Beckett sa Chreig: Guth na mBan, four short works by Samuel Beckett is running at An Taibhdhearc Theatre until this Saturday, July 19, as part of Galway International Arts Festival.

Directed by Sarah Jane Scaife, it follows her award-winning Beckett sa Chreig: Laethanta Sona, a site-specific piece in conjunction with the Abbey Theatre, which premiered on Inis Oírr during the 2021 Arts Festival, for which Bríd Ní Neachtain won an Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Actress.

This piece Beckett sa Chreig: Guth na mBan, is a co-production between Sarah Jane’s Company SJ and An Taibhdhearc, and it brings together four short works by the playwright and novelist that explore the female voice, presence and body.

In Footfalls, May, a middle-aged woman, paces outside her unseen mother’s room as fragments of memory, rhythm and voice unfold into a portrait of care, loss and identity.

In Not I, a single mouth floats, unleashing a torrent of fragmented memories as a woman disowns her trauma with the repeated cry: ‘Not I.’

In Rockaby, an elderly woman, dressed for death, rocks on a chair as a voice repeats “time she stopped,” in a meditation on loneliness, memory and the search for companionship.

Fizzles 4 (from Beckett’s prose collection)  is a short, poetic text offering an image-rich meditation on existence, space and time.

These works are set against a West of Ireland backdrop and the broken colonial architecture of Dublin.

This immersive Irish language production, which is Inspired by the language and landscape of Inis Oírr, has English audio access for people without Irish.

It’s the first time these works are being performed together in Irish – in a new translation by Micheál Ó Conghaile, who also translated Happy Days –  alongside Mise Éire by poet Eavan Boland.

Performed by Caitríona Ní Mhurchú, Fiona Lucia McGarry and Nuala Hayes, set design is by Alyson Cummins, lighting is by Stephen Dodd and Sinéad Cuthbert designed the costumes, while music is by Matthew Martin and Fiona Lucia McGarry, and the film is by Arcade Film.

The production, billed as a “multi-sensory encounter that invites audiences into a layered world of memory, language and the body”, is at An Taibhdhearc, Middle Street, until this Saturday, July 19, at 8pm. Tickets €18–€20. Booking at antaibhdhearc.ticketsolve.com.

Pictured: The show is inspired by Inis Oírr.