Catastrophe

Catastrophe es una obra corta de Samuel Beckett, escrita en francés en 1982 a invitación de A.I.D.A. y “[f]irst produced in the Avignon Festival … Beckett considered it ‘massacred.’” Es una de sus pocas obras que aborda un tema político y, posiblemente, ostenta el título de la obra más optimista de Beckett. Beckett "wrote the short play Catastrophe about control and censorship" y la dedicó al dramaturgo checo Václav Havel, quien se encontraba en prisión en ese momento. Havel escribió una obra llamada Mistake "as a response to the one Beckett had written in solidarity." "In February 1984, in one of the most significant milestones in the history of Index on Censorship, both plays were published for the first time." En enero de 2022, tras casi 38 años, en la celebración del 50.º aniversario de Index, le pidieron "Iranian playwright Reza Shirmarz to write his own response to Beckett's Catastrophe." Shirmarz escribió su obra Muzzled, que fue publicada por Index como respuesta dramática a Catastrophe de Beckett. Al dar sus puntos de vista sobre la obra de Beckett en una entrevista con Index, Shirmarz dijo que "Catastrophe is about censored communication, the ritualistic representation and the symbolic image of human relationship constrained by external forces, a deterministic, political and post-dramatic text which demonstrates how humans are coerced to be and live in a torturous limbo. [In Catastrophe], Beckett's Protagonist is deprived of free will by the systems surrounding him and the systematic control imposed by others, except at the moment he moves his head up and looks at the spectators. Despite his psychosomatic pain, he talks through his silence and protests through his immobility. As so-called social factors and audiences, we are reminded by the playwright that we are not able to get out of the cage the sociopolitical conventions have imprisoned us in and we must abide by the unbreachable laws brought in by the global structures and conglomerates in order to survive." Catastrophe de Beckett y Mistake de Havel dirigidas por Michael Brown y Muzzled de Shirmarz por Sami Ismat se produjeron como parte del Festival of Absurd Theatre en The Chopin Theatre de Chicago en my 2025.