THE PLAYS
Cocoon presents its third ‘Annual Beckett Performance Festival,’ sharing three short Beckett plays, performed by Cocoon Actor’s Theater.
Not I is a haunting duet piece exploring the voice of one woman. It is considered a short dramatic monologue, although consisting of two characters, written in 1972 by Samuel Beckett, translated as Pas Moi; premiere at the "Samuel Beckett Festival" by the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York, directed by Alan Schneider, with Jessica Tandy and Henderson Forsythe.
A Piece of a Monologue is a very quiet monologue for one male actor. It is a fifteen-minute play written by Samuel Beckett, between October 1977 and April 1979. It followed a request for a “play about death” by the actor David Warrilow who starred in the premiere in the Annex at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, New York on 14 December 1979.
The Old Tune is a fast-paced, comedic duet for two very old men. It is a free translation of Robert Pinget’s 1960 play La Manivelle in which Samuel Beckett transformed Pinget’s Parisians, Toupin and Pommard into Dubliners, Cream and Gorman. Its first radio broadcast was by the BBC on 23 August 1960. Barbara Bray directed Jack MacGowran and Patrick Magee.
Call to reserve: 845-452-7870
Tickets: Pay at the door by cash, check or credit card.
OR CLICK HERE to buy online!
THE DISCUSSIONS
Special guest lecturers will speak post-show, with open discussions with the directors, actors, and audience.
THE ART
A visual art installation with music will be presented in the parlor rooms of the theater building before and after each performance.
THE PERFORMERS
Cocoon Actor’s Theater is an ensemble of performers working throughout the year together on various classic material, sharing roles and duties.
Performing in this year’s ‘Annual Beckett Performance Festival’ are:
Jim Granger, Andrés and Marguerite San Millán, and Douglas Woolley.
THE PLAYWRIGHT
Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Beckett's work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation."
