As part of its Fifth International Theatre Festival, UCLA Live presents the Samuel Beckett Centenary Celebration showcasing a selection of the late writer's most influential pieces performed by some of the leading exponents of his work. This Nov. 7-19 mini-festival begins with Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland's Access All Beckett — Five Dramatic Recitals of Prose and One Late Drama, including The Beckett Trilogy: "Molloy," "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable," as well as Three Works by Beckett: "A Piece of Monologue," "Enough" and "Texts for Nothing III, VIII & XI."  The festival concludes with Gate Theatre Dublin's "Waiting for Godot," featuring original director Walter Asmus and most of the original cast.

All performances will be held at Freud Playhouse on the UCLA campus. For tickets and information, visit www.UCLALive.org, call (310) 825-2101 or contact Ticketmaster.

Samuel Beckett Centenary Celebration At-A-Glance

• Tuesday-Sunday, Nov. 7-12: Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland performs Access All Beckett — Five Dramatic Recitals of Prose and One Late Drama, featuring celebrated actor Conor Lovett and actress Ally Ni Chiarain.
• The Beckett Trilogy — "Molloy," "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable," Tuesday, Nov. 7; Thursday, Nov. 9; Saturday, Nov. 11; and Sunday, Nov. 12.
• Three Works by Beckett — "A Piece of Monologue," "Enough" and "Texts For Nothing III, VIII & XI," Wednesday, Nov. 8, and Friday, Nov. 10.

o       Wednesday-Sunday, Nov. 15-19: Gate Theatre Dublin returns to L.A. with an encore engagement of their celebrated version of "Waiting for Godot," featuring Walter Asmus' original direction and most of the original cast.

Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1906, Samuel Beckett changed the course of theater and literature forever with his revolutionary plays and prose. With characteristic irony and a wicked sense of humor, Beckett stripped away the trappings of literary expression to reveal the true nature and basic anguish of the human condition.

Beckett died in 1989, but as numerous worldwide events celebrating the centenary of his birth attest, his works are as powerful and relevant as ever. "For me, Samuel Beckett is the most important playwright of the 20^th century," said UCLA Live director David Sefton. "With his body of theatrical work, particularly the pivotal 'Waiting for Godot,' he created a new language for the stage — liberating it from many of the conventions of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Without Beckett there would be no Harold Pinter or Sarah Kane. The debt owed to him by contemporary theater is incalculable."

Although Beckett is widely known for his groundbreaking theater plays, there is a strong tradition of presenting his prose works for a live audience. Among the performances scheduled for UCLA Live's Beckett Centenary is a suite of prose pieces performed as solo recitals by Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland. Featuring the acclaimed Irish actor Conor Lovett in all but one of the six works, Access All Beckett includes four nights of Beckett's great prose trilogy: "Molloy," "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable," as well as two evenings of Three Works by Beckett: "A Piece of Monologue," "Enough" (performed by actress Ally Ni Chiarain) and "Texts for Nothing III, VIII & XI."

Also scheduled is a reprisal of Gate Theatre Dublin's acclaimed "Waiting for Godot," featuring the original direction of Beckett's former associate Walter Asmus, plus most of the original cast, including Beckett veterans Barry McGovern and Johnny Murphy as Vladimir and Estragon, as well as Stephen Brennan as Lucky and Alan Stanford as Pozzo. The play was last performed at UCLA Live in 2000 to rave reviews and standing ovations. Originally produced in 1988 at the request of Beckett himself, the troupe's version of his 1952 masterpiece has been described as "definitive … the closest we will ever get to the perfect 'Godot'" (The Irish Times).

About the Companies

Founded in Chicago in 1983 by Bob Meyer and based in Paris since 1988, Gare St. Lazare Players have mounted more than 50 productions of new and classic plays throughout the world. In 1995, two of the group's members, director Judy Hegarty Lovett and actor Conor Lovett, set up Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland and quickly achieved worldwide acclaim for their riveting interpretations of Beckett's prose. Their celebrated productions have been staged in a variety of venues and festivals throughout the world.

Since 1928, Gate Theatre Dublin has been regarded as one of the most adventurous and far-sighted playhouses in Europe, introducing Dublin to the work of international playwrights including Ibsen, Chekhov, O'Neill and Zola. As the company's artistic director since 1983, Michael Colgan has been instrumental in launching a worldwide renaissance of interest in Beckett by staging all 19 of the writer's works on significant stages across the globe.

Samuel Beckett Centenary Celebration — Additional Information

Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland

Access All Beckett — Five Dramatic Recitals of Prose and One Late Drama

Beckett's brilliance as a dramatist may have overshadowed his gifts as a novelist, but these six works remind us that he was also one of the great fiction writers of the 20^th century. The prose pieces are directed by artistic director Judy Hegarty Lovett, and the short drama, "A Piece of Monologue," is directed by Walter Asmus.

