With and Without Sam: Volume 1: A Ditty Full of Old Muck - Paperback

by Bettina Jonic (Author)

A Ditty Full of Old Muck (text from 1st act of Happy Days by Samuel Beckett) was started as an isolated piece written in 1989 called 'A buried lady called Winnie, Sam and me' as a preparation to direct Happy Days... Beckett was still alive. When he died in December of that year Bettina, in her own words, "aborted the project and slowly over a long period of time - ten years to be exact - wrote different pieces (all dated). Each stands on its own, some kind of a linked narrative was never intended... nor publication considered at the time ..." Drawing for the book cover was created by Charlotte Johnson Wahl and is based on Winnie from Beckett's Happy Days.

Author Biography

Raised in Los Angeles by Croatian parents, Bettina Jonic studied ballet for 10 years in California with Theodore Kosloff and Bronislava Nijinska, and music and singing at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Vienna's Academy of Music and the Paris Conservatory of Music. She made her singing debut at the Festival d'Aix en Provence, and went on to work in various international opera houses, where she specialized in the work of Mozart and Richard Strauss, and to perform at festivals in Edinburgh, Holland, Adelaide and Paris. She extended her singing career through the works of Bertolt Brecht, becoming the doyenne of a new generation of Brechtian interpreters. In 1975, she released an album of 22 songs on Actor/Singer Development Productions, Ltd. titled The Bitter Mirror, which mixed her interpretations of Brecht and Bob Dylan. The album was reissued on compact disc in 2010 by Motéma Music in New York. Her developmental work includes her own Actors Work Group in London, and collaborations with Peter Brook in Lisbon and Paris, the latter being a production of The Tragedy of Carmen in the 1981-82 season at the Thèatre des Bouffes du Nord. She created Actor/Singer Development at the Royal Opera House in 1980, and under the aegis of the ROH, founded "The Little Garden" in 1985, to further accommodate this work. This led to the establishment of an International Actor/Singer Performance Research Centre in 1988. Performances included Macbeth (with Monstrous Regiment at the Donmar), Othello/Otello, and Ghost Games with Lulu (ROH). Jonic has written the text for various music/theatre pieces including Lorca (Edinburgh Festival), The Wheel (Camden Festival) and The Ladies (The Little Garden production at the Artaud Theatre). In addition to The Bitter Mirror, she has created many original works for herself, including Brecht and His Composers, Marie Antoinette meets Elinor Rigby, Denim Blues, Anna of the Seven Deadly Sins, A French Love Affair, and Journey into Exile. She has had two poetry collections published: Briefs (Covent Garden Press) and Déjà vu (Arfuyen Press, Paris).