Words Are All We Have

Most of us know Beckett from his piece ‘Waiting for Godot (released in 1952 in French; ‘En attendant Godot). The English translation was released in 1955. The story is about two homeless people, who are waiting for Godot, who will never arrive.

Becketts theatre plays are empty, minimalistic and pessimistic and deal with topics like human nature and faith.

In 1956 the BBC asked Samuel Beckett to create a radio play (drama), something he never did before. The radio play became “All that fall”, in Dutch translated as “Allen die vallen”, that was aired on the BBC radio for the first time in 1957, so exactly 60 years ago.

Maddy Rooney, a seventy year old woman that exists of “twohundered pounds of unhealthy fat”, is on her way to the station of Boghill to visit her blind husband, as a surprise for his birthday. On her way to the station she meets some fellow villagers. The trip doesn’t go as planned.

For this project, ‘Words are all we have’ (the title refers to a quote of Beckett, even though the source of the quote has never been found) we asked a group of artists to respond to this radioplay.

Those artists are: Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen, Matthias König, Lukas Simonis & Natasha Taylor, Marius Bruijn and Pernille Lønstrup.

Four out of five artists (including a duo) made a new work especially for this project. The only assignment we gave them; audio should be a substantially part of the work.