday 22^nd December 1989. He wrote for an array of mediums, including theatre, prose, poetry, film, television and radio.  His last stage play was What Where in 1983.

Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival 23rd-27th August 2012 www.happy-days-enniskillen.com Box Office Tel: +44 (0) 28 66322658

The post The Happy Days EFFIE Awards appeared first on Happy Days.

Two exhibitions by Atom Egoyan (Canada) and Joseph Kosuth (US) are the latest to open alongside Antony Gormley’s “Tree for Waiting for Godot” (UK) and Jeremy Henderson’s (NI) Paintings: A country road. A Tree. Evening.

Steenbeckett is film-maker AtomEgoyan’s farewell to film and old ways of making cinema. The installation features an obsolete editing machine, 2000 feet of 35mm celluloid, and a video projection of a solitary man – actor John Hurt as Krapp in Egoyan’s own film of Krapp’s Last Tape – nursing his memories as he eavesdrops on his younger self. Steenbeckett was produced by ArtAngel in 2002.

Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth’s meditation on Beckett, seen here in the UK and Ireland for the first time, invites the viewer into a floating world in which sculptural neon text hovers in darkness with soft black rubber underfoot. The installation entitled, ‘Texts for Nothing – Enniskillen’ Samuel Beckett, in play, delivers a sensual experience while questioning the nature of art, word and meaning.

Antony Gormley’s festival commission “Tree for Waiting for Godot” will be exhibitedin The Grand Yard, Castle Coole, Enniskillen, until 13 September. The sculpture, made from 37 separate pieces of stainless steel, has been commissioned for a future Aboriginal Australian-Irish co-production of Beckett’s most famous play.

The late Jeremy Henderson lived in Enniskillen and went to Portora Royal School, as did Samuel Beckett. Henderson’s landscape paintings are full of Beckett sensibility, and this selected retrospective takes its title from the stage directions for Waiting for Godot: “A country road. A tree. Evening”.

Several other artists can be seen as part of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, including an exhibition of paintings by London-based artist Jason Sumray, and a selection of John Minihan’s famous photographs of Beckett on show in the Old Library at Portora Royal School. Visitors to the Beckett Basement at Castle Coole will explore the basement of this historic house through a series of soundscapes based on Beckett’s writing, musical influences and the sonic mechanics of his texts, directed by Cathie Boyd.

Listings Details:

Visual Arts at Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival

“Tree for Waiting for Godot”, Antony Gormley, 16 July-13 September, The Grand Yard, Castle Coole, Enniskillen. World Premiere. Part of the London 2012 Festival

Steenbeckett, Atom Egoyan, 9-29 August, The Clinton Centre Higher Bridges Gallery, Enniskillen. Irish Premiere. Part of the London 2012 Festival

‘Texts for Nothing – Enniskillen’ Samuel Beckett, in play, Joseph Kosuth, 9-29 August, Cooper Wilkinson Building, Enniskillen. UK & Irish Premiere.

Paintings by Jeremy Henderson: A country road. A tree. Evening, 3-31 August, The Gallery, Waterways Ireland, Enniskillen

Krapp’s Last Tape: Paintings by Jason Sumray, 22-27 August, The Entrance Hall & Cloisters Gallery, Portora Royal School, Enniskillen

Beckett Basement: Samuel Beckett – words / sounds & moving images, directed by Cathie Boyd, 23-27 August, Castle Coole Basement, Enniskillen

John Minihan Photographs, 23-27 August, The Seale Room, Portora Royal School, Enniskillen

Dark At Its Full, An Evening of Music and Film on reflection of Beckett’s novella Mercier and Camier, curated by Dr. Helen Sharp with contributions from pianist and musicologist Dr. Catherine Laws, artist Seamus Harahan, composer and installation artist Ciaran Maher, film-maker David Prior and poet Larry Lynch, Friday 24 August, 7.30pm, Entrance Hall, Castle Coole.

