Happy Days
Performances
Cast & Personnel
Director
Assistant Director
Dramaturgy
Cast
Scenic Design
Costume Design
Lighting Design
Sound Design
Prop Design
Stage Manager
Booth Crew
The Play
“Here all is strange.”
Beckett’s existential tragicomedy Happy Days concerns itself with Winnie, a middle- class, middle-aged woman who is quite literally stuck, buried to her waist in crusted earth. Her husband Willie lives in a hole behind her mound, physically and emotionally out of reach. Even in his company she is essentially alone. Armed with a shopping bag of everyday items and routines, a series of half-remembered stories, songs, and prayers, and an undying capacity for optimism, she presses through an endless series of unforgiving days to the merciful night to come. The bell rings again and when the blazing sun comes charging back, she is buried up to her neck. Her last resources depleted, her arms and body sunk and gone, her predicament is irreversible, hellish, seemingly eternal. Through it all she perseveres, struggling with all that remains to make real her impossibly hopeful exclamation: “Oh this will be another happy day!”
Tamarie Cooper plays Winnie and Jason Nodler directs, reprising their roles from the Infernal Bridegroom production 22 years ago.
