Press Releases

February 5, 1999
Samuel Beckett's Happy Days Performed March 7 at Southampton College

Touring Theater Company "Bas Bleu" Takes the Stage at Avram Theater

Contact:
Jane Finalborgo
Joe Dionisio
(516) 287 8313
Fax: (516) 283 4081

Southampton, NY -- Happy Days, one of the famed works of playwright Samuel Beckett, will be performed by The Bas Bleu Theatre Company on Sunday, March 7 at 8 p.m. in the Avram Theater at Southampton College of Long Island University.

Tickets are $9 ($5 for students), and can be purchased at the door or through Mary Bruno in the Humanities office at 516-287-8420.

On March 8 and 9, Bas Bleu also will perform for a Southampton College English class, and lead a discussion on Beckett. The course is taught by English professor Robert Hullot-Kentor, who arranged for Bas Bleu to come to the College. Bas Bleu (pronounced bah blue), a touring theater group based in Fort Collins, Colorado, is widely celebrated.

"The magnificence of watching such talent in the intimacy of a small theater is overwhelming. Bravo to the Bas Bleu Theater!" wrote The Collegian newspaper.

Happy Days, directed by Dr. Laura Jones, stars Wendy Ishii as Winnie and Morris Burns as Willie. "The key to Beckett is having excellent actors and a smart, perceptive director," said critic Phyllis Walbye. "Bas Bleu has the key... to BeckettÕs mysterious theatrical creations."

Beckett, the late Nobel Prize-winner, was a founder of the Absurdist movement. "He changed the course of modern theater with Waiting for Godot," said John Reilly, a Southampton College professor of Arts and Media who directed an award-winning 1995 documentary about the playwright. "Beckett revolutionized theater by discarding all its traditional rules. He has to be considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century."

Reilly's Waiting for Beckett will be screened Monday, March 8 at 6 p.m. in the Duke Lecture Hall at Chancellors Hall. The film, followed by a discussion of the playwright, is free and open to the public.

In Happy Days, Beckett created one of his most memorable fiction roles in Winnie. According to critic Eric Prince, the role is coveted by actresses because "it offers one of the most challenging peaks to be scaled in the history of the stage."

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