(NEW YORK, NY) -- After a sold out run in NYC, there are only a limited number of tickets available for an exclusive stream of Beckett Briefs - From the Cradle to the Grave performed by Irish Repertory Theatre. The stream is presented by The League of Live Stream Theater and is available for viewing from March 16-30, 2025.
Beckett Briefs is three short plays by Samuel Beckett, directed by Ciarán O'Reilly and featuring F. Murray Abraham, Roger Dominic Casey, Kate Forbes, and Sarah Street. These three short plays that run the gamut of existence, from birth to the afterlife.
NOT I - "Practically speechless... all her days." A non-verbal woman, abandoned by her parents at birth and resigned to an uneventful life, suddenly hears voices at the age of 70 and realizes it's she who is speaking.
PLAY - "We were not long together when she smelled the rat." Eternally together in the afterlife and locked in their urns, a man, his wife, and his mistress relay the sordid details of their love triangle.
KRAPP'S LAST TAPE - "Perhaps my best years are gone... But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back."
Krapp (F. Murray Abraham), an aged man, reviews his life with the assistance of his younger self, heard on autobiographical tape recordings.
"[A] collection of three one-acts about mortality and memory, smartly directed by Ciarán O'Reilly and including "Krapp's Last Tape," starring an understatedly masterful F. Murray Abraham… Even the lighting (designed by Michael Gottlieb) is precisely as Beckett demands [...] it works brilliantly… – Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times
Running Time: Approximately 75 minutes with no intermission. Closed Caption available.
Production is available for viewing March 16 at 5:00pm ET through March 30, 2025. Once you start watching, you will have 3 days to complete your viewing. All viewing must be completed by March 30 at midnight ET, as the production will no longer be available after that time.
Viewing passes are $39 and available for purchase online.
Jim Augustine and Oren Michels met across the negotiating table during the pandemic, working on a deal they both hoped would be good for the theater industry they loved. Jim was at the time COO of Zuckerberg Media and its subsidiary Assemble Stream Inc. where he had built the models, financing and tech teams necessary to live-stream 2nd Stage‘s production of Clyde’s, a new play from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage. Once Ms Nottage approved in concept, Oren got to work on behalf of 2nd Stage, where he is a board member, negotiating for the organization’s best interests while hoping to navigate the theater industry that he loved toward sustainability through technology. While negotiating for their separate parties, the two developed a respect for one another’s expertise in business, and trust in one another’s passion for supporting theaters.
The partnership they forged resulted in Clyde’s being the first-ever simulcast run of a Broadway show. The experiment proved Broadway’s capacity to distribute productions live to all fifty states, to sell-out live-stream access at prices competitive to in-person ticket sales, and to bring radically new audiences into the 2nd Stage family. Reflecting on the show’s premiere in Rikers Island, two-time Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage said that live-streaming “breaks down barriers … interrogating the notion of whether theater has to be in a box.”
When ZM and ASI pivoted to other opportunities, Jim and Oren reconnected to finish what they had started, this time as a not-for-profit, building upon the ideas that brought them together to support 2nd Stage in the first place, but now for the benefit of not-for-profit theaters everywhere.
Their work, now called The League of Live Stream Theater, brings live, world-class theater into homes, schools and community centers around the world, believing that together, we can make theater more accessible than ever before, drive new audiences to new works, increase awareness for world-class stages and the artists who make their work possible, increase revenues, and help our institutions to thrive for another generation.
