*Catastrophe* / *Mistake*

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of communisim in Europe, some London actors just produced a double bill of Samuel Beckett's *Catastrophe* and Vaclav Havel's *Mistake* -- written in response to one another, and both about a mute prisoner's defiance of a totalitarian regime that has imprisoned them. *Catastrophe* (1982) is available on the Beckett on Film series produced by the BBC in 2001-02; directed by David Mamet, the seven-minute film stars Harold Pinter and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet's wife) as the fascist types and an elderly, wordless John Gielgud as the Prisoner.
[photo: from a Sept. 2008 production of *Catastrophe* at Colorado State University]