Emory Report

November 8, 1999

Volume 52, No. 11

November events honor Beckett with art, theater Few contemporary authors have inspired as many works of visual art as Samuel Beckett has, and Emory will host an international exhibition and symposium on this symbiotic relationship Nov. 11-13 titled "Samuel Beckett and the Visual Text." Included in the exhibition are artists' editions of Beckett texts, including fine press and graphic work by such well-known artists as Avigdor Arikha and Jasper Johns. The exhibition will be on display inWoodruff Library's Schatten Gallery and is free and open to the public. "Samuel Beckett and the Visual Text" is a collaboration between the library and the Beckett Correspondence Project, which has been based at Emory since 1990 and is preparing the definitive scholarly edition of the author's letters. More than 35 artists' editions of Beckett texts, plus photographs, letters and other documents revealing the creative process of the artists represented, will be on display through Dec. 20. A two-day symposium will bring together scholars and some of the featured artists to discuss the relationship between Beckett texts and visual art. The keynote address will be delivered at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 12 by Marjorie Perloff, Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities at Stanford University, who will discuss "'Seeing' Beckett's Language, 'Reading' Johns' Images." Her address will take place in Special Collections. On Saturday, Nov. 13, there will be presentations by three scholars: Breon Mitchell of Indiana University, author of the forthcoming bibliography of Beckett's printed texts, will give a gallery talk of the artists' editions. Lois More Overbeck, director of the Beckett Correspondence Project, will discuss Beckett's relationship with film and television. Dalia Judovitz, professor and chairwoman of French and Italian at Emory, will discuss the use of word-image interplay in the avant garde. Five of the exhibition artists will take part in a panel discussion about their art from 3-5 p.m. on Nov. 13. The panelists are Danish artist and publisher Hans Brøndum; Sorel Etrog, a Romanian painter and sculptor who emigrated to Israel and has been living in Toronto since 1961; German painter, illustrator, graphic artist and photographer Manfred Garstka; American teacher and printmaker Dellas Henke; and American printmaker Charles Klabunde. In conjunction with the symposium, Theater Emory will present justplay...[s], a collection of theater pieces by Beckett, in the Mary Gray Munroe Theater. Directed by Brenda Bynum, each evening will have a different selection of works that will include "A Piece of Monologue," "Act Without Words I," "Act Without Words II," "Come and Go," "Ohio Impromptu," "What Where" and "That Time." The production completes the performance during the last few years of the entire Beckett canon in Atlanta. Performances will be 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 11; 4 and 9 p.m. on Nov. 12; and 3 and 8 p.m. on Nov. 13. Tickets are $12 general admission; $10 seniors, Emory faculty and staff, non-Emory students; $6 Emory students. For information, call 404-727-5050. -Deb Hammacher Return to November 8, 1999 contents page