Happy Days 2012 is funded by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board; Arts Council Northern Ireland; the London 2012 Festival; Fermanagh District Council; and Lakeland & Inland Waterways

ENDS

For additional information and images, please contact:

Northern Ireland | ROI

Alison Knox

alisonlknox@gmail.com | 0796 698 3336

UK National and International

Anna Vinegrad:

press@annavinegrad.com | 0207 609 8905 | 0781 3808 487

For general enquiries about the festival and for a printed programme contact

Happy Days 2012 Festival Office: Tel +44 (0)286 632 2658

Editors Notes

About the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival

The London 2012 Cultural Olympiad is the largest cultural celebration in the history of the modern Olympic and Paralympic Movements. Spread over four years, it is designed to give everyone in the UK a chance to be part of London 2012 and inspire creativity across all forms of culture, especially among young people.

The culmination of the Cultural Olympiad will be the London 2012 Festival, a spectacular 12-week nationwide celebration bringing together leading artists from across the world with the very best from the UK, from Midsummers Day on 21 June and running until the final day of the Paralympic Games on 9 September 2012.The London 2012 Festival will celebrate the huge range, quality and accessibility of the UK’s world-class culture including dance, music, theatre, the visual arts, fashion, film and digital innovation, giving the opportunity for people across the UK to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Principal funders of the Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival are Arts Council England, Legacy Trust UK and the Olympic Lottery Distributor. BP and BT are Premier Partners of the Cultural Olympiad and the London 2012 Festival.

For more details on the programme, to download the London 2012 Festival official guide and to sign up for information visit www.london2012.com/festival

Arts Council Northern Ireland

The Arts Council is the lead development agency for the Arts in Northern Ireland, providing the main support for artists and arts organizations throughout the region through a range of funding opportunities. The Arts council distributes public money and National Lottery funds to organisations that develop and deliver arts programmes across all of society.

Northern Ireland Tourist Board

The Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival has received support towards the 2012 event from the NITB Tourism Events Funding Programme 2012/13. The event is part of the NITB led ni2012 programme of events taking place throughout Northern Ireland during 2012 and it is featured in the Big Guide to Big Events and on the ni2012 web portal. Visit www.ni2012.com

Fermanagh Lakelands

Fermanah Travel offers during the festival

Call save number from ROI  1850230230.

Killyhevlin Hotel ****
Tel: (028) 6632 3481
Web: www.killyhevlin.com
Why not come and enjoy the world’s first annual multi-arts festival celebrating the work and influences of Samuel Beckett from Thursday 23rd to Monday 27th August.  Make a weekend of it and enjoy two nights bed and breakfast with one four course dinner from only £149pps

Killyhevlin Hotel ****
Tel: (028) 6632 3481
Web: www.killyhevlin.com
Why not come and enjoy the world’s first annual multi-arts festival celebrating the work and influences of Samuel Beckett from Thursday 23rd to Monday 27th August.  Enjoy three nights bed and breakfast with one four course dinner from only £195pps

Lough Erne Resort Hotel *****
Tel: (028) 6632 3230
Web: www.lougherneresort.com
Stay in this 5 Star Resort including breakfast from just £55 per person sharing.
From: GBP £55 per person sharing, based on 2 persons sharing

The post Trailblazer exhibitions: Canadian Film-maker Atom Egoyan, US artist Joseph Kosuth and UK’s Antony Gormley pay homage to Samuel Beckett appeared first on Happy Days.

Happy Days are coming…

The post Happy Days EIBF Animation appeared first on Happy Days.

Minister for Tourism Arlene Foster joins Sean Doran, Festival Director, and artist Alan Milligan at the launch.

The Happy Days EnniskillenInternational Beckett Festival,  the first of its kind-celebrating the workand influence of writer Samuel Beckett across all the art forms- has launchedthe full programme for its inaugural edition which will take place inEnniskillen from 23-27 August 2012.

Getting underway on Thursday23 August 2012, the five-dayfestival will play host to a diverse mix of Beckett-inspired, world class, international and home-grown talents from theworld of theatre, visual art,music and comedy.

