Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival Receives Major Trust Award

The Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival is delighted to announce that it has just received one of the largest awards to an arts festival this year, £300,000 from the UK-based T.S. Eliot Trust. This major new funding over three years secures the Festival's future for Enniskillen and Northern Ireland.

News of the award comes as the Festival, which celebrates Samuel Beckett's association with Enniskillen, gears up for its opening performances next week.

The twelve-day Festival features a packed programme with a stellar line-up of international artistic talent, including director Sophie Hunter (recently married to actor Benedict Cumberbatch) who will present one of the most hotly anticipated shows of the Festival - a breathtaking production of Benjamin Britten's Phaedra, which will be performed in an equestrian arena in the grounds of the ruined Necarne Castle, Irvingstown, sung by the award-winning mezzo soprano Ruby Philogene MBE.

This year's Festival sees the first visit to Ireland of the Berliner Ensemble, the company founded by Bertolt Brecht in 1949 with their controversial production of Waiting for Godot, alongside France's leading dance group The Maguy Marin Dance Company also making their Irish debut with May B.

Happy Days will present 6 world premieres, including Samuel Beckett's All That Fall - which will be performed in complete darkness - directed by Max Stafford Clark (formerly Director Royal Court Theatre London), starring Rosaleen Linehan and Beckett's Ohio Impromptu directed by Adrian Dunbar, which will be staged in the stunning setting of Devenish Island, a short boat ride from Enniskillen.

Stephan Rea has just been added to the programme and will join a discussion about Beckett's favorite actor, Jack MacGowran who will be celebrated this year in a special strand, which will also feature a production of MacGowarn's rarely performed Beginning to End. Conall Morrison directs Denis Conway in this one man show.

This year, the Festival introduces sport to its diverse programme, with the Becket XI (Ireland) v Pinter XI (England) cricket match, to celebrate Beckett and his friend Harold Pinter's passion for the sport. This will be followed by a post-match event, composed of screenings and readings by actors Barry McGovern and Stephen Brennan.

Following its tradition of celebrating a related artist each year (Joyce and Dante previously) the 2015 Festival will present two major T. S. Eliot events: The Waste Land, realised at the Ardhowen Theatre by Adrian Dunbar, and Four Quartets in two cycles, the first a midnight vigil and the second a daytime promenade in the Enniskillen island churches.

Founder & Artistic Director Sean Doran says "The timing of the T S Eliot Estate's philanthropy has been critical to our survival and to mounting this year's Festival. As part of the Northern Ireland arts scene and in the climate of the current funding cuts we are extremely grateful for this timely generosity and intervention. The award has essentially helped to secure three more years for the festival alongside the continued support of our existing Partners and Donors. It has put much needed wind in our sails".

The T S Eliot Estate says, "The American theatre critic and playwright Robert Brustein, brought T S Eliot and Samuel Beckett together when he called them 'wasteland prophets of the Western world'. But, here in 'time present' it gives us enormous pride and a feeling of straightforward rightness to sponsor Happy Days: Enniskillen International Beckett Festival."

The T S Eliot Estate joins the three existing Principal Partners of Happy Days EIBF: Tourism NI, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Fermanagh and Omagh District Council.

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