Walter Asmus appointed Honorary Trustee of Samuel Beckett Society

The celebrated German director Walter Asmus was appointed Honorary Trustee of the Samuel Beckett Society at a presentation at the Beckett International Foundation seminar at the University of Reading on Saturday 1 November.

Walter Asmus first met Samuel Beckett at the Schiller Theater in West Berlin in 1974, where he assisted Beckett to direct Waiting For Godot. From 1976 Asmus worked as a director at the Schiller Theater, Staatstheater Darmstadt, Staatstheater Kassel, Thalia Theater Hamburg and numerous other theatres worldwide. In 1986 he was made Professor of Music, Theatre and Media at Leibniz Universität Hannover.

Asmus has staged Beckett’s dramas in many of the world’s best known venues, including Dublin’s Gate Theatre and London’s Royal Court Theatre, as well as in New York, Kraków, Paris, Atlanta, Ventura, Copenhagen and Shanghai. In 1988, he recorded Rockaby, Footfalls and Eh Joe for the Süddeutsche Rundfunk Stuttgart with Billie Whitelaw. And then in 2014, he staged Not I, Footfalls and Rockaby with Lisa Dwan at the Royal Court.

At the seminar, he discussed his long association with Beckett in an interview with Matthew McFrederick of the University of Reading in a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Schiller production of Warten auf Godot where he first met the Irish author.

Masthead: Walter Asmus and Society President Liz Barry [Photo: F Ó Faoláin]