(Robert is a teaching artist with Steppenwolf for Young Adults)
When I first found out that I was going to lead post-show discussions for Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had studied Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in graduate school, but felt intimidated by the prospect of leading discussions about a play so many have studied.
(John is the Marketing Director at Steppenwolf)
“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco
this ain’t no fooling around
This ain’t no Mudd Club or CBGB
I ain’t got time for that now”
Anyone remember THAT song? “Life During Wartime” - Talking Heads. It burst onto the scene in 1979, then reappeared in their live film Stop Making Sense. I used to put on one of my dad’s way-too-big-for-me suits and jerk-dance around to it like David Byrne. As I understand it, it’s about some kind of urban guerrilla movement gaining momentum in NYC - and the protagonist is getting caught up in it - it feels like something that is going to change (or end?) society, and he is reflecting back to when he used to hang at the (now defunct) NYC punk clubs Mudd Club and CBGB. I do miss my punk youth… anyway, I was thinking about it as I was putting together the EXPLORE event for Endgame, which happens this Friday. How do you put together a rockin’ party for Samuel Beckett’s Endgame? Well, it turns out that you think about “Life During Wartime.”
I play Nell in Endgame. Nell has one scene in the play, which occurs about 15 minutes into the play and takes less than 10 minutes to perform. The unique aspect of this small role is that I enter from a garbage bin. My husband in the play, Nagg, played by Fran Guinan, also lives in a garbage can and both Fran and I get into our places by going into the basement of the theater, climbing a staircase under a trap in the stage floor, and wait on our perch underneath the bins until our entrance. It’s a peculiar way to experience the play. Our physical expressiveness is limited by our confinement in the cans and, further, we come to understand that both Nagg and Nell are losing their sight (and perhaps their hearing).
(Joy is the Literary Manager at Steppenwolf)
We’re about to enter previews for Endgame, so this seems like a good time to share this great blog post about Beckett that I found a few months back. It’s by Conor McPherson, another Irish playwright who you might know from our productions of his plays The Seafarer, Dublin Carol, and The Weir. The entire post is good, but I particularly love his take on the central question of Endgame:
I am looking forward to starting rehearsal on March 2nd for Endgame with Frank Galati directing. Frank is a hugely important influence in my life and, now, a dear friend. Some of my most singular experiences in the theater as an actor have been with Frank. When I was a graduate student in the Performance Studies department at Northwestern where Frank was a professor, he cast me in an adaptation he had created of Gertrude Stein’s novel, Ida. It was a wonderful experience. Frank has some kind of uncanny affinity for Stein’s voice and, since that production of Ida, he has adapted Stein’s work for the theater several times, to marvelous effect: She Always Said Pablo at the Goodman Theatre and Loving Repeating, first at Northwestern and then with About Face Theatre at the Museum of Contemporary Art.