Rehearsing/Samuel Beckett

Rehearsing/Samuel Beckett is part of a series of curatorial investigations utilising archives, research materials, and re-presented art works. The aim is to reconsider the use of historic materials through innovative curatorial processes and by initiating live projects inspired by these materials. The source material was the personal archive of theatre director, David Gothard which also includes material on Michael Clark, Tarkovsky, Miro/La Claca, Kantor, Kureishi.

The background to Gothard’s archive is that Beckett had been asked by the San Quentin Drama Workshop to direct rehearsals for a world tour starting in Ireland. He agreed to direct but refused to leave Paris for Dublin, instead starting a correspondence with Gothard that led to rehearsals taking place at the Riverside Studios, London. The archive consists of correspondence from Beckett, previously unseen photographs by the late Chris Harris, cuttings, videos, photocopied annotations etc.

My intention was to install this material at Chelsea space as a meditation on the nature of rehearsal. The archive would act as starting point and backdrop for a series of performances, concerts, actions to occur within the exhibition itself. I invited Jess Weisner to assist research, cataloguing, and presentation of the archive.

John Tilbury ‘performed’ a lecture on ‘Music and Beckett; David Toop created a new composition for laptops, flute and vibraphone; David Ryan and John Edwards performed improvised music; Pablo Bronstein choreographed a dance performance for the Tate Triennale; Shaun Macdowell created a painting during the private view; Gaby Agis and Florence Peake devised a new performance; Harry Burton and Harold Pinter allowed inaugural screenings of their unfinished film ‘The Art of Rehearsal’, Adrian Shaw improvised a performance based on Beckett’s Ping.

A pamphlet was published (ISBN 870540 99 9). The show toured to Coventry School of Art and Design in 2006 and Donegal in 2007.