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October 25, 2022 | Theatre, What Did You Think?,
What are your thoughts about On Beckett?
Join the conversation and let us know what you thought about On Beckett! Comment below, either by following one of the prompts below or with whatever crosses your mind. We can’t wait to hear from you!
1. Does Beckett’s text speak to you?
2. How did the clowning work change your understanding of the text?
3. What is it about Beckett’s text continues to draw artists to interpret it?
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Irwin did an outstanding job of bringing Beckett to a common level of understanding.
I’m probably the only person in the theater tonight to have seen him in Waiting for Godot with Robin Williams and Steve Martin in 1988 at Lincoln Center.
Bill Irwin did an amazing and unusual interpretation of Beckett today.
As a longtime lover of clowns and clowning, and as an Irish-american and a one-time huge fan of Beckett, I really enjoyed his take on Beckett’s work. Having performed in ‘Waiting for Godot’ in a college production more than 50 years ago (for a theater class), I really appreciated his ‘vaudeville’ take on performance and his emphasis on the ‘clown’ aspects of Beckett’s work, as we did back then. Our production was a full student production, with a student director, which left us a lot of freedom to do as we wished and to make a mess of things. So, we did.
To our young minds and hearts, Beckett was more funny/hilarious than dark. As green, wannbe thespians we were quite pleased with our interpretation while rejecting our professor’s darker and more philosophical take on the play. Needless to say, our professor was not pleased but we had a ball and the audience loved us. As I recall, our take on Lucky & Pozzo was an S&M variation (along the lines of ‘Rocky Horror show’ before we ever saw or heard of Rocky Horror) -which we felt was as plain as the noses on our faces. So. It was a kind of vindication to see Bill Irwin’s interpretation today that mirrored some of our own from 50 plus years ago.
One minor critique. I realize Bill is the ‘Artist-in-residence’ (lucky students) at Emerson this semester, so to a certain degree, today’s ‘performance’ came across more as a ‘Master Class’ in theater technique & performance for advanced theater majors – but with his wit and performative brilliance, Mr. Irwin pulled it off. I was not bored and believe I learned quite a bit more about both Mr. Irwin and Mr. Beckett. Two brilliant artists which we are lucky to have.