Imagination dead imagine

by Samuel Beckett

for string quartet, recorded voices and laptop
Text by Samuel Beckett
Music by Michael Roth

Performed by Quartet Nouveau:
Violins: Batya McAdam-Somer, Missy Lukin
Viola: Annabelle Terbetski
Cello: Elizabeth Brown
Recorded voices (and special thanks to): Marco Barricelli, Geraint Wyn Davies, Jessica Jean Erwin, Dion Johnstone, Robert Joy, Seana McKenna and Lucy Peacock

Stage Manager: Shelia Devitt

Costume Designer: Sonya Brag

Sound designer: Todd Barton

Lighting designer: Michael Maag

From composer Michael Roth:

As a teenager in New York, I only went to concerts at the Fillmore East, played in my band, and listened to The Beatles, very little theatre if any. Within a year of The Beatles breaking up, a literature class (that I wasn’t even in!) at my high school had an extra ticket to go see some play off-Broadway, and for some reason they gave me the ticket - I have no idea why - and that play was WAITING FOR GODOT. In many ways I think I was the ideal audience having no idea what it was, not even reading a program note like the one I’m writing for you now. I can only sum up that experience as the night I discovered that art could do that - could reflect the madness like that - no one had told me, I didn’t know. And in many ways, in the perhaps all too many years since, my work has tried to navigate between GODOT and STRAWBERRY FIELDS, and - do I believe in the life to come? - - like many, to paraphrase, mine is always that.

A few years later I met for coffee with the drama critic Martin Esslin, author of THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD, and coincidentally, my teacher’s teacher – we had in fact met several times before. Among other things I told him that someday I wanted to “set some Beckett.” He said, “Well, why don’t you just write to him?” Reasonable suggestion, so I wrote to Mr. Beckett c/o his publisher in Paris. In my I’m sure overly-fawning letter I told Beckett of my meeting with Esslin and my desire to set something of his, listing several of his texts as suggestions (I no longer have my letter to him) - and much to my shock he wrote back very quickly, in a letter dated January 20, 1980, and gave me permission to set IMAGINATION DEAD IMAGINE.

IMAGINATION DEAD IMAGINE is a great but, musically speaking, fairly complex prose piece, about 1100 words, and though I gave it a lot of thought, the idea of it actually being sung by somebody or a group of some kind seemed counter-intuitive – or, in other words, a really bad idea. I knew though that I would eventually have to figure out something. Technology and many of the digital things we do everyday and almost take for granted helped me figure things out, so to speak. I recorded a handful of people reading the text once or twice each, mixing and lining up all of the voices in pro tools – word by word, syllable by syllable - and then composed a string quartet to go along with, or more accurately, exist, or try to exist, with Beckett’s text, imagining (with a dead imagination perhaps) a scenario wherein the Quartet was hearing the text for the first time - living in it, responding to it, agreeing with it, protesting against it, etc... perhaps at the end, resigned to it. I think of the piece as much as anything as a music/theatre piece - even an opera - with a string quartet as protagonist.

IMAGINATION DEAD IMAGINE was premiered in 2017 in San Diego, followed by performances in LA and finally, in 2018, with special thanks to Randy Newman, Prague where it was featured at the Beckett and Technology conference. The actors, friends who recorded the text for the project are, from Canada’s Stratford Festival, Geraint Wyn Davies, Dion Johnstone, Seana McKenna and Lucy Peacock, along with my dear friends Marco Barricelli, Jessica Jean Erwin (South African actress) and Robert Joy. My thanks to them, to my dear friends Octavio and Kimberly for making this occasion happen, and finally to Annabelle, Missy, Elizabeth and my dear old friend Batya, the great players of Quartet Nouveau, who have put themselves into this universe with great musicianship and passion - and (thanks to Tom Stoppard) wham, bam, thank you Sam for reinventing the wheel of the 20th century, we’re all I think grateful, and hopefully, even if there is despair now and again, we can continue to laugh as the world tumbles forth.

“Imagination Dead Imagine” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. www.concordtheatricals.com