J. Kelly Nestruck: “Nasmith’s performance is exquisite – the pathos not overplayed, the humour stinging but still funny. When he holds a peeled banana in his mouth, it is the epitome of the word “absurd.” When he listens intently and then gets lost in memory, you see that boat moving gently, up and down, and from side to side.”
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Colette Sheridan: “It is going to be a verbatim performance. But is it very grim? After all, the narrator exists in the mud-dark and ends up in solitude after the other creature disappears. The text has drawn comparisons with Dante’s image of souls gulping mud in the Stygian marsh of the Inferno.”
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The production will run from 28 February to 17 March 2018. Visit the Battersea Arts Centre website for more information. If you are a member of the Samuel Beckett Society, you can also read a recent review of the Thom production in The Beckett Circle.
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The Irish Examiner: “[Stephen Dillane] is in Cork to rehearse for How It Is, a production of Samuel Beckett’s little-known 1962 novel. It has been adapted by Gare St Lazare Players, the Irish theatre company who have been to the fore in interpreting and performing the writer’s work for almost two decades.”
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The Deutsches Literatur Archiv website has posted a series of images from the ongoing ‘German Fever’ exhibition, which explores Samuel Beckett’s enduring connections to German art, culture, and community. Among the images one will find photograph, manuscripts, and correspondence, and will be of great interest to anyone interested in Beckett’s work. There is also an accompanying booklet by the exhibition organisers, Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon.
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Call for Papers: “Mathematics and Modern Literature is a collaborative, interdisciplinary conference exploring the ways in which writers active between the late nineteenth century and the twenty-first century engage with, represent or reflect upon mathematics in their work.”
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An excerpt from Mel Gussow’s obituary, published in The New York Times, 27 December 1989:
“Samuel Beckett, a towering figure in drama and fiction who altered the course of contemporary theater, died in Paris on Friday at the age of 83. He died of respiratory problems in a Paris hospital, where he had been moved from a nursing home. He was buried yesterday at the Montparnasse cemetery after a private funeral.
Explaining the secrecy surrounding his illness, hospitalization and death, Irene Lindon, representing the author’s Paris publisher, Editions de Minuit, said it was ‘what he would have wanted.'”
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A London Beckett Seminar conference at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 1-2 June 2018
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A symposium at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in association with the Cambridge Group for Irish Studies. The distinguished line-up of speakers includes many of the leading figures in Irish studies across several generations, as well as creative writers and actors. While the main focus will be on the two greatest Irish modernist writers, Joyce and Beckett, contributors will also consider other modern Irish writers and the appropriateness or otherwise of “modernism” as a category in poetry, fiction, drama and the visual arts.
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The free public event will take place in the 5th floor lecture theatre of The Tavistock Centre, London, on 13 December 2017. This year’s winner is Maryam Ghasemi, a former student of the Tavistock and Portman’s ‘Psychoanalytic Studies’ masters course. Her paper is titled, ‘Rockaby: Eros and Thanatos’, and is a psychoanalytic reading of the short play by Samuel Beckett.
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The Samuel Beckett Society 