"What do I know about man's destiny?  I could tell you more about radishes."
-Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett is probably the most well known of the absurdist playwrights because of his work Waiting for Godot.  Beckett's plays seem to focus on the themes of the uselessness of human action, and the failure of the human race to communicate.  He was born on April 13,1906, which was both Friday the 13th and Good Friday.  He had quite a normal upbringing in an upper-middle-class Irish family, and excelled in both school and the sport of cricket.  He attended the University of Dublin Ireland where he received his M.A. in modern languages, he then taught for a short time, explored parts of Europe and eventually settled in Paris.  It was in Paris that he met writer James Joyce.  It was this literary exposure that encouraged Beckett to seek publication.  It is interesting to note that  many of the conversations between Beckett and Joyce were conducted in silence.  In the 1930's and 40's Beckett published many works in the form of essays, short stories, poetry, and novels, but very few people noticed his work.  In fact he only sold ninety-five copies of the French translation of his novel Murphy, in four years.  His postwar era fame only came about in the 1950's when he published three novels and his famous play, Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Godot is probably the most famous absurd play to date.  The characters of the play, are absurd caricatures who of course have problems communicating with one another, and the language they use is often times ludicrous.  And, following the cyclical pattern, the play seems to end in the same state it began in, with nothing really changed.

Endgame

play in one act by Samuel Beckett, written in French as Fin de partie and produced and published in 1957. It was translated into English by the author. Endgame has four characters: Hamm, the master, who is blind, wheelchair-bound, and demanding; Clov, his resentful servant, physically incapable of sitting down; and Hamm's crippled, senile parents, Nagg and Nell, confined to garbage cans. They all live in one room with two windows; from these Clov, at Hamm's order, views and reports on the dying of the Earth. The complex relationship between Hamm and Clov is the principal subject of the play. As is characteristic of Beckett's plays, the setting of Endgame is spare and the stage directions are copious. In its first American publication Endgame was bound with Beckett's brief pantomime Act Without Words, I, originally Acte sans paroles, I (first produced and published in 1957).

Endgame is Samuel Beckett’s second published play. The plot is continuous, unbroken by separate scenes or acts. Roger Blin first produced this play in France at the Royal Court, in 1957, and later Blin and Georges Devine produced it again in an English production. Both were badly received by almost all London critics. Only after the now famous Paris production of 1964, starring Patrick Magee and Jack Macgowran in the roles of Hamm and Clov, was Endgame recognized as a masterpiece.

As the play opens, Hamm is dying in a world that seems to be coming to an end. Hamm takes satisfaction in knowing that all of existence may fade to nothing. Hamm is confined to a chair, and throughout the play he discards, reluctantly, the continuing prospects of life: food; painkillers; his servant Clov, on whom he is totally dependent; the pole that enables him to move his wheelchair; and holding the dog, on which he lavishes his affection.

Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell, having lost their legs many years ago in a bicycle accident, live in ashbins from which they occasionally emerge only to be cursed by their son. His mother dies and Hamm, knowing that Clov is leaving him, prepares for his last battle, first to outlive his father and then to face inevitable death without the help of the few objects that have given him comfort in his final days. Hamm soliloquizes in terms of the last moves in chess, a king evading checkmate as long as possible with stern asides on religion, ‘‘Get out of here and love one another! Lick your neighbor as yourself!’’ He echoes Pozzo’s gravedigger aphorism in Waiting for Godot when he says, ‘‘The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.’’ Clov prepares to leave, hating Hamm for past wrongs, yet now without pity for Hamm.

• first performed (as Fin de partie) at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on April 3, 1957. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Roger Blin, Jean Martin, Georges Adet, Christine Tsingos.

• opened (as Endspiel) at the Schlosspark, Berlin, on September 30, 1957. Directed by Hans Bauer. Featured Bernhard Minetti, Rudi Schmitt, Werner Stock, and Else Ehser.

• opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre, New York, on January 28, 1958. Directed by Alan Schneider. Featured Lester Rawlins, Alvin Epstein, P. J. Kelly, Nydia Westman.

• opened (as Endspiel) on March 8, 1958. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured George Bucher, Karl Schellenberg, Franz Ibaschitz, Mela Wigandt.

• performed as part of the "Holland Festival 1958" (as Fin de partie) at the Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Rotterdam, on June 21; the Schevingen Kurhauscabaret on June 22; and the Nieuwe de la Martheater, Amsterdam, on June 24. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Roger Blin, Jean Martin, Georges Adet, Alice Reichen.

• opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre, New York, on February 11, 1962. Directed by Alan Schneider. Featured Vincent Gardenia, Ben Piazza, John C. Becher, Sudie Bond.