The top class artistic line-upincludes three new highlights: recent work by internationally-renownedconceptual artist Joseph Kosuth featuring rubber floors and neon;Dublin’s Pan Pan Theatre with their groundbreaking production of AllThat Fall, and Irish fiddler Tommy Peoples with a special one-offperformance inspired by Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape.

 Speaking at the launch which took place at Enniskillen Castle, Sean Doran, Founder & ArtisticDirector said:

“Happy Days inthe small market town of Enniskillen is a new addition to the summer calendarof international arts festivals. But more crucially, it arrives at a time ofvigourous cultural renaissance in Northern Ireland. Our aim is to give Beckett loversacross the world an annual home, to gather and celebrate the writer’s geniusand wit”.

Beckett spent his formativeyears in Enniskillen at Portora Royal School, which will be one of the fourmain festival hubs. The festival will take place along the town’s half-mile inmany of the towns historic venues, including the medieval Enniskillen castle,the 18th century Castle Coole, Ardhowen Theatre, and Portora RoyalSchool itself, as well as the Cathedral, churches, and schools.

For those with an interest in music, an eclectic mix of concerts can be enjoyed with performances fromLlyr Williams, Gavin Bryars, Ian Bostridge and local man Duke Special. While theHappy Days talks programme brings together leading writers, poets andartists to draw out themes in Beckett’s life and work including Lady Antonia Fraser, John Banville, Edna O’Brien,Adrian Dunbar and Paul Muldoon among others.

Several performances at HappyDays 2012 are part of the London 2012 Festival, the spectacular nationwidecelebration running from 21 June until 9 September 2012, bringing togetherleading artists from across the world with the very best from the UK. London2012 Festival events include the acclaimed Director Robert Wilson,directing and performing in Krapp’s Last Tape; Antony Gormley’sTreefor Waiting for Godot in stainless steel; Gavin Bryars and Ensemble;and Atom Egoyan’s Steenbeckett, and nightly sessions at MissFitt’s Comedy House from topcomedians including Ed Aczel, Josh Howie and John-Luke Roberts among others.

Family-friendlyperformances and events include Clastic Theatre’s puppet performance of ActWithout Words 1, and a fun, tongue-in-cheek and family-focused sportsprogramme, that will recognize Beckett’s prowess as a sportsman. “Bend ItLike Beckett” will include the Samuel Beckett Muckball Cup;the Beckett Bike-It; the Beckett Skulls Rowing Race, andthe Didi & Gogo’s Sunday Afternoon Crricket – Artists vs Crritics.

The post FESTIVAL CELEBRATING BECKETT LAUNCHES WORLD CLASS MULTI-ARTS PROGRAMME appeared first on Happy Days.

British sculptor Antony Gormley’s latest creation “Tree for Waiting for Godot”has been “planted” inthe Grand Yard at Castle Coole, Enniskillen.

The“ planting” of “Tree”marks the first event of the inaugural Happy Days Enniskillen InternationalBeckett Festival, which takes place in the island town, 23-27 August.

“Tree for Waiting for Godot” is a festivalcommission as part of a stage set for a future production of Samuel Beckett’smost famous play Waiting For Godot.

The “flat-pack” sculpturehas been made in 37 separate square stainless steel sections to facilitatetheatrical tourability, and measures 2.9 x 2.8 x 2.9 metres.

SeanDoran, Founder and Artistic Director of the Happy Days Festival said:

“We are delighted thatAntony has allowed “Tree for Waiting forGodot” to be exhibited for the first time at our inaugural Happy Daysfestival. With less than six weeks to go, it is an appropriate internationalsymbol with which to kick-start the festivities. Waiting for Godot is Beckett’s most famous work, known all over theworld, and the sculpture will form part of a stage-set for a futureAboriginal-Australian and Irish co-production of the play”.

