I’m over due on a response to Beckett’s “Endgame” but the past three weeks I’ve been caught up in my other writing projects.
I’m more than fifty pages into a new full length play that’s really coming together, and is practically writing itself. I finished a new ten minute play that I’ve had stewing in the back of my mind for quite a while, and finally put words on paper last week. I’m in the process of finishing a major overhaul on “An Army of One” that I feel really brings that play together, and will mark the last major revision I do to that play for a long time. And I’m working on something that could potentially be a screenplay, comic book, or dynamic digital web show using flash and animation… I don’t know. The past three weeks I’ve had so many good ideas rolling around in my head I’ve had a hard to finding ways to focus on any one project.
I figure that this is a good problem to have, and it’s not hurting any of the things I’m working on, so I can’t really complain. The only thing it has really hit hard is my ability to sit down and write up my response to Beckett. Frankly I don’t want to derail the good thing I have going in my own writing, so I’m going to post-pone a write up until this current writing streak cools down a bit, and I need something to stimulate myself.
The irony here, is that maintaining this website, and posting reviews of works I’m currently reading is meant to be the fuel that burns my creative fire, and I guess the good news is that it’s working. The bad news is that I’m not keeping up on new posts.
I have a fairly small readership on this site, and of those readers, 98% of them never respond to what I write, so I don’t really feel like I’m letting anyone down but myself.
In the meantime I’d like to share a few tidbits about Endgame that you might enjoy, and I’ll do a proper write up when I come down off my play writing high.
Youtube videos of scenes from Beckett’s “Endgame”
If you’re in Minneapolis, you should absolutely check out this production of “Endgame” by the Ten Thousand Things Theater Company.
When I have the chance to do a proper write I’m going to discuss the above theater’s decision to do runs of this show for free in housing projects, homeless shelters, and prisons. These people are doing some amazing things with classic theater works to communicate with people in difficult situations. Hopelessness, the cyclical nature of life and living, and fining meaning in routines is so difficult when you’re broke, or living off the state, or at the state’s mercy. This play really speaks to that type of living, and with the proper talk back session can make an impact in those peoples lives.
Take a look at the press kit that the folks from Ten Thousand Things put together for the show (links to webpage): Press Kit Website
Also, I’m going to host a copy of their PDF here on my site so that you can review the details of this production once they’ve updated their site and moved on to other works. This is really great stuff that these people are doing. (Link goes to PDF file.) Press Kit PDF
Lastly, I’ve always thought it’s good to start any discussion of a work by looking at what someone else thinks, (even if they’re wrong), here’s a link to the spark notes analysis of this play: It’s only marginally useful
Realistically speaking, I would suggest that the Ten Thousand Things production is as close as I’ve even seen anyone come to my interpretation of this work. How do we find meaning in life when we have no control, when the world seems to have conspired to determine all our actions for us and we’ve lost our ability to choose. Free will is a luxury that many of us take for granted simply because we have the means to choose. The characters in this play are acting out their parts in a script certainly, but their paths were chosen for them by a hand less sympathetic than Beckett’s.
The idea that the world these characters live in is inescapable, and that they are doomed to repeat the cycle only serves to make this show something of a fable. Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our fathers? Can Clov turn his back on the boy outside, or is he doomed to Hamm’s fate? In a world of gray bleakness and repetition is the only real escape in death? Can you really die in the world Beckett created? Or are you condemned?
I hope you enjoy the bits I’ve shared with you thus far, and I hope to return in earnest to talk about this work in greater detail when I can spend more time and think about what I want to say. So far the above is all that I have. Enjoy!