His Writing Sustains

An interview with director Judy Hegarty Lovett about Beckett, Godot, and the growth of Gare St Lazare Ireland

By Olivia O’Connor, Geffen Playhouse Literary Manager & Dramaturg

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Olivia O’Connor: We are speaking in the first few days of rehearsal for Godot. What are your priorities in this first week?

Judy Hagerty Lovett: Ultimately to get the piece up and running. To give the actors a chance to stand it up, to come off the page, and to give them an idea into the direction we're headed. I take a lot of the lead for the direction in which we go from [the actors]: from what happens in the room and from what I see emerging from their skillset, their response to the work, their way of meeting the work.

OO: You saw your first Beckett play, which was Waiting for Godot, when you were a teenager in Cork, Ireland. Do you remember your first reaction to the play?

JHL: I do. I remember it very distinctly, because prior to that I had only the Christmas pantomimes to go on; I had not ever been brought to a play or something outside of vaudeville. It was fascinating for me to see a first play in my teens. It was a beautiful production. It was in a very small theater called the Ivernia Theatre with a very fine cast. I was fascinated by what I saw on stage—the visual imagery and the style of the dialogue. The most incredible discovery for me was Pozzo and Lucky, and the casual manner in which a man crosses the stage tied to a rope. I was wondering, why is nobody taking any notice of the man with a rope around his neck? It was a revelatory moment for me.

OO: Since co-founding Gare St Lazare Ireland in 1996 [with co-artistic director and collaborator Conor Lovett], you've been directing and adapting Beckett's work for more than 25 years. What about Beckett’s body of work has continued to speak to you? Has your relationship to his work changed as you've gotten older, especially in regards to Godot?

JHL: Our company's approach to Samuel Beckett has been particular in that we focused principally on the prose works over the plays. In fact, we began with a short audition piece from Beckett’s novel Molloy. Something clicked, and I knew this work was worth pursuing. We just kept extending the audition piece and eventually thought that it might be a good idea to present it as a work for the stage. And so it was a very simple entry in the sense of just liking the writing, reading Beckett’s work and finding a way to present it on stage. There was no plan to head into 25 years of being with the same writer. Somewhere in the middle of touring the work around the world, we realized we could keep going and hopefully eventually present all the prose and plays, and here we are. Beckett’s writing feels as fresh to me today as that first day, and I expect I will never tire of it. It is exceptional writing, and writers of this caliber do not come along every day.

To answer the second part of your question: I think the way my relationship has developed to the work has less to do with my own [personal] changes and more to do with actually spending that amount of time with a single writer. Having the privilege of delving deep [has led to] a rich excavation and a deeper understanding of the patterns, choices, and developments across Beckett’s canon.

Then just in terms of the approach to the plays: having had the possibility to stage Waiting for Godot several times, I have found it very interesting watching my own relationship to that work.

GSLI mounted our very first production [of Godot] when we first moved to Paris in 1991. It played in a studio theater in the First Arrondissement. The theater had an English-speaking program, which, as you can imagine, had small audience turnout. I didn’t know it at the time, but this turned out to be of great benefit to my practice: it became for me a kind of a testing ground. The press weren’t watching; the estate weren’t watching. And so the company took liberties that perhaps would not be appreciated if we had been in the spotlight at the time. We did not have a tree; we did not have a stone. We did not have a budget. We had to improvise. The cast and crew all worked voluntarily. To have that freedom at that time was a great advantage. I learned so much about the play in that context.

In subsequent productions, I became very aware of Beckett’s stage directions in Godot and how important they are to the production. They are, as such, part of the play-text and are deeply woven into the integrity of the play. [And so, for a time], following every stage direction to the letter became the approach to the work.

Fast forward to next productions, I now feel that it’s best to meld, mold, and sculpt—[to find] a possibility for a freedom and an attention to the prescriptive detail of the work. Waiting For Godot is all about juxtaposition, opposites, and balance—it’s not surprising that the approach to staging it might suggest similar structures.

OO: Waiting for Godot is due to enter the public domain in 2049. I'm so curious about what productions we will see then.

JHL: I think it'll be very exciting. I welcome that, and I think it's important for that to happen so that his work doesn't get stuck in being a museum piece. It will be important for creators to go away from it in order to come back to it, which is the natural order with work when it is released into the public domain.

I think everything is in perpetual movement and change and is an adaptation of an adaptation. All plays are a blueprint for what becomes a three-dimensional event. And I think it's very important to consider that every production is different and is inevitably different from the last. This is the value of live work. The adaptation from page to stage process is a vital one. It's a living one. And it lives in time. It must live vitally within the moment for audience and creators. One should never feel hostage to tradition or expectations of time but to live freely looking back and forward and, if possible, outside of time.

