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Screening of Filmed Version of Happy Days by Samuel Beckett
March 5, 2021 @ 4:30 pm
“The situation is one of the strangest in the whole history of theatre.”
—Katherine Worth, scholar
Something has occurred. And now Winnie can’t leave—can’t see anyone—can’t move—is perpetually stuck. There is little to do but brush her teeth and maintain hope.
Watch the trailer for HAPPY DAYS by Samuel Beckett from wildprojectTV.
Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days (One of the most unforgettable plays in the modern canon” — The New York Times) is the ultimate emblem of perseverance. In the iconic playwright’s lifelong pursuit to illuminate consciousness on stage, Beckett devised Winnie: a tour de force of charm and grit, helplessly buried up to her waist in the ground. She endures the wearisome humdrum of endless, interchangeable days. And now, speaking to an audience who has faced a year of quarantine, the play endures too.
To commemorate the play’s 60th anniversary, New York’s the wild project and director Nico Krell are revitalizing this mammoth, mysterious work. In an exception allowed only during the global pandemic, the performance will be recorded and broadcast online, delicately translated to the screen by a team of artists working on the cutting edge of digital theatre.
Krell is a Princeton alumnus, Class of 2018, and the production features alumni Tessa Albertson, Class of 2020, as Winnie, and Jake Austin Robertson, Class of 2015, as her husband Willie. Alumni Jules Peiperl is costume designer and Stanley Mathabane is sound designer, both members of the Class of 2017.
Presented by The Wild Project in the East Village, New York City, in association with Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies. The Wild Project, a nonprofit theater company and venue, was founded in 2007 to support the diverse independent theater, film, music, visual arts and spoken-word artists of New York City. The organization has presented and produced theater that seeks to enrich, educate, and unify its East Village community in an environmentally responsible green space, devoting specific initiatives to supporting LGBTQ+ artists and projects and those of people of color.
Beckett (1906 –1989) was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, theater director, poet, and literary translator. His idiosyncratic work offers a bleak, tragi-comic outlook on existence and experience, often coupled with dark comedy. Beckett is considered one of the last modernist writers and one of the key figures of the “theater of the absurd.” He is perhaps best-known for his 1953 play, Waiting for Godot. In 1969 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
JOIN THE EVENT
This virtual event is free and open to the public. The film will be preceded by an introduction with director Krell and Princeton Professor and Fund for Irish Studies Chair Paul Muldoon. The event will take place on Zoom Webinar; advance registration required.
This event is recorded for archival purposes only and will not be available for viewing after the event.
ACCESSIBILITY
The film will be closed captioned and the introduction will be live captioned in English. If you are in need of other other access accommodations in order to participate in this event, please contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least 2 weeks in advance of the event date.
