Endgame

By Samuel Beckett

November 2009

St. Stephen’s Theater

A hoarder-inspired take on Beckett’s famous post-apocalyptic tragicomedy.

Artistic director Lane Savadove staged Endgame with a "provocative" production set in a faded 1970s South Jersey hoarder's basement. This marked the EgoPo debut of Ed Swidey, who would go on to appear in numerous EgoPo productions. Endgame follows the isolated lives of a desperately co-dependent master and servant and two elderly parents living in trash cans (in our case, a washer and dryer) as they hunker down in their tight quarters, shut out from the outside world.

Creative Team

Lane Savadove … Director

Dan Soule … Set Designer

Jessica Risser-Milne … Costume Designer

Matt Sharp … Lighting Designer

Danielle Kindt … Stage Manager

Cast

Ed Swidey … Hamm

Doug Greene … Clove

J. Center … Nagg

Ann Gundersheimer … Nell

About Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish playwright, novelist, and poet.

Written in both English and French, his literary and theatrical works feature bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic episodes of life, coupled with black comedy and literary nonsense. Beckett is widely regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century, credited with transforming modern theatre. As a major figure of Irish literature, he is best known for his tragicomedy play Waiting for Godot (1953).

For his foundational contribution to both literature and theatre, Beckett received the 1969 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."