FARMINGTON — Emery Community Arts Center in Farmington presents Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Act Without Words I on May 16 at 7 p.m. and on May 17 and 18 at 2 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at https://www.simpletix.com/e/samuel-beckett-s-endgame-and-act-without-w-tickets-214830

Nobel Prize-winning playwright Samuel Beckett, famous for writing Waiting for Godot, first produced Endgame and Act Without Words I in London in 1957. This play has been performed all over the world and in multiple languages.

Endgame explores the day in the life of a family in a post-apocalyptic seaside underground. Each word is a poetic expression of the absurdity of human existence, written in a “theatre of the absurd” made famous by Beckett. This show has a lot of dark comedy, physical comedy, and incredibly rich language that the actors take on at full force.

These characters, such as Nagg and Nell, played by Jenn Beloin and Tim Davis, popping out of garbage cans, show how the challenges of the daily grind of life can impact us all. Incredibly witty, this play explores how ‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.’

This play also features Austin Frederick and Frederick Liebfried as the main characters, Clov and Hamm, and Tim Berry. Directed by Gavin Pickering.

Emery Community Arts Center has become a local hub for community theatre, including recent productions of Sandy River Players’ You Can’t Take It with You, Spamalot, and Into the Woods. Gavin Pickering has recently directed shows at Emery, including Last Gas and Small Mouth Sounds.

For more information, email gavin.pickering@maine.edu.