Speakingon BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Gormley told presenter Mark Lawson that hehad corresponded with Beckett and sent him his first piece of work, “Fruits ofthe Earth”, made from his father’s First World War handgun:

Gormleytold Lawson: “I think of [Beckett] as a sort of fatherfigure, because he understood the placement…his stage directions for his playswere so absolute and so utterly aware of the critical factor of making arelational field… He made a roadmap for all creative minds to concentrate theireffort”.

“Tree” will remain atCastle Coole for 60 days to mark the 60th anniversary celebrationsof the National Trust at Castle Coole.

The post ANTONY GORMLEY’S“TREE FOR WAITING FOR GODOT”IS“PLANTED” AT CASTLE COOLE, ENNISKILLEN appeared first on Happy Days.

Ardhowen Theatre
Opening Night Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th August 8.30pm
Sunday 26th and Monday 27th August, 3pm
£25 for Saturday, Sunday Monday performances
Friday 24th Preview: Tickets £20

To book tickets log on to http://www.ardhowentheatre.com/

Krapp’s Last Tape has been described as Samuel Beckett’s most perfect play. An old man on his birthday sits down to make a recording about the past year of his life, as he has done every birthday since a young man. Now bitter, funny, ironic, he finds it hard to recognise himself in the brash, romantic, confident voice of his youth recorded 30 years earlier.

Robert Wilson has often been compared to Samuel Beckett. Both are masters of stark and striking simplicity. In one radiant hour, Beckett and Wilson, in a few simple strokes, paint a vision of man and his world that is one of the most poignant experiences in theatre.

“I met Beckett in the early ‘70’s” says Robert Wilson. “He’s been a tremendous influence on my work. He suggested I do his work and in talking to him, I realised how many things we had in common. He came backstage (Wilson’s show A Letter for Queen Victoria 1974/75) and said ‘I like your text very much’. He asked to have a copy of it. We agreed the actors we both liked best were the old Vaudeville actors. He said how much he admired Buster Keaton – a favourite of mine”

Robert Wilson is an extraordinary international cultural icon, arguably the most innovative and influential theatre director of the past 40 years. He has worked closely with artists as varied as Gianni Versace, David Bowie, Brad Pitt, Tom Waits, Philip Glass, Lou Reed and Jessye Norman. This production of ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ has been a major hit in Paris, Rome and Rio De Janero and now arrives at Happy Days in Enniskillen for its UK and Irish premiere.

The post Robert Wilson: Krapp’s Last Tape appeared first on Happy Days.

A GUIDE TO ENNISKILLEN & FERMANAGH

For 5 days in August the town of Enniskillen in Fermanagh will celebrate the wonders and influence of Samuel Beckett with a major new international festival, Happy Days. The festival runs from Thursday 23rd-Monday 27th August 2012. Plus there are free Happy Days exhibitions throughout July and August.
Enniskillen is the County Town of Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, located almost exactly in the Centre of the County on an extraordinary natural island which separates the Upper and Lower sections of Lough Erne. Enniskillen is the largest town in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.
There are architectural gems in the town and these will form the heart of Happy Days 2012: Enniskillen Castle, Castle Coole, Portora Royal School, Ardhowen Theatre, Mount Lourdes School, St Michael’s Church and St Macartin’s Cathedral among others.
One of the key images that a visitor to Enniskillen may take home with them is the proximity of Lough Erne to the town. Moorings just outside the town centre ease the pressure for parking spaces and add a continental feel. Enniskillen is a retail centre for the County, and beyond, and a lively hub for dining and drinking.
The town is home to one of the most famous bars in the world and a regular award-winner, Blakes of the Hollow. Blakes will be the Festival Club for Happy Days 2012.
Enniskillen Town Centre is firmly built along the long, narrow Main St, which actually changes name six times along its length. This gives Enniskillen a real sense of bustle and life as well as imbuing the shops with their own unique character. High Street Stores sit comfortably beside small independent traders, creating a special atmosphere for the place.
Fermanagh is world famous for the beauty of its landscape. The Fermanagh Lakelands has a wealth of extraordinary natural sites to explore.
VIEW THE FERMANAGH LAKELANDS GUIDE
FIND ACCOMMODATION IN ENNISKILLEN & FERMANAGH
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT VISITING NORTHERN IRELAND
HOW TO GET TO ENNISKILLEN & FERMANAGH

Here is a short animation by Barry from http://www.baboom.ie which features some of the sights of beautiful Enniskillen and Fermanagh

The post VISIT FERMANAGH LAKELANDS appeared first on Happy Days.