The Beckett Trilogy–"Molloy," "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable"

Tuesday, Nov. 7; Thursday, Nov. 9, and Saturday, Nov. 11, at 8 p.m.; Sunday, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m.; all at Freud Playhouse

Tickets: $40, 28 ($15 UCLA students)

Conor Lovett stars in this signature performance of Beckett's great prose trilogy. Written between 1947 and 1950 and told with Beckett's characteristic wit, lyricism, shocking crudity and piercing insight, these poignant and often hilarious first-person narratives portray characters who are increasingly immobilized but struggle mightily to go on.

Three Works by Beckett:

"A Piece of Monologue" (Conor Lovett, actor)

"Enough" (Ally Ni Chiarain, actor)

"Texts For Nothing III, VIII & XI" (Conor Lovett, actor)

Wednesday, Nov. 8, and Friday, Nov. 10, at 8 p.m.; Freud Playhouse

Tickets: $40, 28 ($15 UCLA students)

In language of great beauty, "A Piece of Monologue" ruminates on the shortness, the nature and the poignancy of life. In "Enough," a narrator of indeterminate gender, tells of his/her companionship with an older man, which began when the narrator was about 6. "Texts for Nothing" offers a profound meditation on the reliability of language and the nature of self.

Gate Theatre Dublin, "Waiting for Godot"

Walter Asmus, director

Wednesday-Friday, Nov. 15-17, at 8 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 18, at 2 and 8 p.m.;

Sunday, Nov. 19, at 7 p.m., at Freud Playhouse

Tickets: $60, 42 ($20 UCLA students)

Last performed at UCLA Live in 2000 to rave reviews, "Godot" returns with Gate Theatre Dublin featuring most of the original cast. "Here, finally, is a 'Godot' worth its weight in gold," an L.A. Times wrote of the performance. Written in French, "Godot" premiered in 1953 in Paris as "En Attendant Godot" and remains one of the most influential works of dramatic literature. At the time of its American premiere in 1956 (at Coconut Grove and on Broadway with a cast that included Bert Lahr), New York Times' critic Brooks Atkinson described the play as "a mystery wrapped in an enigma." 

UCLA LIVE'S FIFTH INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL

• Sept. 29-Oct. 1: The Suzhou Kun Opera Theater of Jiangsu Province in its L.A. debut performs "The Peony Pavilion," the 400-year-old, Chinese opera of love and resurrection.
• Sept. 30-Oct. 8: Playwright/performer Heather Woodbury's world premiere of "Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks" is a time-traversing, two-part saga that looks at the Brooklyn Dodgers' move to Los Angeles from New York in 1957 and the lasting effect it has had on three generations of characters.
• Oct. 11-15: Andrew Dawson's "Absence and Presence," an L.A. premiere and 2005 Edinburgh Festival award winner, is an eloquent reflection on his father's death.
• Nov. 7-19: As part of the Samuel Beckett Centenary Celebration, Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland (Nov. 7-12) performs Access All Beckett — Five Dramatic Recitals of Prose and One Late Drama; and Gate Theatre Dublin (Nov. 15-19) returns to L.A. with its definitive version of "Waiting for Godot."
• Nov. 28-Dec. 10: "Mabou Mines DollHouse," directed by Lee Breuer in its West Coast premiere, is an OBIE Award-winning adaptation of Ibsen's text set amid a surrealistic visual landscape of dollhouse sized furniture, where small men dominate tall women.
• Dec. 12-17: STO Union, Canada's acclaimed experimental theater company, presents "Revolutions in Therapy," a multi-media work questioning psychoanalysis, religion and capitalism; and "Recent Experiences," the story of four generations of a family performed with the audience seated intimately around a large table.

The UCLA Live International Theatre Festival is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Tickets for UCLA Live events can be purchased at the UCLA Central Ticket Office at the southwest corner of the James West Alumni, online at www.UCLALive.org, and at Ticketmaster outlets. To charge by phone or for more information, call (310) 825-2101. UCLA students must purchase tickets in advance. Student rush tickets, subject to availability, are offered at the same price to students with a valid ID one hour prior to show time.

UCLA Live is an internationally acclaimed producer and presenter of music, dance, theater and spoken word, bringing hundreds of outstanding and provocative artists to Los Angeles each year. From the ancient to the modern, the local to the global, and the underground to the world-renowned, UCLA Live is committed to supporting the development of new and existing work by both major and emerging artists. Lectures, residencies, and extensive outreach programs expand the impact of its unparalleled performances.

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