Word: beckett
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Akalaitis and ART Director Robert Brustein have defended their production on the grounds that Beckett has made revisions in the staging when he produced the play himself and that Beckett has permitted other unusual stagings, such as a flooded warehouse being used as the theatre for a 1983 production of the play. Generally, the law is not on their side. Beckett can allow particular changes in his play without opening the floodgates to any changes. If Beckett thinks a flooded stage is okay as a backdrop for minimalist drama, but a ravaged T-stop is not, that is his legal...
...made the play a classic: sometimes it is preserved on celluloid, other times it becomes a Platonic form of a performance of that play. With Endgame, it is a timeless, barren interior of grey lighting. That aspect of the play could be 'lost' if it became popularly believed that Beckett's Endgame should be staged in some ornate, bizarre interior. This danger of losing the original is especially great with a minimalist play where there is no clear historical context to make losing the original staging difficult. When an aspect of the play is lost, some of its value...
...that we treat intellectual property this way. If the ART had been trespassing on Beckett's farm instead of his literature, there would be no question of his right to kick them out. Many of us feel the same level of rights apply to intellectual property and for better reasons. In a sense, a person deserves what she creates more than she deserves what she inherits. The creator has a deeper, more personal interest in her own creation than in things she purchases from a grocery store or a real estate agent. The interest is emotional. It is also social...
...recognize such inalienable rights of the author, our copyright law is not insensitive to this idea, i.e. we tie copyright protection to the lifetime of the author, not just a time period necessary for cost recovery plus "profit". We recognize that Endgame is a product of Beckett's imagination and that he has some right to keep it as he imagined it. Yes, Beckett is stymieing the creative impulse of the artists at the ART, but he did not ask them to produce Endgame and they would be more stymied if he never wrote the play. The ART is free...
From what we know of Beckett's in this dispute, he would have more happily permitted an adaptation: a play inspired penned, by Beckett (This too copyright owner's permission)Billing this production as an adaptation would have been more honest because it would have recognized the tremendous creative input i.e, changed made...