Rick Cluchey

Douglas Charles Cluchey (December 5, 1933 – December 28, 2015) was an American actor. He was friends with Samuel Beckett.

Life

Douglas Charles "Rick" Cluchey was born in Chicago December 5th, 1933. He served in the Army. In 1954 Cluchey was convicted for carjacking and armed robbery of a hotel courier for which he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. On November 19th, 1957, after a touring theatre company from the San Francisco Actors Workshop, performed Waiting for Godot for the prisoners at San Quentin, he formed his own theatre company within the prison, the San Quentin Drama Workshop, and began writing and acting in plays. The Workshop produced seven productions of Samuel Beckett's plays in seven years, in a theatre they built in the century old prison chapel in San Quentin. Inspired by Beckett, he wrote his own play, an autobiographical attack on the inhumane treatment of prisoners, titled "The Cage." This play received a professional production at the San Francisco Actors Workshop while Rick Cluchey was still incarcerated. For his good behavior and service to the prison community, where he also worked in the dental lab and as the sacristan in the prison chapel, Cluchey's sentence was commuted by Pat Brown and he was released in December 1966, despite his sentence of "Life with no possibility of parole." Following his release, he received several offers of work from theatre and film companies. With recently released members of the San Quentin Drama Workshop, he toured colleges and universities with "The Cage", eventually making his way to the Edinburgh Festival in 1974. He and the San Quentin Drama Workshop also performed "Endgame" there with Becket''s permission, which they then took to the American Center Theatre in Paris. Beckett heard about the production, arranged to meet Cluchey and hired him as an assistant, for the production of "Waiting for Godot" at the Forum Theatre in Berlin. I. He was featured in the premiere of Becektt's direction of “Krapp’s Last Tape" at the Akademie Der Kunst in Berlin . On opening night, he received the news he had been pardoned by Jerry Brown, the Governor of California, whose father Pat Brown had granted Cluchey parole in 1966. With the San Quentin Drama Workshop, he toured the world presenting "Beckett Directs Beckett", which included "Krapp's Last Tape", "Endgame", and "Waiting for Godot." He was committed to bringing the redemptive power of theatre to other prisoners, and devoted his life to "Theatre in Prison." His widow, Nora Masterson, carries on the legacy of his work, and is working with New York playwright Jeff Stolzer to produce "Sam and Rick", the play that chronicles the unique friendship of the "prison playwright", and Samuel Beckett. On December 28th, 2015, after a long battle with congestive heart failure and emphysema, he died in Santa Monica. His many artifacts from the productions of the San Quentin Drama Workshop, international reviews, scripts, and correspondence with Samuel Beckett has been donated to Special Collections at the De Paul University Library in Chicago, under the file "The Rick Cluchey Papers." He is survived by three generations of children, Rick Freeland, (born in 1953) of Jacksonville Florida, Louis Beckett Cluchey (born in 1975) of Los Angeles, Maya Cluchey (born in 1978) of Nahsvhille, and Jameson Alan Cluchey, (born in 1996) a drummer, who lives in Los Angeles.