'Endgame' Director Defends Production

American Repertory Theater (ART) director JoAnna Akalaitis defended her controversial production of Samuel Beckett's "Endgame" before an audience of about 35 students at the Loeb Theater last night.

"Endgame" opened on schedule at the Loeb Wenesday despite threats of legal action by the Nobel Prize winning playwright and his publisher, Barney Rosset of the Grove Press. Beckett and Rossett objected to ART's set, its use of incidental music by Philip Glass and its use of Black actors.

Under the terms of a compromise worked out earlier this week, ART agreed to include a statement of Beckett's objections in the show's program.

Beckett charged that Akalaitis took excessive liberties in her interpretation of the minimalist play.

Akalaitis last night defended the right of directors to stray from absolutely faithful performances of the text. "The most boring production of Beckett was directed by Beckett," she said in a wide ranging impromptu discussion.

The director added that she was surprised by Beckett's attack.

"I really am stymied. It's not like him. It's not the way he normally behaves," she said.

She also said that when Beckett directed he frequently made revisions in his own plays.

While Akalaitis called Beckett "the bottom line" in drama and "the greatest living playwright," she said she was no longer "attracted" to his work.

Akalaitis said that when ART's artistic director Robert S. Brustein asked her to direct the production. "I knew I didn't want to do a thoughtful metaphysical Endgame."

She said her conception of the play came from living in a run down area of New York City. "I look out my window at New York and it is "Endgame," she said, explaining that "there are these communities of men who sit around parks and subways have their own strange language and are somewhat mentally disturbed."

Akalaitis said she met Beckett at a theatrical festival in Berlin where he noted that she had taken some liberties with one of his plays.

"He came to see the whole company and set, He said. "You certainly have adapted it I think he didn't like it, but he didn't do anything," she said.