Nervous Theatre to Present BECKETT'S TEXTS FOR NOTHING

Nervous Theatre will present Boston actor Doug Lockwood in an intimate new staging of Samuel Beckett's Texts for Nothing. Lockwood's performance of Beckett's texts will be presented three times each night for audiences of 12 in this searing 30-minute production.

"Where would I go, if I could go? Who would I be, if I could be? What would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it's me?"

Audiences will be immersed in the words of Samuel Beckett as they gather around a single performer murmuring into the darkness. Texts For Nothing plumbs the depths of isolation and dread in this meditation on the nature of being.

Lockwood inhabits a nameless speaker "down in the hole the centuries have dug" in this adaptation of Beckett's collection of thirteen shorter, fragmented works written in 1952. The piece was developed by Lockwood and director Connor Berkompas, the founding artistic director of Nervous Theatre. Berkompas is a graduate of The Boston Conservatory at Berklee where Lockwood has taught for the past seventeen years. The production has been made possible through a Berklee Faculty Fellowship.

"At the height of lockdown, Doug and I found ourselves drawn to this short prose collection," says Berkompas. "This project is the direct result of our year-long collaboration, distilling Beckett's sprawling text into an unrelenting monologue for a single performer." Lockwood likens the process to "creating a kind of strange poetic puzzle. After months and months of Zoom rehearsals with Connor, mysteriously it now makes sense to me."

On directing his former professor, Berkompas says, "Doug was an early champion of my directing work in school and has always treated me as a peer. Working with him in this capacity feels like a natural progression." Lockwood says of Berkompas, "Connor is a brilliant director, and I trust him implicitly: he challenges me in all the ways I need to be challenged as an actor, and I feel lucky to be working with someone who pushes me to be better"

Nervous Theatre is a nomadic theatrical collective currently based in Bozeman, Montana. The group recently premiered Strange Mating Calls, an experiential performance presented at the Tinworks Art exhibition. Previous works include the theatre/film hybrid MOMMY'S DEAD AND THEY BURIED HER IN MOSCOW (a riff on Three Sisters) and a touring production of The Maids. More information can be found at nervoustheatre.com

Doug Lockwood is a Boston and New England area actor and director where he works as an Associate Professor of Theatre at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee. In 2004 he became a founding member of The Actors' Shakespeare Project (ASP), a company devoted to sight-specific Shakespeare plays where he has directed and performed in numerous productions.

Connor Berkompas is a performer, teaching artist, and the founding artistic director of Nervous Theatre for which he directed Strange Mating Calls, MOMMY'S DEAD, and The Maids. He works using process-based and devising techniques that embrace collaboration and exploit the "liveness" of theatre. Connorberkompas.com

Texts for Nothing will be presented January 20-February 6 in the basement studio of The Boston Conservatory Theater at 31 Hemenway St. Performances run Thursday-Sunday with start times of 8pm, 9pm and 10pm each night. There will be a limit of 12 seats sold for each performance. There will be no late seating due to the intimate nature of the staging. Run time: 30 minutes. Tickets are $10 for general admission and $5 for Berklee students, faculty, and staff (promo code BERKLEE).

To purchase tickets, visit https://textsfornothing.eventbrite.com To learn more, visit nervoustheatre.com

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