October 24-27, 2024
ONE WEEKEND ONLY!
From October 24-27, an exploration of Beckett’s experimental theatre takes over downtown Ashland, Oregon. The entire festival takes place in non-traditional theatre spaces, and rain or shine, audiences will travel from place to place to encounter each piece. Experience Beckett as Beckett intended and explore the boundaries of what defines performance.
Please note: audiences are free to carry umbrellas with them, as there will not be covers are not guaranteed at each location. Audiences will be required to ambulate throughout the performance.
From Artistic Director Octavio Solis:
Samuel Beckett is considered one of the most influential voices in literature and theatre of the 20th Century. A Nobel-prize winning writer, he is a master experimental novelist (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) with numerous works of short fiction to his credit, but it is as a playwright that he has truly distinguished himself. “Waiting for Godot”, “Endgame”, and “Happy Days” changed the landscape of experimental theatre in the last century and influenced the visions and works of so many dramatists and theatre thinkers around the globe. More than anyone else, he offered a distilled vision of humanity at the crossroads of its extinction, giving voice to our unique awareness of our inevitable mortality not only as individuals but as a civilization. With strange valor and humor, his characters soldier on in the worst of circumstances, as expressed in the final lines of The Unnamable: “… you must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on...” Since his passing in 1989, his status has only grown larger, and his works continue to be produced in theatres worldwide.
I have long been attracted to the bleak but comic vision of Beckett’s works, as I find comfort and solace in his courage of his unblinkered imagination. Staring into the void and laughing at it is utterly basic to our daily lives, and yet it is so suppressed, so “unnamable”, that we hardly realize we are doing it, much less coming to terms with the meaning of those seemingly futile gestures. These acts are at the root of our faith, our addictions, or preoccupations with material things, and even our Art. They are the root of both our private and collective Memory. But the events of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic laid bare our terrors and isolation in ways we could not have anticipated. Coming across the works of Beckett again in midst of the three years of worldwide death and uncertainty made his works so poignantly relevant. I suddenly found new life, wit and daring in his works. He seemed to be addressing our age so explicitly, particularly in the numerous brief plays that he wrote during his lifetime. I realized that so many of these short plays had still not been presented in Ashland, except perhaps on a university level, because their brevity made them prohibitively difficult for larger theatres to produce. I read and selected a number of short works from his theatre canon to produce.
The Ashland Beckett Shorts Festival will run for an extended weekend on October 24-27, 2024. This will be a one-time event in which we will present six short works by Beckett that have not been seen in the region.
These works are:
Not I ……………………… Amanda Moody/Octavio Solis
Rockaby…………………. Dee Maaske/Todd Barton
Krapp’s Last Tape……. Universes/Steven Sapp/MiIdred Ruiz Sapp
What Where…………… Puppeteers for Fears
Act Without Words II……. Jackie Apodaca/James Donlon/Alina Cenal
Imagination Dead Imagine….……. Michael Roth and Quartet Nouveau
We proudly welcome you to join us in celebrating the mastery of Samuel Beckett in beautiful downtown Ashland, Oregon.
-Octavio Solis