Event Listing - Theater
Thu Apr 24 - Thu May 15

Performers Under Stress presents

Son of Sam I am

an evening of rarely-performed short works by Samuel Beckett


Tel. 415-585-1221
Website
$15 - $20
Tickets
Box Office: 415-585-1221

Location
Date and Time
The Garage, 975 Howard
975 Howard St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
cross street: 6th St.
district: SoMa

Thu Apr 24 (8:00 PM)
Fri Apr 25 (8:00 PM)
Sat Apr 26 (8:00 PM)
Thu May 1 (8:00 PM)
Fri May 2 (8:00 PM)

Description
SON OF SAM I AM features an eclectic selection of Beckett’s short works, including Catastrophe, Rockaby, and Krapp’s Last Tape, as well as several short pieces of fiction that the audience will blindly pick from a clothesline.

Written in 1982 and dedicated to then imprisoned Czech reformer and playwright Václav Havel, Catastrophe finds a tyrannical Director molding an actor on a platform into his own personal vision of a catastrophe, with the aid of his befuddled Assistant. Perhaps a comment on Beckett’s own work, Catastrophe is a comment on societies that restrict free speech through state-censored art, and of course, the tyranny of certain stage directors.

A woman dressed in a black gown sits rocking in a chair that rocks of its own volition. A voice speaks to her. It is lulling her to sleep, perhaps her last sleep. Or maybe, it is waking her up. Beckett penned Rockaby in 1980 for a festival and symposium in commemoration of his 75th birthday.

Written in the late 1950s and later translated into English by Beckett himself, Rough for Theatre I echoes both the themes and situations of Endgame and Waiting for Godot. A is a blind street corner fiddler looking for spare change. B is an invalid
in a wheelchair looking for company. Will it be love or violence between them, or both?

In Rough for Radio I, written in 1961, A Woman comes to visit A Man in his room. She asks to listen. The Man instructs her to turn the knobs of the instrument. Voices emerge. There are births. There is death. Nothing is resolved, but we do learn The Man’s name.

One of Beckett’s funniest and most ironically chilling works for the stage, Krapp’s Last Tape premiered as a curtain raiser to Endgame in 1958 and was originally written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee. It is Krapp’s 69th birthday and, as was become his custom, he hauls out his old tape recorder and reviews one of the earlier years – in this case the recording he made when he was 39. As he looks back with longing on the ashes of his youth, he finds he has nothing he wants to record for posterity.

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish dramatist, novelist and poet. His works were minimalist, and, according to some interpretations, deeply pessimistic about the human condition. The perceived pessimism, however, is mitigated by a great and often wicked sense of humor. Beckett's perceived “pessimism” was not so much for the human condition, but for that of established cultural and societal structures. In addition to prose, poetry, teleplays, and pieces written for the radio, Beckett’s body of works for the stage include Waiting for Godot (1952); Act Without Words I (1956); Act Without Words II (1956); Endgame (1957); Krapp’s Last Tape (1958); Rough for Theatre I (late 1950s); Rough for Theatre II (late 1950s); Happy Days (1960); Play (1963); Come and Go (1965); Breath (1969); Not I (1972); That Time (1975); Footfalls (1975); A Piece of Monologue (1980); Rockaby (1981); Ohio Impromptu (1981); Catastrophe (1982); and What Where (1983). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969.