I've worked with a lot of students at the National Theater Institute in the U. S., and it's really interesting to work with people of different nationalities and [to see] their approach to the work: their understanding of Beckett and what they like to focus in on.

Some approaches I’ve witnessed focus heavily on Godot as a religious document and really pull out all the religious iconography across the work. Other people will heavily focus on the comedy and want to pull all of that out. And so be it, because it is. I mean, what is a work and what is a writer, unless they're offering something that becomes a new imagination and allows the work to live in different contexts? Of course, it’s best to avoid projecting too much of your own agenda into any creation, but looking for that balance is what collaboration and engagement with a work is all about.

I understand Beckett himself would have been very attentive to how his work was delivered, but it’s also crucial to understand that he became a man of the theater through his writing. I think he started out very much as a writer and he evolved into theater, and I think he realized during his lifetime—by virtue of actually directing the work himself—how much work changes on the ground, in the rehearsal room with actors, and what it meant to bring a work from the page to the stage. You see that very especially with Godot. For a work that was written in apparently three months, from October 1948 to January 1949, it underwent a lifetime of changes. It had a 20-year evolution. From the early productions in the fifties, into the seventies, and right up to the eighties he was still directing that work and making changes to it for revivals and new productions. He made several changes to Godot over time and through collaboration with productions in different languages and countries.

I think there's an additional plus to the plurality of the work, in that it was written in two languages. That's an important factor and something to deeply consider—it is a bilingual play which underwent changes and cultural contextualization. It wasn't until [Beckett] got to the English version of Godot that he referred to it as a tragicomedy in two acts. He did not refer to it as that in the original French.

OO: You mentioned collaboration and the newness of any production. For this particular production, Rainn Wilson was a catalyst to the Geffen programming the piece; it was a bucket list project that he really wanted to do. How did you two first connect?

JHL: I'm so glad to hear it was on his bucket list. I think it should be on everybody's bucket list. Interestingly, the connection with Rainn is via Will Eno, an American contemporary playwright. Eno first saw one of Gare St Lazare Ireland’s productions in New York in 1998. He was really taken by our presentation of Molloy by Samuel Beckett and met with us after the show.

We immediately struck a chord and developed a friendship from there. He wrote Title and Deed for the company in 2011. It is a brilliant piece of work, a solo work written for Conor Lovett to play. We presented it at the Signature Theatre in New York in 2011. It’s wonderful now to report here that we just commissioned Eno to write a new play for the Gare St Lazare Ireland to play at the Gate Theatre in Dublin in 2026. So that relationship has sustained. That relationship happened through Beckett.

As you know, Rainn Wilson did a production of Thom Pain here at the Geffen [in 2016]. Will and Rainn remain very good friends. And so when Rainn said to Will, my bucket list play is Waiting for Godot, Will said, well, the only people to do Godot with you are Gare St Lazare.

And so he made a direct connection with us that way. And here we are.

OO: Earlier, you touched on some of the misperceptions about Beckett’s work: that it’s quite serious, or academic, or inaccessible. When you enter into a new process, is that notion something that you address head-on?

JHL: It's perhaps important to know that Godot and Beckett are still considered niche work. Despite the play being iconic and regarded as one of the classics, it wasn't when it first came out. It took time for people to embrace it and to accept it and accept Beckett’s visionary masterpiece.

It is a truly modernist work, and nothing like it has happened before, perhaps even since. While I consider it a masterpiece I am, however, very aware that there exists a whole swath of audience members who don’t know about Beckett and have never heard his name before and may not have had access to his work. Typically, people know only of Godot and may not know anything more about Beckett. The joy in this production is that we may find an audience who are meeting the work for the first time. It’s exciting to think of a younger audience meeting the work, too.

There’s a common misconception that Godot is really difficult, boring, and hard to understand. But Waiting for Godot is a truly accessible play. I think what has happened is that, not unlike Joyce, Beckett has been kept in an academic box. Somehow and somewhere along the way it was believed to be a play for intellectuals, and that’s a great pity, because it’s a play written for everybody. This play has been translated in multiple languages and is now seen as the most influential play of the 20th century. It’s both funny and tragic, and it asks the questions we all ask at some point. I doubt there’s a person on Earth who hasn’t sat at one point and asked, why are we here? I’ve heard children ask that question, you know what I mean? So it doesn’t take an intellectual mind to wonder what life is all about. This play asks those questions and more.

The important thing is the production itself. If it manages—and it's hard to do—to get a decent balance of comedy and tragedy and if the actors make a reach towards the audience and adapt to really making [the play] their own and making it feel concrete and human, then I think we're on a better track to be able to help an audience find a way into that work without feeling left out or ill equipped or not intellectual enough to understand it.

