Winter Warmed
Three weeks of events celebrating the works of Samuel Beckett
The Festival
The centrepiece of the festival is one of Samuel Beckett's most celebrated works, Endgame. A depiction of the heart of an uncompromising relationship, laid out in ruthlessly beautiful poetry and image. Directed by Anthony Richards, Endgame features some of the best seasoned local performers.
There are also performances of Breath and A Piece of Monologue and extracts from All That Fall and Embers.
Surrounding Beckett’s own works, we have new performances from visiting groups of professionals and students. Waiting for Waiting for Godot is a new play about the old play from Jamie Ruther and Ben Crowden, and A Little Nonsense from Bristol based Juncture Theatre is a celebration of the world of clowning. Short creations by local University students feature alongside Exeter College students' The Dream project have been made in response to Beckett's work and we also welcome Clyst Vale Colleges' production of The Trial.
There are workshops for performers, writers and other theatremakers, together with a number of expert-chaired discussion sessions and films.
So please come and find Exeter’s Bike Shed Theatre and prepare for some moving, funny and thought-provoking theatre about the nature of being a human being.
Samuel Beckett
Two tramps waiting for Godot, parents consigned to dustbins, a woman buried in sand and a mouth alone talking are some of the ways in which Beckett chose to present his understanding of the human condition, reduced to it’s essence.
He was an exile from a tight-knit Irish family with a love of European literature; he was an educated intellectual with deep interests in the visual arts as well as literature, and an active member of the French Resistance. His plays meditate on the questions "why are we here?" and "what are we doing?"
Again and again he explores patterns of behaviours that are mutually sustaining, at once loving and abusive, between people whose identities are inextricably linked. Symbiotic relationships. He presents this in many ways, often using theatre clowns to embody these competing tensions simultaneously. In Beckett’s theatrical world impossibility and possibility are adjacent bedfellows, and they give rise to moments of serious reflection, right next to moments of great hilarity.
His stage creations may be abstract, but in the way that poetry distils, they are full of warmth, humour and compassion.