Introduction
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is the playwright that best represents the Theater of the Absurd. He was born into a middle-class Protestant family near Dublin on 13 April 1906. At age 14, he was sent to the same school which Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) had attended. Beckett studied for his bachelor’s degree in French and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927. In 1928, he moved to Paris, where he was introduced to James Joyce (1882-1941), the famous author of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. The two Irish writers became good friends and Joyce continued to exert profound influence on Beckett.
Beckett published his first short story Assumption in 1929. He also wrote poems, plays, and critical essays. Later he returned to Dublin and received his master’s degree from Trinity College. He settled permanently in Paris in 1937, and published the novel Murphy in the next year. During World War II, he joined the French Resistance and fought military occupation by Nazi Germany. He narrowly escaped the capture by the Gestapo, fleeing for his life to a small village.
After the War, Beckett returned to Paris and began to write primarily in French. He translated most of these works into English himself, and also penned some French translations in the other direction. En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot), his signature piece, premiered at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris in 1953. The strangeness of the dialogues and action confused audiences and critics alike, and rocked the theatrical circles abroad. The play was later recognized as a groundbreaking piece and eventually became a classic with a run of four hundred performances at the Théâtre de Babylone. In 1969, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation.”
Other important works of Beckett’s include his trilogy novels Molly (1951), Malone Dies (1951), The Unnamable (1953), and dramatic works Endgame (1958), Happy Days (1961), and Rockaby (1981).
Beckett died in France in 1989 at age 83. He was buried with his French wife Suzanne Descheveaux-Dumesnil, who had helped publishing his works over the years, at Cimitière du Montparnasse, Paris.
En Attendant Gogot has been translated into over twenty languages and staged by numerous troupes all over the world. It was the most selected play when the British National Theater conducted a vote for “One Hundred Plays of the Century” in the year 2000.
History
2005: Waiting for Godot, adapted from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, was premiered, Taipei
2006: Shanghai Dramatic Center
