Production Staff
Director, Tony Vezner
Stage Manager, Sue Turner
Assistant Stage Manager, Linda Lee Metz
Costume Designer, Beth Hubbartt
Costume Crew:
Linda Bremer, Jane Stacy
Dramaturg, Dorothy Parlow
Lighting Designer, Benton Bullwinkel
Lighting Crew:
Peggy Jacoby, Art Kelly
Makeup Designers:
Betty Nelson, Ginny Richardson
Makeup Crew:
Mary Ellen Druyan, Janeen Jewell,
Arlene Page, Elizabeth Roche
Properties Designer, Carol Dapogny
Properties Crew:
Arlene Blaha, Bill FitzGerald,
Tom Frohnapfel
Set Designer, Tom Squillo
Set Construction Chair, Terry Locke
Set Construction Crew:
John Allen, Sandy Buboltz,
Ralph Byers, Anne Cahill,
Jack Calvert, Brian Centers,
Tim Feeney, Tom Frohnapfel,
Kirby Harris, Mark Hewitt,
Mike Huth, Von Jansma,
Heinz Karplus, Joel Nikoleit,
George Petros, Tom Pfeil,
Paul Roach, Fred Sauers |
Set Painting Chair, Bill Rotz
Set Painting Crew:
Sandy Buboltz, Holly Cejka,
George Dempsey, Pat Huth,
Kathy Kusper, Arlene Page,
Connie Sierzputowski, Noel Smith,
Sandy Squillo, Charron Traut
Sound Designer, Martha Hogenboom
Production Box Office Chair, Sandy Squillo
Production Box Office Crew:
George Dempsey, Barbara Lupo,
JoAnn Mallon, Lori Proksa,
Patti Roeder, Mary Ellen Schutt,
Carol Suda, Marilyn Wilson
Production Hospitality Crew:
Inge Baugh, Chet Bugowski,
Carole Clarke, Bill FitzGerald,
Midge Gallas, Barbara Hammack,
Bill Hammack, Marjorie Mason Heffernan,
Karin Kramer, Janette Taft
Production House Manager Crew:
Susan Cardamone, Joe Delaloye,
George Dempsey, Karen Holbert,
Harry Hultgren, Terry Locke,
Kevin McGrath, Andy Neely,
Tom Schutt, Bill Wilson
Production Lobby Photo Display:
Marjorie Mason Heffernan, Jane Stacy
Production Posters, Kathleen Kusper
Production Program Chair, Joel Nikoleit
Production Program Design, John Vilhauer
Production Publicity Chair, Beth Hubbartt |
About the Author:
Samuel Beckett was born near Dublin, Ireland on May
13, 1906 according to his birth certificate, though he regularly claimed to have been born
on April 13, 1906—Good Friday. Raised in a middle-class, Protestant home, he was the
son of a surveyor and a nurse. Looking back on his childhood he once remarked, “I had
little talent for happiness.” In 1928, Samuel Beckett moved to Paris, where a friend
introduced him to James Joyce. Beckett quickly became an apostle of the older writer.
During World War II, Beckett fought for the resistance until he was forced to flee with
his French-born wife. In 1945, he returned to Paris and began his most prolific period as
a writer. In the five years that followed, he wrote the plays Eleutheria, Waiting for
Godot, and Endgame; the novels Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, and Mercier et Camier;
two books of short stories, and a book of criticism. Samuel Beckett was the first of the
absurdists to win international fame, and he deeply affected other writers such as Edward
Albee and Harold Pinter. His works have been translated into over twenty languages. In
1969, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature; the prize citation noted that
Beckett’s work “rises like a Miserere from all mankind.” He continued to
write until his death in 1989, but the task grew more and more difficult with each work,
until, in the end, he said that each word seemed to him “an unnecessary stain on
silence and nothingness.” Beckett Quotes to Ponder:
Compiled by Dorothy Parlow
Samuel Beckett refrained from explaining or analyzing his work. In that spirit we offer
you the following quotes of Samuel Beckett not as an explanation of Endgame but as items
to ponder while you come to your own conclusions.
From Texts for Nothing: To think, when one
is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not
yet old, that is perhaps something.
From Enough: What do I know of man’s
destiny? I could tell you more about radishes. From Beckett at Sixty: Who is Godot?
What is Godot? If I knew, I would have put it in the script.
From Waiting for Godot: Estragon: I
can’t go on like this. Vladimir: That’s what you think.
From Endgame: Clov: Do you believe in the
life to come? Hamm: Mine was always that.
Acknowledgments:
Special Thanks
Porter Abbott of the Beckett Bulletin Board
assisted in tracking down the source of quotes.
Produced by special arrangement with Samuel
French, Inc.
|
About the Play:
Endgame: The final stage of a game (especially chess) when only a few pieces remain.
Becket secured his position as a master dramatist on April 3, 1957 when his second
masterpiece, Endgame, premiered (in French—as Fin de Partie) at the Royal Court
Theatre in London. Beckett declared in 1978, “I suppose the one I dislike least is
Endgame.” The play followed Waiting for Godot, perhaps the most significant script of
the twentieth century. The prisoners in San Quentin had no problem understanding either
play when they produced them in stagings Beckett approved. They knew what it means to
wait. Beckett insisted that every punctuation mark, every (pause) in the script must be
observed by the actors, and that is the key to the rhythm of the play. The actor has to
observe each of the marks to effectively realize Beckett’s language. For instance,
Clov’s line “I’ll leave you, I have things to do” is a reprise which
occurs fourteen times, enhancing the script and his character. Hamm’s “Go and
get the sheet” and “Go and get two bicycle wheels” occur eight times. The
audience could sing it with them! In Endgame, Beckett distills life and theatre down to
tempo—shifts, repetitions, pauses. “Go with the flow,” said E.G. Marshall,
Broadway’s first Vladimir, “don’t try to understand.” It will become
clear to you in retrospect, and you will retrospect!Director’s Note “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness” -Nell, Endgame
Endgame is probably one of the bleakest existential works in literature. It's also one of
the funniest. The existentialist believes that life is a cruel joke. Humor, by its nature,
always relies on pain. The quintessential joke—a man slipping on a banana
peel—demands that somebody end up with a sore backside. Beckett understood that
better than anyone. The genius he admired as much as any philosopher or writer was the
silent film star Charlie Chaplin. In fact, when director Alan Schneider wanted to make a
movie version of Endgame, his proposed casting was to use Chaplin—in all four roles.
Beckett’s heroes and antiheroes have all of the pain it takes to make good comedy.
Like a Chaplin character in a silent film they struggle against forces that should wipe
them out, and yet they keep going. Finding themselves in impossible situations, with no
reason to go on, they keep going on. As we watch them we wonder why they go on, and maybe
we ask ourselves why we go on. Our answers are as personal and universal as any answers a
person can give. Just as Chaplin elicited our laughter and, when we saw the pain in his
eyes, our pity, so Beckett’s characters evoke laughs of recognition and later our
pity because they are so honest with us about their pain. While working on this play we
tried to find many metaphors for the aloneness and finality that the characters in this
play must experience. We talked about growing old, losing one’s faculties, feeling
forgotten, and facing death. |
