Pioneer Players' season begins with the Samuel Beckett classic, 'Endgame'

The University of Wisconsin-Platteville Department of Performing and Visual Arts-Theatre and Pioneer Players will open their 2024-2025 season with Samuel Beckett's "Endgame." Performances are October 9-12 at 7:30 p.m., and October 13 at 2 p.m. in the Center for the Arts Theatre. The performance on Oct. 9 at 7:30 p.m. is also the Benefit Wednesday show. All tickets for Benefit Wednesday are $7, and the proceeds go to the Platteville Food Pantry and Pioneer Provisions, a free pantry/grocery service on campus which all currently enrolled students experiencing food insecurity are eligible to utilize.

First performed in 1957, Beckett's play is an absurdist, tragicomic modern masterpiece set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The story follows Hamm, a blind, paralyzed, domineering elderly man, his parents, and his servant, Clov, as they seem to await an unspecified end after some undefined cataclysmic event.

According to Dr. Ann Dillon Farrelly, professor of theatre and director, "Endgame is an existential rumination on the end of the world. As the chess term it derives its title from suggests, humanity has very few moves left to play after it has created for itself the conditions for its destruction. While Beckett was commenting on his own society, one newly emerging from the horrors of World War II, there is always something relevant about a Beckett play. Particularly now."

The cast includes Nik Swiggum as Hamm, Matthew Siekierski as Clov, Aaron Brown as Nagg, and Phoenix Johnson as Nell.

Joining Farrelly on the production team are student scenic designer Amber Bornheimer, student lighting designer Jamie Wodack, and costume designer Sarah Strange. Rounding out the production staff are student stage manager Jessee Pinson and technical director Jeffrey Strange.

"It is always exciting to have student designers working alongside the faculty. As always, our students are doing some amazing work. We ask a lot of them, and they always go above and beyond in their commitment to every project," said Farrelly. "We've chosen to set this play in a morgue in the United States - in some near future. The characters are going through the motions as the bodies continue to arrive. Something happened that is slowly ending the world…something catastrophic. And these characters keep up the routine while also pondering their role in that destruction. It's Theatre of the Absurd, so it's a little bit weird and a little bit mysterious. But the writing is brilliant and revelatory."

Tickets for the production are $15 for general admission and $7 for students (price includes $2 box office transaction fee). For tickets, contact the University Box Office at 608-342-1298 or buy them online at tickets.uwplatt.edu.