Perforum presents Gare St Lazare Ireland with Dr. Nicholas Johnson

6 Feb 2017

Staging Beckett's Prose

15th February: Gare St Lazare Ireland in conversation with Dr. Nicholas Johnson (TCD)

In conversation with Dr. Nicholas Johnson, Judy Hegarty Lovett and Conor Lovett of Gare St. Lazare Ireland will discuss their work on staging Beckett’s prose. There will be a special focus on their current work in development on Beckett’s prose piece How it is (1964).

PERFORUM SPRING 2017

Samuel Beckett: Musicality, Making, and Other Archives 

Wednesdays 6:00 pm – 7:45 pm. Theatre Development Centre, Triskel Christchurch, Tobin Street, Cork.

Perforum events are open to the public and admission is free.

Judy Hegarty Lovett (Director) Judy has a BA in Fine Art from the Crawford College (Cork) and a Diploma in Dramatherapy from University of Hertfordshire (UK). She studied Theatre with Philippe Gaulier in London. She joined the original Gare St Lazare Players in Paris in 1991as an assistant to Artistic Director Bob Meyer. In 1996 Judy directed Conor Lovett in Molloy by Samuel Beckett in London and so began Gare St Lazare Ireland. Judy has directed over 18 Beckett titles for Gare St Lazare across stage, prose and radio drama. Other directing includes Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, Title and Deed by Will Eno, Moby Dick (adapted by Judy with Conor Lovett), Swallow by Michael Harding, Tanks a Lot (co-written by Judy Hegarty Lovett and Raymond Keane) and The Good Thief by Conor McPherson. Judy’s work has toured to over 60 venues in Ireland and to 80 cities around the world. In 2015 she was an Off-West End Awards Best Director nominee for First Love by Samuel Beckett at The Arcola. Also in 2015 Judy mounted Here All Night, The End and Waiting For Godot at New York’s Lincoln Centre and Skirball Centre. Judy is currently researching for a Phd at Reading University on staging Beckett’s prose.

Conor Lovett (Actor) Conor trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He has performed 19 Beckett roles in 24 Beckett productions internationally including Vladimir in Waiting For Godot for Gare St Lazare and Lucky in the same play for The Gate Theatre Dublin, Hamm in Endgame, Acts Without Words 1 & 2, A Piece of Monologue (directed by Walter Asmus) and solo performances of Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Texts For Nothing, First Love, The End and The Calmative and 5 of the radio plays (all directed by Judy Hegaty Lovett). Other theatre credits include An Oak Tree by Tim Crouch (National Theatre UK), Title and Deed by Will Eno (Gare St Lazare/Signature Theatre NYC), Moby Dick (Gare St Lazare), The Bull (Fabulous Beast) and Leaves by Lucy Caldwell (Druid/Royal Court). On television Conor has appeared in Versailles (Canal+), Endeavour (ITV), Charlie (RTE), Father Ted (Channel 4), Fair City (RTE), Fallout (RTE). Film includes Music, War and Love, Small Engine Repair, Intermission and Moll Flanders. He has won awards and nominations in China, Germany, Ireland, UK and USA.  

Dr. Nicholas Johnson is a performer, director, and writer currently working in the School of Creative Arts at Trinity College Dublin. Recent Beckett projects include dramaturgy for Cascando (Pan Pan, 2016), direction for No’s Knife (Lincoln Center, 2015), and performance for Ill Seen Ill Said (ATRL & U. Antwerp, 2015-16). In 2014 he adapted and directed The Brothers Karamazov and translated/directed Ernst Toller’s Machinewreckers, both at the Beckett Theatre. In 2012-13 he directed Ethica: Four Shorts by Samuel Beckett, presenting Play, Come and Go, Catastrophe, and What Where in Bulgaria, Dublin, the Enniskillen Festival 2013, and Áras an Uachtairáin for World Human Rights Day. His research appears in The Plays of Samuel Beckett and Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland (both from Methuen) as well as Theatre Research International, the Journal of Art Historiography, and Forum Modernes Theater. He co-edited the Journal of Beckett Studies special issue on performance (23.1, 2014) with Jonathan Heron, with whom he also co-founded the Samuel Beckett Laboratory. He has facilitated performance workshops worldwide, including most recently the US, UK, Germany, Turkey, India, Japan, Bulgaria, Morocco, Israel and the West Bank. With Sam Slote, he is a founding co-director of the Beckett Summer School at TCD. In 2016 he held a visiting research position at Yale University.

For more on this story contact:

Dr. Bernadette Cronin