Samuel Beckett News

Custom Made Theatre Co. Stages World Premiere of Gino Dilorio's "Sam and Dede, or My Dinner with Andre the Giant," Feb 11 - Mar 5.

Following successful tours of Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in 2015, today London Classic Theatre Artistic Director Michael Cabot announces a new production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. Cabot directs a cast including Jonathan Ashley (Goldberg), Gareth Bennett-Ryan (Stanley), Cheryl Kennedy (Meg), Ged McKenna (Petey), Declan Rodgers (McCann) and Imogen Wilde (Lulu). The production tours to 37 venues around the UK this spring/summer, starting at Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham on 17 February.

Pear Theatre continues its 2015/2016 season with Anton Chekhov's classic UNCLE VANYA, in a world premiere translation by Bay Area writer, actor, and director Dave Sikula.

Today in 1957 Waiting for Godot opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where it ran for 6 performances. An absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, it revolves around two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's premiere. Since its US premiere in 1956, several notable revivals have been produced, including the 1988 production featuring Robin Williams and Steve Martin, and the 2009 revival starring Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin.

It seems ironic--to me at least--that New York's venerable City Opera would be returning to life at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, just as the “Prototype: Opera/Theatre/Now” festival was finishing up its run at alternative venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Prototype “unleashed a powerful wave of opera-theatre and music-theatre from a new generation of classical and post-classical composers and librettists”--their words, not mine, but I won't dispute it--while City is doing a warhorse.

Cherry Lane Theatre, where COLIN QUINN - THE NEW YORK STORY has been enjoying a sold-out run for the past several months, will present a special performance to benefit Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce St.) on Tuesday, January 26, it has been announced by Angelina Fiordellisi, the theater's Founding Artistic Director.

The multi award winning shake & stir theatre co will celebrate their 10th Anniversary year with a stellar line up at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) in 2016.

On Monday 8 February 2016 the arts community and leaders from various industry sectors will gather at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) Playhouse to honour the life and career of the acclaimed and much loved Australian actress, CAROL BURNS who passed away after a brief illness, just before Christmas.

The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University will present the historic, monographic exhibition Who Does She Think She Is?, a long-overdue retrospective of Rosalyn Drexler's multidisciplinary practice, February 12 – June 5, 2016. Showcasing Drexler's major paintings and collages as well as her captivating early sculptures, award-winning plays and novels, and photographic and video documentation of the flamboyant performance aspects of her life and work, the exhibition is co-curated by Rose Curator-at-Large Katy Siegel and Curatorial Assistant Caitlin Julia Rubin.  An opening reception will be held on Thursday, February 11, 2016 from 5-9pm.

Theatre for a New Audience will present a live taping of the podcast Person Place Thing with host Randy Cohen interviewing internationally acclaimed director Trevor Nunn on Sunday, January 24, at 7:00pm at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place.  Tickets are $15 for the general public and $12 for Theatre for a New Audience subscribers.

With the critically acclaimed Show Boat currently running in the Crucible, and Partus and A Raisin in the Sun in rehearsals, Sheffield Theatres' Artistic Director Daniel Evans announces the full casts for the forthcoming productions of Waiting For Godot and the world premiere of Richard Bean's comedy thriller The Nap, both at the Crucible this spring.

Geffen Playhouse announces a premiere theatrical event for Los Angeles - ten years in the making. Will Eno's lauded play was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and has been translated into more than fifteen languages, with more than 100 productions mounted worldwide.

'JUPITER (a play about power)' by Superhero Clubhouse and Kaimera Productions is an argument of soaring irony and logic between humanity and a dude with one-time magic who has made all fossil fuels disappear permanently from the Earth. That's not such an unbelievable premise, when you think about it, because in terms of our global history, we are on the brink of an energy systems overhaul. Some 'man at the switch' could at any time begin shutting our industrial civilization down. Oh, we'll be indignant then. Now imagine a philosophical debate between this overlord and a woman who represents all of humankind. That is the one-act 'dream play' that will be offered to us by playwright Jeremy Pickard, director Simon Adinia Hanukai and musician/energy policy specialist Jonathan Camuzeaux, presented by La Mama from February 11-28, 2016.

The waiting is over! After 16 years of waiting in the wings, Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett's absurdist masterpiece WAITING FOR GODOT returns to San Diego stages with the fruitlessmoon theatreworks 2016 production at White Box Live Arts. Godot was presented at the Lyceum Theatre in 2000 and produced by The Renaissance Theatre Company.

Los Altos Stage Company is thrilled to announce the Bay Area Premiere of Will Eno's whimsical and poetic tale, Middletown. Winner of the inaugural Horton Foote Award for Most Promising New Play in 2010, Middletown opens on January 29 (preview performance on January 28) and runs through February 21 at the Bus Barn Theater in Los Altos.

Rehearsals begin today (Monday, January 4) for Theatre for a New Audience's production of William Shakespeare's Pericles directed by Trevor Nunn, featuring OBIE Award-winner Christian Camargo in the title role and leading a diverse company of 22 actors, Jeffrey Horowitz, Theatre for a New Audience Founding Artistic Director, announced. 

One of Australia's most versatile and acclaimed actors, Carol Burns has passed away, aged 68, after a short battle with cancer. Her partner of 36 years, composer and musician, Alan Lawrence was at her bedside as she passed at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital.

Two River Theater, under the leadership of Artistic Director John Dias and Managing Director Michael Hurst, announces the full cast and creative team for its production of Lives of Reason, a world premiere written by Robert Rechnitz and Kenneth Stunkel, directed by Jonathan Fox. Performances will begin in Two River's Marion Huber Theater, 21 Bridge Avenue, on Saturday, January 9 and continue through Sunday, February 7. The opening night performance is Friday, January 15 at 8pm. Tickets are available from 732.345.1400 or tworivertheater.org. The lead production sponsors are Monmouth University and Saker ShopRites.

Michael Grandage Company and Emily Dobbs Productions opened the UK premiere of Richard Greenberg's THE DAZZLE at FOUND111, at the site of the old Central St Martins School of Art on Charing Cross Road. 

Actor Tony Roberts celebrated his new memoir 'Do You Know Me?' -- which reveals the story of his legendary five-decade career on stage and screen -- with an in-store reading and book signing at The Drama Book Shop (250 West 40th Street) on yesterday, December 15.