Beckett "wrote the short play Catastrophe about control and censorship" and dedicated it to the Czech dramatist Václav Havel, who was in prison at the time.
"[4] In January 2022, after almost 38 years, in 50th birthday celebration of Index, they asked "Iranian playwright Reza Shirmarz to write his own response to Beckett's Catastrophe.
[In Catastrophe], Beckett's Protagonist is deprived of free will by the systems surrounding him and the systematic control imposed by others, except at the moment he moves his head up and looks at the spectators.
As so-called social factors and audiences, we are reminded by the playwright that we are not able to get out of the cage the sociopolitical conventions have imprisoned us in and we must abide by the unbreachable laws brought in by the global structures and conglomerates in order to survive.
"[8] An autocratic Director and his female Assistant put the “‘[f]inal touches to the last scene’ of some kind of dramatic presentation”,[9] which consists entirely of a man (The Protagonist) standing still onstage.
(Beckett explained to James Knowlson that when he was composing Catastrophe, “In my mind was Dupuytren’s contracture (from which I suffer) which reduces hands to claws.”[14]) The Director dismisses his Assistant's proposal to have the man gagged (“This craze for explicitation!
"[25] The play can be viewed as an allegory on the power of totalitarianism and the struggle to oppose it, the protagonist representing people ruled by dictators (the director and his aide).
It starred playwright and Beckett enthusiast Harold Pinter as the Director, and featured the last on-camera appearance of the British actor, John Gielgud as the Protagonist (he died only a few weeks later).
This version has been somewhat controversial, as Mamet chose to film it as a realist piece: the scene takes place in an actual theatre, and the principals are dressed as a director and his assistant might look.
After Johnny Murphy raised his head and glared with great dignity at the audience, his lips parted and stretched into an imitation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
The director's assistant coolly carries out her instructions, and it matters little if we are in a concentration camp or a film studio: all humane considerations are ruled out to achieve the ultimate work of art.