• Eh Joe @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    One of the most satisfying aspects of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival has been its embrace of Beckett in all his diversity – from his emblematic plays to short dramatic works, poetry, and performances written specifically for radio and television. Eh Joe, Beckett’s first play for television, was written for Jack MacGowaran in 1965, though the version on the big screen in Enniskillen’s Ardhowen Theatre comes from a 1986 adaptation by Director Alan Gilsenan, starring Tom Hickey and Siobhan McKenna (as the Woman’s voice). The stark opening scene sees Joe, a middle-aged man in worn, soiled clothes, sat…

  • Dr Kathryn White: ‘Teaching’ Beckett @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    Can we teach Samuel Beckett, or is the process more about simply exposing people to The Nobel Prize-winning author and letting his words work their magic on the individual in highly personal ways? This is the main theme of the introductory talk in the Town Hall at the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival by Dr. Kathryn White, Lecturer in English in the School of Arts and Humanities at Ulster University. Yes, Beckett is back in Enniskillen after a gap year in 2016, during which the festival successfully upped sticks to Paris. Sagely rebranded as part of the brand spanking…

  • Lisa Dwan @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    Talks related to Samuel Beckett are an integral feature of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival. This year, the inaugural Billie Whitelaw Memorial Lecture in the Southwest College commemorated the late Beckett actress who passed away in December 2014. Lisa Dwan, in a very real sense the heir to Whitelaw, had the honour of delivering the first Billie Whitelaw Memorial Lecture and gave a talk every bit as captivating as the interpretations of Beckett’s plays that have won her unreserved international acclaim. In introducing Dwan, the festival’s Deputy Artistic Director Liam Browne quoted a New York Times review of…