• opened (as Fin de partie) at the Théâtre de Carouge, Geneva, on May 15, 1962. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Roger Blin, Maurice Aufair, Marc Fayolle, Valerie Quincy.

• opened at the Studio Champs-Elysées, Paris, on February 20, 1964. Directed by Michael Blake, assisted by Beckett. Featured Patrick Magee, Jack MacGowran, Sydney Bromley, and Elvi Hale.

• opened at the Aldwych Theatre, London, on July 9, 1964. Directed by Donald McWhinnie. Featured Patrick Magee, Jack MacGowran, Brian Pringle, and Patsy Byrne.

• opened (as Endspiel) at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt on September 25, 1967. Directed by Beckett. Featured Ernst Schröder, Horst Bollman, Werner Stock, Gudrun Genest.

• opened (as Fin de partie) at the Théâtre 347, Paris, in 1968. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Roger Blin, Jean Martin (replaced by André Julien), Georges Adet, and Christine Tsingos.

• opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on October 28, 1968. Directed by George Devine. Featured George Devine, Jack MacGowran, Richard Goolden, Frances Cuka.

• opened at the Washington Square Methodist Church on May 30, 1970. Directed by Robert Sklar. Featured Joseph Chaikin, Peter Maloney, James Barbosa, and Jayne Haynes.

• opened at New York University School of the Arts on February 8, 1973. Directed by André Gregory. Featured Gerry Bammam, Larry Pine, Tom Costello, Saskia Noordhoek Hegt. This infamous production featured a wild array of sound effects (bugles, machine guns, crowing roosters, automobiles) and quickly won disapproval from critics and Beckett.

• opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, as part of the Samuel Beckett Festival, on May 20, 1976. Directed by Donald McWhinnie. Featured Patrick Magee, Stephen Rea, Leslie Sarony, Rose Hill.

• opened at Roundabout Stage Two, New York, on March 27, 1977. Directed by Gene Feist. Featured Gordon Heath, Jake Dengel, Charles Randall, Suzanne Shepherd.

• opened at the Murray Theater, Princeton, on May 4, 1977. Directed by Joseph Chaikin. Featured Daniel Seltzer, Christopher McCann, Charles Stanley, Shami Chaikin.

• opened (as Slutparti) at Bristol Music Centers Teater, Copenhagen, on September 18, 1978. Directed by Walter D. Asmus. Featured Morten Grunwald, Ove Sprogoe, Tommy Kenter, and Lily Weiding.

• opened at the Young Vic, London, on January 29, 1980.

• opened (as Fin de partie) at the American Center on October 26, 1981. Directed by Sandra Solov. Featured Pierre Chabert, Henry Pillsbury, Raymond Segre, and Sandra Solov.

• opened at Tai Théâtre d’Essai on April 13, 1983. Directed by Peter Hudson. Featured Nick Calderbank, Christian Erikson, Robert Barr, and Judith Burnett.

• opened at the Bathhouse Theater, Seattle, in 1998.

• a bilingual version of Endgame/Fin de partie opened in Montreal in 1999. The performance took place in an abandoned warehouse in subzero temperatures.

• opened at Harbourfront's Premiere Dance Theatre, Toronto, in 1999. Directed by Daniel Brooks. Featured Diego Matamoros, Peter Donat, Jim Warren, and Karen Robinson.

• opened at the Winters Opera House, Winters, California, on May 21, 1999. Directed by Lloyd Vance.

• opened at St. Margaret's Anglican Church, Winnipeg, Manitoba, on January 11, 2001.

• opened at the Earl Street Theatre, Kingston, Ontario, on February 22, 2001. Directed by Mark Ingram. Featured Steven Spencer, Clayton Garrett, Aaron Miedema, and Linda Worsley.

Happy days

In Happy Days, Samuel Beckett pursues his relentless search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the universe, to time past and time present. Once again, stripping theater to its barest essentials, Happy Days offers only two characters: Winnie, a woman of about fifty, and Willie, a man of about sixty. In the first act Winnie is buried up to her waist in a mound of earth, but still has the use of her arms and a few earthly possessions—toothbrush, tube of toothpaste, small mirror, revolver, handkerchief, spectacles; in the second act she is embedded up to her neck and can move only her eyes. Willie lives and moves—on all fours—behind the mound, appearing intermittently and replying only occasionally to Winnie’s long monologue, but the knowledge of his presence is a source of comfort and inspiration to her, and doubtless the pre-requisite for all her “happy days.”