About Beckett

Samuel Beckett (1906-89), the Irish novelist, playwright, and poet who became French by adoption, was one of the most original and important writers of the 20th century. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969. Like Oscar Wilde before him, Beckett attended the famous Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, a town that is now the centre for the world’s first annual Beckett Festival – HAPPY DAYS.
Samuel Beckett stood apart from the literary coteries of his time, even though he shared many of their preoccupations. He wrestled with the problems of “being” and “nothingness” but he was not an existentialist in the manner of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Although Beckett was suspicious of conventional literature and of conventional theatre, his aim was not to write anti-novels or anti-plays as some authors did.
Beckett’s work shows affinities with James Joyce, especially in the use of language; with Franz Kafka in the portrayal of terror; and with Fyodor Dostoevsky in the probing of the darker recesses of the human spirit. Beckett was inspired, rather than influenced, by literary figures as different as the Italian poet Dante (the Divine Comedy’s circles of Hell and Purgatory); the French philosophers René Descartes (the cogito) and Blaise Pascal (“the wretchedness of man without God”); and the French novelist Marcel Proust (time). Beckett’s own work opened new possibilities for both the novel and the theatre that his successors have not been able to ignore.
Beckett was born in Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1906. He attended the Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, where he excelled in both academics and sports. In 1923 he entered Trinity College in Dublin to specialise in French and Italian. His academic record was so distinguished that upon receiving his Baccalaureate degree in 1927, he was awarded a 2-year post as lecteur (assistant) in English at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Literary Apprenticeship

In France, Beckett soon joined the informal group surrounding the great Irish writer James Joyce and was invited to contribute the opening essay to the book Our Exagmination round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, a collection of 12 articles written as a defence and explanation of Joyce’s still-unfinished Finnegans Wake by a group of Joyce’s disciples.
Beckett also moved in French literary circles. During this first stay in Paris he won a prize for the best poem on the subject of time in a competition sponsored by the Hours Press. His poem Whoroscope (1930) was his first separately published work and marked the beginning of his lifelong interest in the subject of time.
Beckett returned to Dublin in 1930 to teach French at Trinity College but submitted his resignation, after only four terms, saying that he could not teach others what he did not know himself. During the year he had obtained a Master of Arts degree. A penetrating essay on Proust, published in 1931, indicates how many of his subsequent themes Beckett was already beginning to consider at this time. After several years of wandering through Europe writing short stories and poems and employed at odd jobs, he finally settled in Paris in 1937.

