SUNDAY NOV. 23RD IS WAITLISTED! Tickets will be released to the waitlist at 7:35.
Box Office Phone: 773-977-7873
There will be no late seating.
The reviews are in!
"This is a brilliant interpretation of a brilliant play."
- Chicago Reader, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Chicago Stage Standard gives Happy Days 4 out of 4 stars and reports that our internationally collaborated production "makes for damn good theatre...thought-provoking, unsettling entertainment."
"The audience is not just invited to witness a couple’s life and relationship conclusion, but compelled to think about their own life in parallel." - (Newcity Stage), Recommended
Directed by András Visky
October 14 – November 23, 2014 at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church
International Collaboration Staged on Multimedia Art Installation
Theatre Y is proud to announce their production of HAPPY DAYS by Samuel Beckett. Romanian director András Visky, Assosiate Artistic Director of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, stages the two-person cast featuring Artistic Director Melissa Lorraine and Evan Hill. The seldom done Samuel Beckett classic will be staged in a multimedia art installation designed by Hungarian intermedia and conceptual artist Peter Szabo.
HAPPY DAYS follows Winnie, a woman submerged in a heap of garbage first up to her waist and then up to her neck. Comforted by the occasional visits by her husband Willie, Winnie remains resolved to find meaning in her life and attain her “happy days“ in Beckett's remarkably written “As is now expected from Beckett, this text awakens my worst and largest fears:
‘What am I doing
No one is even noticing
I am lying to myself, always
I am not even present to myself here now’
I am acutely aware of the paradox I participate in day by day when I believe that I wish to live, as long as possible, but proceed to drown out the hours themselves.” comments Artistic Director Melissa Lorraine. “Now, in addition to these timeless fears, my generation has the added layer of virtual immortality, the performance of a cyber self...a hall of mirrors to distance us further still from reality. Conceptual Artist Peter Szabo will bury the actors in their own digital garbage – an installation of their actual virtual graveyard. I believe that Beckett’s Happy Days can be the liturgy with which we confront our fear of living. In this century.” The production team for HAPPY DAYS includes: Peter Szabo (scenic design), Kevin V. Smith(assistant director), Katina Donoghuev (assistant stage manager) and Robert Eric Shoemaker
About the Director
András Visky is a poet, playwright and essayist and the resident dramaturg at the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, Romania, where he also holds the position of Associate Artistic Director. His plays have been staged in several countries including Romania, Hungary, France, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and the United States. Since 1994, he has lectured at the Cluj Babeş-Bolyai University in the Department of Theatre and Television. Visky is the author of more than a dozen plays, including Juliet which opened at the Thalia Theatre in Budapest where it ran for several seasons. His play Long Friday which opened at the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, is a stage adaptation of Imre Kertész's Kaddish for an Unborn Child (winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature), and received awards for Best play and Dramaturgy at the Hungarian National Theater Festival in Pécs; the play has toured in Bucharest, Budapest, Sibiu, Torino, and Ljubljana. His most recent play, Born For Never, opened at the Festival d'Avignon in 2009, and was rated as the best performance of the Festival according to the critics’ votes. In 2009 Visky was awarded the prestigious József Attila Award by the Hungarian Minister of Culture.
About the Scenic Designer
Péter Szabó (born in Romania) is an intermedia and conceptual artist, living and working in Budapest, Hungary. During his studies in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, he was a founding member of Protokoll Studio, contemporary art space, and noise bands Alergische Platze and Ovekk Finn. Szabó works with a large scale of media, including drawing, object, installation and public action, often commenting on the recent political and social situation of his micro-environment. His present work focuses on the social and economic value of art, creating public-art events, community building and educational projects . While working with independent initiatives (Young Artists Association, Budapest), nomadic social art platforms (The Knot – Mobile Unite) and various institutions (tranzit.hu, tranzit.ro). Szabó has participated in different residential programs across Europe (Great Britain, Germany, Romania, Austria, Poland). His work has been exhibited in Budapest (Trafó, Studio Gallery), Prague (Futura Gallery, Skolska 28 Gallery), Chicago (Columbia College, Book and Paper Arts), Bratislava (AMT_projects), Zagreb (No Gallery of MSU), Wien (MQ, IG Bildende Kunst), Kassel (Kunsthalle Fridericianum), New York (ICR).
About Theatre Y
Theatre Y creates poetic and visceral theater, mines the contradictions of the human experience, and challenges audiences to find universally shared meaning.Theatre Y was founded in 2006, by actor Melissa Lorraine and director Christopher Markle. The company is steeped in the theatrical traditions of Eastern Europe and is known for its highly-physical, avant-garde style. Theatre Y has a deep commitment to creating global partnerships between the creative Chicago community and international artists, and, in addition to hosting international playwrights and choreographers. Collaborations with primal masters of the Eastern European theatre, including Luciane Pintilie and Tadeusz Kantor as well as Romanian playwright András Visky - influenced the companyʼs founding, with Viskyʼs play, Juliet as its first production.Written for his mother, the play centers on the true story of Andrásʼ first memories in a communist gulag. Theatre Y toured the English version of Juliet internationally from 2006-2012, performing coast to coast, as well as in Romania, Slovakia, Italy, Canada, Hungary, Israel and Palestine. This tour forged the values, aesthetic, and many of the international collaborations that now define In the winter of 2010, Theatre Yʼs production of Visky's I Killed My Mother was a world premiere, which played to sold-out houses at Chicagoʼs Greenhouse Theater, garnered critical acclaim, and was invited to LaMama ETC in New York. Since then, Theatre Y has made Chicago its home, producing work across the city, until 2013 when they were invited to settle into the historic 1901 sanctuary of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Logan Square.