Samuel Beckett: crazy inventions

At the Cologne Philharmonie’s Rheingarten Foyer, which is featured as a performance venue in Valerij Lisac’s »REPEAT PLAY!« for the first time in this year’s programme, the Television Plays which Samuel Beckett created for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk will be presented for the duration of the festival. These date from 1966 to 1982, a late phase in the output of the Irish playwright during which he was trying to draw conclusions. The pieces are marked by rigorous minimalism, questioning even the medium itself. Beckett robs the stage of its dimensions, the actors of their characters, the language of its content and the play of all illusion. The protagonists in »What Where« appear as suspended faces, as if cut out from an all-encompassing blackness. Of the actress in »Not I«, we see only teeth and lips, and her monologue is reduced to a rhythmical stream of syllables. These are all »crazy inventions«, as Beckett himself described his television productions. He was serious when he did so.