Samuel Beckett Play in New York

Posted on June 16, 2009 - Filed Under Arts & Culture

Samuel Beckett was an Irish playwright and poet. He is most known for his association to the theatre of the absurd and his poly Waiting for Godot. A revival of this play is currently in production at the Roundabout Theatre in New York. Tourists who are in town for this production often stay in one of the 5 star New York hotels . He was born in April of 1903 in Ireland, though his family moved to England when he was young. The Beckett family is sometimes believed to be of Huguenot origin, though this theory has been criticized as being extremely unlikely. He returned to Ireland for his formal education and studied English, French and Italian at Trinity College.

Beckett had an interesting and complicated life. He was a close friend with the writer James Joyce. The friendship developed from his being a student and assistant of this great poet. He assisted Joyce on the work that would become Finnegan’s Wake. After the German invasion of France, Beckett joined the French Resistance and worked as a courier. On several occasions during this period he was in danger of being caught by the Gestapo. In August of 1942 his unit was betrayed to the Germans and Beckett fled to the small village of Roussillon.

Beckett’s work is as diverse and complicated as his life. He began his formal career as a teacher at Trinity College though he quickly became disillusioned with academic life. His writings have been classified as modernist, post-modernist and it was Martin Esslin who coined the phrase Theatre of the Absurd, though few if any of the writers that became associated with this genre ever considered themselves absurdists. Beckett himself was concerned with the essential aspects of plays and the theatre and often reduced things down to their essence. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his new forms in drama and the novel. Most of his work was bleak in perspective and Waiting for Godot was an initial critical and popular failure. He has since been placed in an near demi-god status in the theatre and literature communities.

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