In the original Paris production, the foremost French actress Madeleine Rénaud turned the role of Winnie into a tour de force of acting and has since toured the U.S. performing it in French, while the late Ruth White won many awards and accolades for her performance in the 1961 New York English-language premiere.

• premiered at the Cherry Lane Theatre, New York, on September 17, 1961. Directed by Alan Schneider. Featured Ruth White and John C. Becher.

• opened (as Glückliche Tage) at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt, Cologne, on November 5, 1961. Directed by Walter Henn. Featured Berta Drews and Rudolf Fernau.

• opened (as Glückliche Tage) at the Schausspielhaus "Tribune", Düsseldorf, on December 17, 1961. Directed by Karl Henry Stroux. Featured Maria Wimmer.

• opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on November 1, 1962. Directed by George Devine. Featured Brenda Bruce and Peter Duguid.

• opened (as Oh les beaux jours) at the Teatro del Ridotto, Venice, on September 28, 1963.

• opened at the Eblana Theatre, Dublin, on September 30, 1963. Directed by John Beary. Featured Marie Kean and O. Z. Whitehead.

• opened (as Oh les beaux jours) at the Odéon-Théâtre de France, Paris, on October 21, 1963. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault.

• opened (as Oh les beaux jours) at the Théâtre de France on September 14, 1964.

• opened (as Giorno felici) at the Teatro Gobetti, Turin, on April 2, 1965. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Laura Adani and Franco Passatore.

• opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre, New York, on September 14, 1965. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault.

• opened (as Giorno felici) at the Teatro Gerolamo, Milan, on September 18, 1965. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Laura Adani and Franco Passatore.

• opened the Studio Arena Theatre, Buffalo, New York, on October 12, 1968. Directed by Alan Schneider. Featured Sada Thompson and Wyman Pendleton.

• opened (as Glückliche Tage, translated by Erika and Elmar Tophoven) at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt, Berlin, on September 17, 1971. Directed by Beckett. Featured Eva-Katharina Schultz and Rudi Schmitt.

• opened at the Liverpool Playhouse, Liverpool, on November 26, 1975. Later transferred to the Old Vic Theatre and then to the Lyttleton Theatre, London. Directed by Sir Peter Hall. Featured Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Alan Webb (sometimes Harry Lomax).

• opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on June 7, 1979. Dircted by Beckett. Featured Billie Whitelaw and Leonard Fenton.

• opened at the New York Shakespeare Festival on June 7, 1979. Dircted by Andrei Serban. Featured Irene Worth and George Voskovec.

• broadcast on BBC2 television on October 13, 1979. Directed by Beckett and Tristram Powell. This was a film of the Royal Court Theatre production of June 7.

• opened (as Oh les beaux jours) at the Théâtre du Rond-Point on September 29, 1981. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Madeleine Renaud and Gerard Lorin.

Not I

• premiered at the Forum Theater of the Lincoln Center, New York, in September 1972.

• opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on January 16, 1973.

• opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on January 29, 1975. Directed by Anthony Page. Featured Billie Whitelaw and Melvyn Hastings.

• opened (as Pas moi) at the Théâtre d’Orsay, Paris, on April 5, 1975. Directed by Beckett. Featured Madeleine Renaud.

• opened (as Pas moi, with Pas) at the Théâtre d’Orsay Grane salle, Paris, on April 11, 1978. Directed by Beckett. Featured Madeleine Renaud.

That time

• premiered (with Play and Footfalls) at the Royal Court Theatre, London, as part of the Samuel Beckett Festival, on May 20, 1976. Directed by Donald McWhinnie. Featured Patrick Magee.

• opened (with Play and Footfalls) at the Manhattan Theatre Club, New York, on December 18, 1977. Directed by Alan Schneider. Featured Donald Davis.

• opened at the Edinburgh Festival of Music and Drama on August 13, 1984. Directed by Alan Schneider.

Waiting for Gobot

• first performed (as En attendant Godot) at the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris, in 1952. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Pierre Latour, Lucien Raimbourg, Roger Blin, Jean Martin, and Serge Lecointe.

• opened at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, Coral Gables, Florida, on January 3, 1956. Directed by Alan Schneider. Featured Bert Lahr, Tom Ewell, Arthur Malet, Jack Scott Smart, and Jimmy Oster. Ludicrously billed as "the Laugh Sensation of two Continents", this production had numerous walk-outs and was filleted by local reviewers. The show was closed after two weeks. Beckett confided to Schneider, "Of course I know the Miami swells and their live models can hardly be described as theatre-goers and that their reactions are no more significant than those of a Jersey herd and I presume their critics are worthy of them."

