Plans are well under way to mark next year's centenary of the birth of Samuel Beckett in his native city Dublin.
Minister for the Arts John O'Donoghue is expected shortly to announce funding for a series of events, including staging plays, exhibitions, readings and musical performances.
An international gathering of Beckett scholars is also planned for Trinity College Dublin in April and the Minister is due to name a committee to act as patrons to the Beckett commemorations.
The playwright, novelist and poet was born in Foxrock on April 13th, 1906. In the late 1930s he settled permanently in Paris where his most famous work and a play that made theatre history, En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) was first performed in January 1953.
Beckett, who wrote most of his major work in French, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
The Gate Theatre, already closely associated with the writer, having previously staged all 19 of his stage plays as part of two festivals in 1996 and 1999, will have a central involvement in the Dublin celebration. The theatre, which holds exclusive performance rights for the playwright's work in Ireland and Britain, plans several productions which the company will also take to the Barbican in London and venues in the US. Readings from the prose works and poetry are also planned for the Gate stage.
TCD, where the writer was a student and later a lecturer before moving to Paris, will host a week-long series of events.
Among those scheduled to give talks on Beckett during this conference are poet Paul Muldoon, literary critic Terry Eagleton and writer Marina Warner, as well as German theatre director Walter Asmus, Beckett's biographer Anthony Cronin, actress Fiona Shaw and playwright Frank McGuinness.