The playwright has long been considered one of the country\u2019s most famous exports, but not an \u2018Irish writer\u2019. An ambitious new season of plays explores his complex relationship with his homeland \u2013 and tickets are already on sale for 2036<\/p>\n
In 2036, the actor Samuel West will take to the stage to perform Krapp\u2019s Last Tape \u2013 Samuel Beckett\u2019s pensive monologue in which an old man, hunched over a reel-to-reel recorder, listens back to the voice of his younger self. West will be 69, the age of Krapp in the play. And remarkably, the tape he plays will feature the sound of himself as a younger man, recorded in 2006, when he was 39 \u2013 the age Krapp was on the night he\u00a0made the recording. Two years later another actor, Richard Dormer, will do the same, using a similar recording that\u2019s currently locked away in a BBC vault.<\/p>\n
These are the most improbable commissions of the Samuel Beckett Biennale, which promises to deliver experimental \u201cperformed readings\u201d of the playwright\u2019s works in pockets of Ireland and Britain over the next 12 years. It is organised by Se\u00e1n Doran and run through his cross-border organisation Arts Over Borders<\/a>. Events will unfold at locations of significance to Beckett\u2019s life and legacy \u2013 from Enniskillen, Belfast and Dublin to Folkestone, Reading and Snodland \u2013 tracing his footsteps across Britain and Ireland.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a37607a64431e610c660e5c142967110c3222380\/481_0_3540_2832\/master\/3540.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=89a7cba3bab17df4a5467d64f7dd3327\" "\\"\u2018It\u2019s")
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