First Novels and Short Stories

More Pricks than Kicks (1934), a volume of short stories derived, in part, from the then unpublished novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1993), recounts episodes from the life of Belacqua, a ne’er-do-well Irish reincarnation of Dante’s Divine Comedy procrastinator of the same name who lived beneath a rock at the Gates of Purgatory. A blood brother of all Beckett’s future protagonists, Belacqua lives what he calls “a Beethoven pause” the moments of nothingness between the music. But since what precedes and what follows man’s earthly life (that is, eternity) are Nothing, then life also (if there is to be continuity) must be a Nothingness from which there can be no escape. All of Belacqua’s efforts to transcend his condition fail.
Although Beckett’s association with Joyce continued, their friendship, as well as Joyce’s influence on Beckett, has often been exaggerated. Beckett’s first novel, Murphy (1938), which Joyce completely misunderstood, is evidence of the distance between them. Deep beneath the surface of this superbly comic tale lie metaphysical problems that Beckett was trying to solve. As Murphy turns from the repugnant world of outer reality to his own inner world, always more and more circumscribed until it becomes a “closed system” – a microcosm where he finds a mystical peace – Beckett ponders the relationship between mind and body, the Self and the outer world, and the meaning of freedom and love.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Beckett was in Ireland. He returned immediately to Paris, where, as a citizen of a neutral country, he was permitted to stay even after German occupation. He served in the Resistance movement until 1942, when he was obliged to flee from the German Gestapo into unoccupied France, where he worked as a farmhand until the liberation of Paris in 1945. During these years he wrote another novel, Watt, published in 1953.
Watt, like each of his novels, carries Beckett’s search for meaning a step further than the preceding one, or, as several critics have said, nearer the centre of his thought. In many respects Watt’s world is everyone’s world, and he resembles everyone. And yet his strange adventure in the house of the mysterious Mr. Knott – whose name may signify: not, knot, naught, or the German Not (need, anxiety), or all of them – is Beckett’s attempt to clarify the relationship between language and meaning. Watt, like most people, feels comfort when he is able to call things by their names; a name gives a thing reality. Gradually Watt discovers that the words men invent may have no relation to the real meaning of the thing, nor can the logical use of language ever reveal what is illogical and irrational: the infinite and the Self.

Writings in French

After the Liberation Beckett returned to his apartment in Paris and entered the most productive period of his career. By 1957 the works that finally established his reputation as one of the most important literary forces on the international scene were published, and all were written in French. Beckett sought the discipline of this foreign, acquired language to help him resist the temptation of using a style that was too personally evocative or too allusive. In trying to express the inexpressible, the pure anguish of existence, he felt he must abandon “literature” or “style” in the conventional sense and attempt to reproduce the voice of this anguish. These works were translated into an English that does not betray the effect of the original French.
The trilogy of novels Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), and The Unnamable (1953) deals with the subject of death; however, here it is not death which is the horror or the source of absurdity (as with the existentialists), but life. To all the characters, life represents an exile from the continuing reality of themselves, and they seek to understand the meaning of death in this context. Since freedom can exist only outside time and since death occurs only in time, the characters try to transcend or “kill” time, which imprisons them in its fatality. Recognizing the impossibility of the task, they are finally reduced to silence and waiting as the only way to endure the anguish of living. Another novel, How It Is, first published in French in 1961, emphasizes the solitude of the individual consciousness and at the same time the need for others; for only through the testimony of another can one be sure that one exists. The last of his French novels to be published was Mercier and Camier. This work demonstrates Beckett’s interest in wordplay, especially in its use of French colloquialisms. Written in 1946, it was not published until 1974.

The Plays

Beckett reached a much wider public through his plays than through his novels. The most famous plays are Waiting for Godot (1953), Endgame (1957), Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), and Happy Days (1961). The same themes found in the novels appear in these plays in more condensed and accessible form. Later, Beckett experimented successfully with other media: the radio play, film, pantomime, and the television play.

Later Works

Beckett maintained a prolific output throughout his life, publishing the poetry collection, Mirlitonades (1978), the extended prose piece, Worstward Ho (1983), and many novellas and short stories in his later years. Many of these pieces were concerned with the failure of language to express the inner being. His first novel, Dreams of Fair to Middling Women was finally published, posthumously, in 1993.
Although they lived in Paris, Beckett and his wife enjoyed frequent stays in their small country house nearby. Tall and slender, with searching blue eyes, Beckett retained the shy and unassuming manner of his younger days. Unlike his tormented characters, he was distinguished by a great serenity of spirit. He died peacefully in Paris on December 22, 1989, and was buried, as he had wished, in a small, quiet ceremony.

Further Reading

The University of Reading is the leading academic centre for Beckett Studies and has the largest Beckett archive in the world.
For more information: www.reading.ac.uk/beckett/
Near the end of his life, Beckett authorized a biography by James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (1996).
Another good source of biographical material on Beckett is Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (1959).

The post ABOUT BECKETT appeared first on Happy Days.