Where Stanislavski Meets Fanon.
Kangalee Arts Ensemble, Inc.
Krapp’s Last Tape
ON NOVEMBER 18, 2022, AFTER MORE THAN A DECADE - DENNIS LEROY KANGALEE RETURNED TO THE STAGE - BY REINTERPRETING SAMUEL BECKETT'S HAUNTING 1958 APOCALYPTIC MONO-DRAMA ABOUT AGE, MEMORY, FAILURE, AND THE OMINOUSNESS OF TECHNOLOGY. This unique version presented by the KANGALEE ARTS ENSEMBLE was like a punk rock King Lear, a return to the distillation of tragedy, it revived "awe" (Magnus Magus) and reminded audiences of what it meant to "breathe in air, together." (Summer Hill Seven)
“A great actor must despise plot while still living truthfully despite it because even in the absence of it, the patient, i.e., audience member must create a plot.
Kangalee and his astute team of artists do everything in their power to give us some freedom from this iron ball of meaning making that keeps us tethered to our suffering.”
- Summer Hill Seven
Krapp’s Last Tape"“ : A combination of Suzuki, Redd Foxx, and West Indian neurosis danced harmoniously in the Kangalee Arts Ensemble’s rendition of Beckett's masterful mono-drama about old age, memory and deterioration was workshopped in February-March 2022 and performed for the public, to sold out audiences, November 2023 at Studio 111, Brooklyn NY.
[photos: Edwin Pagan]
"Krapp's Last Tape" promo video
“...I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire that burns in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back.”
A result of a year-long workshop, this production of KRAPP'S LAST TAPE was both an act of love and courage and was a gentle reminder of the power of live performance and the eternal impact of powerful words. On the heels of having gotten Covid-19, Dennis Leroy Kangalee used what he learned while convalescing and put that into his performance. A project that was only close to his heart but the core of what the company believes: by doing plays we expand our humanity. We learn and discover our similarities in the topical differences. This is where theater can be fun and dangerous: in celebrating differences and receiving wisdom in other “modes” of life or cultures, we find our own selves and reflect the likenesses. This act is liberating.
Edith Raw finishes dressing the set she designed for the 2022 production of “Krapp’s Last Tape” at Studio 111, Brooklyn.
Dani Kriatura's "Kangalee in Krapp's Last Tape" (2022)
A late evening in the future.
A late evening in the future.
AN ACTOR PREPARES: First page of the text of "Krapp's Last Tape" by Samuel Beckett [from script workbook, April 2021]
"A late evening in the future" — It works as a cosmic exercise for an actor and for the notion of technology. The personal tape recorder had just been made available for consumers around the time Beckett wrote the play in 1958. A 69 year old man in 1958 obviously could not have been recording reel-to-reels of himself since 1928. This idea alone is why Beckett projects INTO the future. There is an argument that it is created for the middle-aged actor (or younger) who must pitilessly thrust himself 30 years into the future....
And age. What is it to be 69? Obviously not what it was in 1958, 1988...or what it shall mean in 30 years time.
Now, closing in on the helm of half a century, I shiver at wondering what I will discover about the play (and myself) when I am 69 and perform the play as a man in his 90s!
Krapp's Last Tape may be the most perfect piece of writing for the theater. Is there such a thing? Its mystery, cubistic beauty, the past and present and future tenses collide into a humbling and terrifying question we all ask ourselves on those dreadful anxious days at 4AM, haunted by unfulfilled promises and our weakest commitments. If there is a future it is one that we must face naked and, no doubt, trembling...because the moments, like a great song, do end. Krapp's Last Tape to me is an expression of living and dying; it is personal and universal, cosmic and political.
TAPES VERSUS REELS
For practical and aesthetic reasons, I decided to literalize the "tape" aspect of the play and use cassette tapes and not a reel-to-reel. I wanted a personal connection; I could relate to my past life amidst cassette tapes, as any other person born post 1960 in a metropolis probably can.
The emphasis on the cassette tapes contextualize the production in a strangely "modern" way that also hints at an urbane quality and acknowledges the past; the nostalgia now of cassette tapes rather than compact-discs and now mp4 digital downloads and audio streaming put the personal connection of the play firmly within the grip of Generation X. The generation of mix tapes and walkmans.
Digital sketch from rehearsal photo.
[Credit: Brian Alessandro]
An unexplainable obsession of mine since 1996, I first performed Krapp's Last Tape while at Juilliard in Lincoln Center in the fall of 1996. I was precocious. It was interesting, highly imaginative...but it lacked soul. I hadn't yet understood what having a past had meant. I understood death but I had no relation to regret or a life I had let pass through my fingers. I understood anger, I understand angst. But it took me many years to internalize the impact of loss, personal failure...and the desire to confront that.
Conceptually, my work on it is an extension of my own investigations into solo performance and the 'passion of the clown' as both truth teller and doomed romantic. A holy fool. Where Shakespeare was always too emphatic on "Kings" and "Queens," Beckett expressed the pathos and antics of the powerless. And it was connecting to his penchant for the dispossessed and the perception of the underdog that I most organically related to when approaching his plays. It is this emphasis that defines the Kangalee Arts Ensemble’s approach and iteration of one of the greatest plays ever written.
Box Three, Spool Five: A Documentary About My Connection to Beckett
As of June of 2024, I am still at work on an essay film about what Beckett's plays teach us, the experience of returning to acting after nearly two decades via Beckett during a pandemic, his antiauthoritarian proclivities, how his writing challenges and liberates the actor, and my deep admiration for Krapp's Last Tape as a beautiful work of art.
— October 10, 2022
Dennis Leroy Kangalee
Queens, NY
On break during rehearsal for the “punk rock King Lear.” Beckett's haunting play was workshopped in February-March 2022 in both Queens and Brooklyn [photo: Kofi Yeboah.] Set Design: Edith Raw.