Dramatic Effect

For Rick Cluchey, it all comes back to Beckett.

It was in the mid-’50s, and Cluchey was 23 and serving a life sentence at San Quentin when he first saw Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece, “Waiting for Godot.” It was, in fact, the first play Cluchey ever saw.

The stage was a platform in the prison cafeteria. The prison jazz band played as a warmup, and the director gave a brief explanation of Beckett’s absurdist play. But the actors from the San Francisco Actors Workshop were worried. They’d picked “Godot” because it had an all-male cast, a request from the warden. What if the inmates were bored?

There were 1,200 men watching, one of whom was Cluchey. They were all entertained. Cluchey’s life was changed.

“They had no trouble understanding the play,” recalled Alan Mandell, the troupe’s managing director. “They knew what waiting was all about. Pozzo was the warden. Lucky was the guy on death row who’s going out for the last time.”

Inspired, Cluchey--who was still working on getting his high school diploma--started a drama group within the prison. The San Quentin Drama Workshop eventually became his key to freedom, his ticket to meeting Samuel Beckett and the map for his life’s work.

To commemorate 40 years together, Cluchey and other members of the San Quentin Drama Workshop put together “Beckett’s Women,” a program of three short plays: “Come and Go,” “Eh Joe” and “Footfalls.” After a performance late last year in Hollywood, the company is remounting the show Friday and Saturday at Cal State Northridge.

Cluchey’s personal tale begins in 1953. Out of the Army and out of work, he started driving the getaway car for a friend who was robbing stores. Eventually, it was Cluchey’s turn to do the dirty work. He attempted to rob a man they knew was carrying a lot of cash. Cluchey accidentally shot the man, wounding him slightly. But he had also made the man drive six blocks, so prosecutors added kidnapping to the first-degree robbery charge, which allowed them to seek the death penalty. Cluchey was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was in prison 2 1/2 years before he started the Drama Workshop.

The first play the inmates staged was “Waiting for Godot,” and they invited the men who had performed it for them. Mandell, for one, could see there was talent in the group but that they needed coaching.

He had no idea what he was getting into. For more than six years, Mandell went to San Quentin each week and taught acting, writing and directing. Their stage was on the spot where the gallows had stood.

“It was very difficult,” Mandell said. “The noise was deafening. They’d go and be locked up right after you’d been working on Beckett or Pinter or Shaw. You could hear them being locked up in the cells, and I would leave to go back to San Francisco.”

As word of the unusual productions spread--the productions were covered by local papers--new works were sent to the group. Mandell was able to bring guest lecturers who were visiting Bay Area colleges. Company member Richard Bailey said, “The guys in prison were getting more time from these international experts than the people at the universities.”

Not everyone Mandell worked with was cut out to be in the theater. Many, he said, belonged right where they were. But for Cluchey, Mandell said, theater was an epiphany.

Cluchey spent almost 12 years in prison before Gov. Pat Brown commuted his sentence and made him eligible for parole. His lifetime parole was commuted a decade later by Gov. Jerry Brown.

By that time, the San Quentin Drama Workshop was well-established on the outside. Cluchey had written a play about prison conditions titled “The Cage,” which he took on tour to more than 200 colleges and universities and eventually performed in Europe.

Cluchey laughed when recalling the play’s premiere inside San Quentin. He called it “Le Cage” and set it in France. “The warden came up afterward and said, ‘I didn’t realize things were so bad in French prisons.’ ”

At one time, only former convicts were taken into the San Quentin Company. Thus, actor Richard Bailey failed his first audition: He hadn’t served time. But he joined a European tour of “The Cage” in the early 1970s and has been with the group ever since. (It helped that his grandfather was a prison guard.) Mandell, too, is a member, as are about 150 other actors who have at one time been involved with the workshop.

While in Europe, Cluchey tried to meet Beckett, who was living in Paris. He’d been corresponding with him for years but failed in his attempt at getting an audience with the Nobel laureate. Finally, he invited the playwright to see the San Quentin production of his play “Endgame” in Paris. Beckett sent some associates as spies.

But the next day, Beckett called and agreed to see him.

Coincidentally, both Cluchey and Beckett were headed to Berlin to direct plays in the coming months. When Cluchey’s project fell through, Beckett hired him as second assistant director.

Cluchey and other workshop members continued to work with the writer off and on until Beckett’s death in 1989. Beckett also directed the San Quentin company in filmed versions of “Waiting for Godot,” “Endgame” and “Krapp’s Last Tape.”

In the 30 years since the workshop left San Quentin, the group has never had a permanent home. The company has preferred to concentrate on developing its repertory rather than maintaining a theater building. “It’s like you don’t have to have a church to be religious,” Bailey said.

Though the company does non-Beckett work--most notably Cluchey’s plays--Beckett remains the core of its repertory. Because of the work with him, the company continues to perform many of Beckett’s plays royalty-free. Later this year, the cast plans a tour of college campuses with miniature Beckett festivals such as the one at CSUN.

What is it about Beckett that continues to fascinate? “The truth,” Cluchey said. “Despite all the pretty words, it comes down to that. He knew life.”

BE THERE

“Beckett’s Women,” performed by the San Quentin Drama Workshop, Little Theater, CSUN Speech and Drama Building, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. $9. (818) 677-3093.