Gare St Lazare Joint Artistic Director Judy Hegarty Lovett writes for Culture on their ongoing investigation of Samuel Beckett's writing, which continues this month in their native Cork city with their latest production, How It Is (Part 2).
'We can't keep up with you!', how often I hear it.
Friends, family and colleagues in the business have been saying it for years. I'm beginning to understand what they mean. In September 2019, Gare St Lazare Ireland will present our latest work How It Is (Part 2) by Samuel Beckett at The Everyman Theatre in our home city of Cork.
Now 5 years into the process of creating a stage rendition of this most enigmatic and wonderful novel, I look back and see that the work, itself a collaboration with artists from around the world, was rehearsed and prepared in so many different places.
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Listen: Stephen Dillane and Judy Hegarty Lovett chat about their production of Beckett's novel How It Is: Part 1 on RTÉ Arena
Early in my career of putting Beckett's prose writings in theatres, I saw the value of time and space when it comes to making work. In 1996 we first performed Molloy, by 1999 when we produced Malone Dies, Molloy had changed significantly and in 2000 when we premiered The Beckett Trilogy at Kilkenny Arts Festival I knew that giving time to making performances allows the work to tell me as a director what I need to do. In 2017 we performed The Beckett Trilogy at Lincoln Center's White Light Festival in New York and I could see what 20 years can do to a performance.
So increasingly as well as taking time to make work, I endeavour to invite audiences into the rehearsal process from early on. Of course, people love to see the making of a work, but in truth it is the company that benefits mostly from seeing how the work reacts to having an audience even in the early stages.
In 2018, our show Here All Night played on The Abbey main stage, a first for the company. The show had originally developed from an idea in 2006 and it had a work in progress performance at Le Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. Since it has evolved through different configurations at Brighton Festival UK, White Light Festival, New York, Arts Emerson, Boston and The Coronet Theatre, London. Again its collaborators are international.
The five-year process that has led, through How It Is (Part 1) at The Everyman and The Coronet in London, to the next show means that the work benefits from the deep investigation that Beckett's writing both deserves and rewards. The production also profits from a strong, committed team Mel Mercier, Stephen Dillane, Maura O Keefee, Conor Lovett and Grant Gee , who also see the value of creating work in this way.
Through a series of concentrated working sessions across time, we each have an opportunity to speak into the process knowing that the slow cooking enriches each subsequent rehersal. Through the companies sustained touring program I can look at the evolution of How It Is (Part 2) and see that already in the past 12 months it has been rehearsed in:
- The National Theater Institute (USA),
- a coffee Roastery in Vermont ( USA) home of our patrons Vermont Coffee Company,
- a converted stable in Philadelphia,
- a yurt in Sussex,
- the Salle de conference at Le Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris,
- the meditative Gamelan rooms at The World Academy of music at UL,
- the vaulted rooms of The School of Music at UCC,
- The Beckett Summer School in Trinity College
- our cave studio in France ,
- a dairy farm south of London
- the exquisite Coronet Theatre in London,
- the wooden panelled library of the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork
- and of course in August for two weeks prior to opening at The Everyman Theatre itself.
Every location and setting has added layers to the work, and each is now embedded in the performance. The actors and musicians will be aware of parts revealed to them in each specific location. The act of travelling and making work in multiple places can have a bonding effect on the teams. As director and designer, I learn so much from the different spaces and acoustics in which we rehearse.
Our invited audiences also teach us so much, as each performance absorbs their input. Open rehearsals of this work have taken place in Cork, Limerick, Dublin, Connecticut, New York, Paris, London, Sussex and Reading.
23 years of touring means that we now have audiences and friends all around the world who know we intend bringing this mammoth production their way - How It Is (Part 2) features 15 musicians, a composer, a tenor, two actors and a creative team of 6.
So before the work reaches opening night its journey has opened itself to time, places and people across the globe giving it a diversity and dynamism which now seems to be what Gare St Lazare stands for.
How It Is (Part 2) is on from 3-7 September at The Everyman, Cork - more details here.
