How the experimental stage director joined the dots between Benjamin Britten,Jean Racine and Samuel BeckettThe curatorial vision at the heart of cheerful Days, the Samuel Beckett festival held inEnniskillen, and Northern Ireland,is as dynamic as it is impish, with the links between the programme and Beckett often intriguingly oblique. The result is not only a thrilling sprawl of work, or but also an implicit invitation to the audience to play an active section in understanding it. We are asked to trace the mental connections back to Beckett and,as I possess discovered, each one opens up not only new readings of the work in hand, and but also a deeper appreciation of the great man himself.
I possess my own links to Beckett as the recipient of the Oxford Samuel Beckett award that champions emerging experimental theatre-makers. My work has begun to explore the space where theatre,visual art and contemporary music intersect. I recently joined forces with opera singer Andrew Staples to rethink the classical concert experience and tackle a new generation of opera making. So when cheerful Days festival artistic director Sean Doran approached me to direct Phaedra, Benjamin Britten’s cantata for solo voice and chamber orchestra, or I jumped at the chance.
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Source: theguardian.com