Next month sees the first Happy Days Samuel Beckett festival and the Gavin Bryars Ensemble are to perform their magnum opus 1969’s The Sinking of the Titanic and a world premiere of The Beckett Songbook.
Bryars says: “I have chosen six poems for the collection, four of which are performed here: ‘My way is in the sand flowing’, ‘I would like my love to die’, ‘Song’ and ‘Something There’.”
The festival, which takes place in Enniskillen, county Fermanagh from 23-27 August, where Beckett went to school at Portora, also includes theatre performances of Krapp’s Last Tape, Rough for Theatre II, What Where and What Is The Word, Act Without Words 1, All That Fall, and Not I; readings and talks by among others Paul Muldoon and Alice Oswald, Edna O’Brien, John Banville, John Calder, James Knowlson, Lady Antonia Fraser, and Maggi Hambling. There’s also an exhibition ‘Tree for Waiting for Godot’ by Antony Gormley which runs from 16 July until 13 September. Stephen Graham
Pictured: Antony Gormley