A Global Classroom

Ideas in Focus: Beckett in Berlin




A significant portion of UMBC's theatre faculty could be found in Germany last September when the Maryland Stage Company (MSC), UMBC's resident professional theatre company, was invited to perform three works of playwright Samuel Beckett at the Beckett in Berlin 2000: International Festival and Symposium.

The MSC has won international acclaim for its brilliant adaptations of the plays of Beckett--in 1996 it won an invitation to perform at the Journees Beckett festival in Strasbourg, France--and for the Berlin festival chose three challenging Beckett works: That Time, Ohio Impromptu, and Play.

UMBC theatre professor Xerxes Mehta, who is also president-elect of the Samuel Beckett Society, directed the production, and appearing on stage were theatre faculty members Wendy Salkind and Sam McCready; Terry Cobb and Elena Zlotescu were the production designers. The plays, described as "shocking, chilling, haunting, and mysteriously beautiful," are considered by many scholars to be the most powerful theatre works of the 20th century.

Another UMBC Beckett scholar, Angela Moorjani, professor of modern languages and linguistics, was also in Berlin, serving as one of three organizers of the Beckett Symposium and speaking at a session on philosophy and poetics.

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