Presented by Pan Pan Theatre.
Celebrating the poetry of one of Ireland’s Nobel Prize-winning writers, WHAT IS THE WORD was an audio cinematic experience which features a curated collection of Samuel Beckett’s poetry performed by a cast of some of Ireland’s leading actors, including Andrew Bennett, Áine Ní Mhuirí and Ingrid Craigie.
After a fall in his apartment in 1988, Samuel Beckett moved to the Tiers Temps nursing home in Paris. It was there that Beckett, aged 82, wrote ‘Comment dire’ in French. On the manuscript of his English translation, which he called ‘what is the word’, which is considered to be his final poem, he wrote ‘Keep! for end.’
WHAT IS THE WORD grappled with the struggle to express, a theme present from Beckett’s early work but sharpened by his experience with illness. It offered an immersive sensory journey into some of Beckett’s least-performed works.
Pan Pan, founded in 1993, has created fifty-nine theatre and performance pieces worldwide since its inception. In regards to the creative approach to WHAT IS THE WORD, the University Times writes: “[Pan Pan] surpassed traditional artistic boundaries with their bold mix of theatre and cinema.”