OO: I read it for the first time when I was about 12. I was very moved by it; I remember crying at the end of the play. I'm grateful that I encountered it before I had all of the awareness of Beckett as an important figure and Godot as an iconic play.

JHL: Well, there you go. A lot of people will say to me, help me with Beckett, will you? How do I understand Beckett? I generally respond by saying: just read the work; just read it and meet it in your own way. And you'll find your version of Beckett. And it won't be mine. It’ll be yours. But start with the work.

OO: You and Conor Lovett co-founded Gare St Lazare in 1996. And you've been married since when?

JHL: Oh gosh. Conor and I met when we were 14.

OO: Oh my gosh, I didn't realize that.

JHL: Yeah. A ridiculous amount of time together.

OO: It's amazing.

JHL: Oh, God, somebody do the math. But, yeah, a very long time.

OO: Did you two meet, because you both grew up in Cork, did you meet in school, around town?

JHL: We met via mutual friend. I lived in a very small little village just outside of Cork City. And so yeah: mutual friend, party.

OO: Wow. My assumption was that the professional relationship predated the personal relationship, but it's the opposite. The question still stands though, which is, given the length of that relationship—personally, creatively—how do you two enter a room together and how do you collaborate? Has your process shifted over the course of your careers?

JHL: I suppose it has only shifted in the sense that much of the work that we did in the early part of those 25-plus years [of Gare St Lazare] was a very pared down version of [what we do now]. [It was] pretty much Conor and myself and only even eventually a stage manager coming into the room. It was a kind of sculpting process: an artist with material. We had a very private and intimate process up until probably 15 years ago, when we began to expand out and work with other collaborators.

That expansion into working with other collaborators came at a really good time for us both, as well. We had in some way completed this very intimate way of working. But [the experience] gave us a shorthand that is incredibly useful and a really clear, intimate understanding of each other's process. The respect for each other and each other's practice has always been there. I suppose it's not dissimilar to the relationship, as well. Sometimes, of course, those were hard to untangle, art imitating life and all of that, but we've always gone into the room with a mutual respect. And hopefully we carry that with us. It feels really great to have that deep understanding and to bring that into a room and to share it with other people.

OO: Speaking of inviting other people into your collaborative work, Gare St Lazare Ireland founded the Atelier Samuel Beckett last year, through which artists are invited to residencies near your home in France. Artists of all disciplines have participated: architects, writers, actors, dancers. How did that program begin? And what do you feel is valuable about artists of all disciplines engaging with Beckett's work in their own practice?

JHL: The Atelier Samuel Beckett is really a fantastic story. When Conor and I first moved to France, after being married for a number of years, we went to a very small little village in Mericourt, about 40 minutes outside of the Paris city center.

A wonderful American couple gave us the possibility to look after their house in that village. It meant that as young artists, we had a possibility to build a body of work. [The house] was a rehearsal place and a place for us to work. It allowed us to create, over a number of years, a body of work that we're still living from today.

From that beautiful village in a rehearsal room in France, we toured our work around the world, as far and wide as Australia, South Africa, India, China. It became a signature of the company to tour internationally. Via that touring, we were presenting the work in the U.S. And by virtue of those visits over sustained periods of time and with sustained support from Culture Ireland, we had the great fortune of meeting with patrons who loved what we were doing and wanted to make sure we had support to keep going.

While we are Arts Council funded from Ireland, there were periods of difficulty where funding was impacted by economic crisis, but we were able to sustain the company with our patronage from the U.S. And one of those patrons, just prior to COVID, came to us and said, “We'd like to give the company a substantial gift. What would you like to do with that?” That was a wonderful proposal: to be asked, “what do you want to do with that money,” rather than just considering that it would go into a next production. They said, “where is the company at, and what would you like to do at this point in your careers?”

And so we thought, as you do in mid-age: it's a time for reflection and looking back. We had to think about the great fortune that we had up to now, and all of the support and patronage from the very first visit to Mericourt with the American couple who had given us their home to live in. We knew the value of what it was to live in that rural village, and we thought, we need to give that back. That was the impetus and inspiration for the Atelier. We said to our patrons, what we'd like to do is set up an artist atelier and give other artists an opportunity to come to this beautiful village and create work.

A playwright from Wales and a mixed media artist from Singapore are sharing the residency at the moment. It's up and running. I can't quite believe it. It's quite miraculous. It really is a beautiful thing. It's so pleasing to think that those artists are there and enjoying the fruits of that experience. And all of that journey came through Beckett, came through sustained touring, came through patronage, very particularly via the U.S. So our relationship with the U.S., for us, is very special,.

