Bill Irwin Brings Works from Irish Playwright to Modern Audiences
Bill Irwin’s one-man-show “On Beckett” is running at the Irish Repertory Theatre until Aug. 5.
| 30 Jul 2024 | 03:00
Bill Irwin uses physicality to help his storytelling in “On Beckett.” (
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Bill Irwin believes that his history as a performer and as a clown lends itself to Samuel Beckett’s writing. (
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Bill Irwin explores the work of Samuel Beckett in his one-man-play “On Beckett.” (
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Bill Irwin has been reading Samuel Beckett’s writing since he was 18-years-old. (
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Bill Irwin wrote and performs in “On Beckett,” running through Aug. 5 at the Irish Repertory Theatre. (
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Though it only debuted in 2018, “On Beckett” is quite possibly the culmination of Bill Irwin’s entire career in the performing arts.
The one-man play—written by and starring Irwin—is playing on the Francis J. Greenburger Main stage at the Irish Repertory Theatre until Aug. 5. It shows an actor’s exploration of playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett’s canon of work, including plays like “Waiting for Godot,” “Endgame,” and many others.
The first sentence of the show’s official description is fairly apt: “Bill Irwin can’t escape Samuel Beckett.”
“That is it in a nutshell,” said Irwin. “His work I keep returning to, sometimes by choice, sometimes not entirely by choice. But it’s so interesting that it just stays in my brain. It’s easier and more durable in memory for an actor—for me, anyway—than any other work I’ve done, including Shakespeare.”
Irwin first encountered one of Beckett’s plays in an anthology he purchased for a UCLA English class in 1968. At roughly 18-years-old, he had just finished studying abroad in Northern Ireland, and found much of that familiar Irish culture in Beckett’s writing.
The play was “Act Without Words,” and there is no dialogue at all. In lieu of writing a script with lines to memorize, Beckett wrote this play exclusively in stage directions.
“Something in that just really sparked me,” said Irwin. “It’s for a mime, and it’s only stage directions, and the way he described physical action always stayed with me. I’ve never done that play, but I’ve always remembered how he described a human figure on the stage, and how much that meant to me.”
One-actor-shows like “On Beckett” need to keep audiences engaged, and Irwin is familiar with doing that through physicality. He has spent his life performing both as an actor and a clown, and sees these techniques and traditions in Beckett’s writing. To him, Beckett’s work exudes a need for physicality, with him being what Irwin called, an “examiner of the body-mind relationship.”
“I think Beckett had a soft spot for physical comedians, and he loved Chaplin and Keaton as a young man,” Irwin said. “He came of age right when the movie camera was first becoming part of our life, and apparently his family went to the variety theater all the time. I think he had a deep appreciation for clowns. I don’t know what he would have said if somebody asked him that, but I feel it in the writing.”
Irwin finds himself “deeply filled with joy” that he has the opportunity to perform the “physical and written language” that he is so passionate about.
“It’s about human life, and it examines human life,” Irwin said. “He does get sort of abstruse, sometimes he does make me impatient, but I just love the writing.”
Tickets for the final performances of ”On Beckett” at the Irish Repertory Theatre are available at irishrep.org.