Beckett in Brooklyn

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BBC Radio 4 Extra - Beckett in Brooklyn

Lisa Dwan takes a trilogy of Samuel Beckett plays to the Brooklyn Academy of Music

4 Extra Debut. Irish actor Lisa Dwan takes a trilogy of Samuel Beckett's most challenging roles to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. From 2014.

A disembodied mouth hovers 8 feet above the stage and appears to oscillate wildly around the pitch-black auditorium.

Blindfolded, her head strapped into a harness, Irish actor Lisa Dwan delivers the frenetic, roller-coaster stream of consciousness that is Samuel Beckett's 'Not I'. Alongside 'Footfalls' and 'Rockaby', the play forms one part of a trilogy of intensely demanding one-woman Beckett works which Lisa has been performing to packed houses across the UK & Ireland.

Now, as Lisa takes her Beckett trilogy across the Atlantic to the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre, we find her immersed in a whirlwind of rave reviews, TV appearances and a US theatre-going public heavily preoccupied with Ebola, Isis and the uncertainty of our times.   

As the curtain prepares to fall for the last time, we discover the true extent of Lisa's commitment to these dark and challenging roles, what the impact of performing them has been on her and if, 25 years after the Irish playwright's death, she may have shown us that Samuel Beckett's work matters more than ever.   

Producer: Conor Garrett       

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2014.

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