"The room was dark and full of people hastening to and fro, malefactors, policemen, lawyers, priests and journalists . . ." was the phrase (from Samuel Beckett's Molloy) applied by John O'Donoghue to a large gathering of artists, actors and promoters last night as details of next month's Beckett Centenary Festival were announced.
More than 20 events - theatre, film, visual art, broadcasting, exhibitions - aim to illuminate Beckett's drama and prose and his influences on other artists working in a variety of media. The festival marks 100 years since Beckett's birth, on Good Friday (April 13th) in 1906.
Philip Furlong of the Department of Arts and chairman of the Beckett Centenary Committee, introduced the Minister and Beckett Centenary Committee chairman Michael Colgan, of the Gate Theatre, who shared memories of working with Beckett.
"If this festival achieves anything," said Colgan, "I would like for it to put paid to the myth of Sam Beckett being a gloomy, humourless, pessimistic pedant. The Beckett I got to know in Paris in the 1980s was quite the opposite. A man with a wicked sense of humour which, if it was at anyone's expense, could only have been his own."
The Gate is presenting nine Beckett plays (simultaneously with the Barbican in London), and some actors in those productions travelled to Dublin for the festival launch: Siân Phillips, who is in Rockaby, and John Hurt, who reprises his role in Krapp's Last Tape.
Others in the large hall in the restored College of Physicians in Kildare Street included Edward Beckett, nephew of Samuel, RTÉ director general Cathal Goan, actors including David Kelly, Johnny Murphy, Mark Lambert, Nick Dunning, Alison Doody and Owen Roe, director Michael Caven and Gaiety MD John Costigan.
The month's celebrations include Beckett's Ghosts, four of the later plays presented by Bedrock Productions; Dublin painter Cian McLoughlin's series of large-scale portraits of actors and an exhibition of photographs of Beckett taken by his friend, the Irish photographer John Minihan
Kathy Prendergast's sculpture A Dream Of Discipline; and Mark McLoughlin's video installation The Paradise; an exhibition about Beckett's life; and Access All Beckett from Gare St Lazare Players will also be part of the festival.
There will be an exhibition of Philip Guston's and Bruce Nauman's work at the RHA Gallagher Gallery, along with three filmed pieces by Beckett, an installation by sculptor Michael Warren and an artist's talk by American artist Robert Gober. Documentaries, archive films and a series called Directing Beckett, to be presented by the Irish Film Institute, will tour Ireland, and the Irish premiere of Morton Feldman's Quartet No 2 will be performed by the Pellegrini Quartet at the NCH.
American artist Jenny Holzer will project Beckett's texts on to landmarks in Dublin city centre at night; and an exhibition, Samuel Beckett: A Passion for Painting, opens in June at the National Gallery, which will also host a series of musical events in April.