• opened at Ethel Barrymore Theatre, January 21-26, 1957. Directed by Herbert Berghof. Featured Manton Moreland, Earle Hyman, Geoffrey Holder, Rex Ingram, and Bert Chamberlain. The first all-black production of the play.

• opened at San Quentin State Prison, on November 19, 1957. Directed by Herbert Blau. Featured Jules Irving. The play, chosen because its cast was entirely male, greatly impressed the inmates who, unlike the "Miami swells," understood a thing or two about the idea of waiting. The formation of the San Quentin Drama Workshop was a result of the production’s success.

• opened at the Alley Theatre, Houston, on September 9, 1958. Directed by Alan Schneider. Featured Sidney Kay, John Astin, John Wylie, Carl Bensen, and Neil Tucker.

• opened at the Royal Stratford E., London, on May 15, 1961. Directed by Alan Simpson. Featured Brian Phelan, David Kelly, Derek Young, Nigel Fitzgerald, and Patrick Byrne.

• BBC1 television broadcast on June 22, 1961. Directed by Donald McWhinnie. Featured Peter Woodthorpe, Jack MacGowran, Timothy Bateson, Felix Felton, and Mark Mileham.

• opened at the Encore Theater, San Francisco, on June 21, 1962. Directed by Herbert Blau. Featured Robert Symonds, Eugene Roche, Alan Mandell, Edward Winter, and Christopher Bergman.

• opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on December 30, 1964. Directed by Anthony Page, assisted by Beckett. Featured Alfred Lynch, Nicol Williamson, Jack MacGowran, Paul Curran, Kirk Martin.

• opened at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt, Berlin, on February 25, 1965. Directed by Deryk Mendel, assisted by Beckett. Featured Stefan Wigger, Horst Bollmann, Klaus Herm, Bernhard Minetti, Gerhard Sprunkel. Beckett thought this show "mediocre" and that Minetti "gave the worst performance as Pozzo I have ever seen."

• opened at the Avon Theatre, Stratford, Ontario, on August 22, 1968. Directed by William Hutt. Featured Eric Donkin, Powys Thomas, Adrian Pecknold, James Blendick, and Douglas Birkenshaw.

• opened (as En attendant Godot) at the Théâtre de Plaisance, Paris, on April 3, 1974. Directed by Thierry Destraz. Featured Jacques Salmon, Thierry Destraz, Jean Chevrin, Jacques Desmoliers, and Michel Estève. Beckett considered this revival "very poor" and the troupe "very young."

• opened (as Warten auf Godot) at the Schiller-Theater on March 8, 1975. Directed by Beckett. Featured Horst Bollmann, Stefan Wigger, Klaus Herm, Martin Held (replaced by Karl Raddatz), and Torsten Sense.

• opened at Stanford University, California, on August 12, 1975.

• opened (as Warten auf Godot) at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on April 21, 1976. Directed by Beckett. Same cast as March 8, 1975.

• opened at the Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre in 1977. Directed by Ralph Waite. Featured Donald Moffat, Dana Elcar, Bruce French, Ralph Waite, and Rico Williams.

• opened (as En attendant Godot) at the Odéon-Théâtre de France on February 21, 1978. Directed by Roger Blin. Featured Jean-Paul Rousillin, Michel Aumont, Georges Riquier, Francois Chaumette.

• opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, on May 25, 1978. Directed by Walter D. Asmus. Featured Austin Pendleton, Sam Waterston, Milo O’Shea, Michael Egan, and R. J. Murray.

• opened (as En attendant Godot) at la Cour d’Honneur du Palais des Papes on July 16, 1978. Directed by Otomar Krejca and Yves Cassagne. Featured Rufus, Georges Wilson, Jose-Maria Flotas, Michel Bouquet, and Fabrice Luchini.

• opened at The Acting Company, Public Theatre, New York, on April 22, 1981. Directed by Alan Schneider. Featured Richard S. Iglewski, Richard Howard, Paul Walker, Keith David, and Johann Carlo.

• opened (with Rockaby) at the Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago, on September 20, 1998.

• opened at the River Stage in Sacramento, California, on July 10, 1999. Directed by Frank Condon.

• opened at the Odeon Theatre de l'Europe, Paris, on September 16, 1999. Directed by Luc Bondy. Featured Francois Chattot, Gerard Desarthe, Roger Jendly, Serge Merlin, and Xavier Loria.

• opened at the Bruka Theatre, Reno, Nevada, on November 19, 1999. Directed by Dave Anderson

Some useful sites -

Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot; from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1952), featuring members of the San Quentin Drama Workshop

http://samuel-beckett.net/endgame.html ==== >> ENDGAME

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