In terms of it being multidisciplinary, we were very keen to make sure that it extended to all artists. I come from a fine art background. Conor trained at the Lecoq theater school. We saw very immediately that a lot of Beckett's work has inspired a number of different artists in different disciplines, and we thought it would be a shame to limit it to just theater artists. It should be musicians as much as dancers, to continue the legacy of Samuel Beckett through all disciplines. [We also wanted] to make sure that it was international, because we knew the value of Beckett and how he was perceived around the world. Not all artists and writers make an international name; he has. We knew that people from Japan would be as interested as people from Africa to come and work on Beckett's writing.

OO: Given what you just said about your own fine arts background and interdisciplinary work, I’d love to hear about your collaboration with the design team on this production of Godot.

JHL: It is of great importance to me what the visual picture of any work is. I've had various collaborations over the years, but what has been of principal importance to me is to engage the design as an integral part of the production and not something that gets stuck on or delivered halfway through. For me, it is hugely part of the collaboration and so important to engage the actors with the creative team. Nothing's arriving to the room made; it is being made in situ, so that the actors know that [the design is] the right fit, and it makes sense to the production that they're making. Not the idea of the production that it wants to be, the production that is.

We've been very, very lucky to have collaborators who've been with us for a very long time. We've worked with Simon Bennison, our Lighting Designer, over a 15-year period, [or even] longer. We have a shorthand with him, and I know his level of commitment and his understanding of what a production should be. He's not just delivering an idea, but [instead] is integrated into the process from the beginning.

It's a first-time collaboration with [Scenic & Costume Designer] Kaye Voyce, and she is amazing. She immediately understood the importance of engaging from the beginning and – exceptionally and brilliantly – she's here with us from day one of rehearsal. That is not a norm, and it's a hard thing to get past goal, but when you do, it's amazing.

[Sound Designer] Mel Mercier has worked with us over a 10-year period. We have a very tight and good relationship with him, and he is just a brilliant collaborator. He'll be with us [in the third week of rehearsal], which is well in front of the usual design time. He will be bringing sound into the rehearsal room, experimenting—painting, as he refers to it—in situ with the actors, to try and get feedback from the actors as well: Does this work? Can you live with this sound? Where does this sound belong in the context of this play that we are making now?

We engage all collaborators in the process rather than sticking something on and saying here, wear it. That's very important to us as a company.

OO: After having engaged with Beckett's work for many decades now, what still surprises you about his work?

JHL: Oh, the best surprise is people's response. How different actors receive the work, how different collaborators respond and understand the work, how an audience reacts.

It's a joy to see people find their own way through Beckett and attach meaning or understanding. It opens up my mind to new ways of thinking of Beckett and new ways of understanding the writer and not getting entrenched in any too-heavy opinions of what [the work] is or what it should be. I enjoy that the most.

The other thing that I find fascinating is: his writing sustains. I've never tired of it. It always feels new. It feels modern. There are so many layers, so much to keep on discovering. It feels like, I mean, [it’s] the most quotable work ever. It was really interesting for us to see during COVID, in particular, how many people ran to Beckett for solace. I thought, wow, that's amazing.

Beckett really provides so much to the reader. He has become a go-to support for people when trying to understand humanity. That's a fantastic contrast to not understanding him, [or his work] feeling impenetrable or difficult. It's like, no, we know people ran to him in crisis. [Asking], What is this crisis? How do we manage it? What does it all mean?

We all suffer. We all have pain. We all have difficulty. Beckett’s writing is so human, so current, so rich and rewarding. And [Beckett’s] writing, in addition to just being funny or enjoyable or entertaining, can be hugely insightful. It can penetrate an understanding of the self, or at least help in understanding human behavior.

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Waiting for Godot

NOV 6 – DEC 15, 2024
GIL CATES THEATER

Written by Samuel Beckett
Directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett
Produced in Association with Gare St Lazare Ireland
Featuring Lincoln Bonilla, Conor Lovett, Aasif Mandvi, Jack McSherry, Adam Stein & Rainn Wilson

As Vladimir and Estragon wait and wait for the arrival of the elusive Godot, a cast of mysterious misfits interrupt their endless vigil in Samuel Beckett’s tragi-comic masterpiece that has captivated audiences for decades. Timeless and multi-layered, Waiting for Godot changed the course of contemporary drama and remains as resonant and riveting as ever. Gare St Lazare Ireland, “the unparalleled Beckett champions” according to the New York Times, bring their wit and skill to what promises to be a Godot for the ages.

Geffen Playhouse’s Theater as a Lens for Justice initiative provides access to this production and supplementary programs for populations impacted by incarceration and is supported, in part, by Jayne Baron Sherman.

This production is also supported by:

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