Samuel Beckett certainly appreciated a good scouring blast of silence in his day – his 1951 novel “Malone Dies” hailed “the blessedness of absence” – but this is getting ridiculous.The most influential playwright of the 20th century would have turned 100 on April 13, not that you’d know it from scanning the New York theater listings.

It’s impossible to get within 50 yards of any classical music venue in New York without hearing the sounds of Mozart (celebrating his 250th anniversary this year) or, as a fallback, Shostakovich (who shared with Beckett a 1906 birthday). And Beckett’s original and adopted homes – Dublin and Paris – have risen to the occasion with extensive retrospectives.

But with the exception of a one-night-only presentation of three short works earlier this week at the 92nd Street Y and a recently announced production way uptown, Beckett’s incantatory, puncturing, enigmatic brilliance is AWOL in New York theaters this year. Beckett buffs had to travel to Red Bank, N.J., of all places, to see any substantial body of his work this year; that Jersey Shore town’s Two Rivers Theater Company brought in Edward Albee, Olympia Dukakis, and eight plays last month to commemorate the anniversary.

So I’ve decided to right this wrong and assemble a dream Beckett season. Note to Irish Rep, Theater for a New Audience, Classic Stage Company, Lincoln Center Theater, etc.: Most 2006-07 seasons manage to fit in at least two more shows before the end of the year. It’s not too late …

1. Actually, my first choice is not possible. The Beckett production of the last 20 years that I most regret missing, Deborah Warner’s 1994 staging of “Footfalls” in London, only lasted a week before the famously proscriptive Beckett estate shut it down.The director-actor tandem of Ms. Warner and Fiona Shaw rivals and may even surpass that of Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando, but the Beckett estate didn’t quite see it that way. (Although the rumor that Ms. Warner was subsequently banned from directing Beckett for life turns out to be false.)

So, in its place, my second most coveted production: Bill Irwin’s rendition of the prose pieces “Texts for Nothing,” a distilled (and by many accounts revelatory) revision of Joseph Chaikin’s 1981 adaptation that Mr. Irwin has restaged as recently as 2001.

2.The Irwin-Chaikin collaboration debuted in 1991, but Mr. Irwin put his own stamp on the “Texts” in an acclaimed 2000 production at Classic Stage Company. CSC has had a fair amount of success with Beckett over the years, including an “Endgame” starring a pre-“Wit” Kathleen Chalfant as Clov, but the company’s luck ran out last year with a ghastly rethinking of “Happy Days.” In the central role of Winnie, the paragon of optimism buried first up to her waist and then up to her neck in dirt, director Jeff Cohen cast a Foghorn Leghorn-imitating, scat-singing, text-massacring Lea DeLaria.

But Mr. Cohen’s central notion – casting a younger actress as Winnie – is a potentially fruitful one. So let’s stick with the concept but cast Linda Emond, who has shone in everything from “Homebody/Kabul” to “1776.” (If she’s not available, perhaps we can slip Fiona Shaw into the season after all.) As an added flourish, her lecherous husband could remain an older man – George Grizzard,maybe,or Tom Aldredge.Winnie’s recounting of the unhappy couple happening upon her might be more resonant if she shared a similar trophy-wife conundrum. (“Let go of my hand and drop for God’s sake, she says, drop!”) The director would be Bartlett Sher, who steered Victoria Clark to a Tony Award as another stultified woman in “The Light in the Piazza.”

3. No Beckett retrospective would be complete without a smattering of the short works. The problem that many presenters make is overstuffing these evenings – I’ve seen as many as seven Becketts crammed into one night, and the cumulative effect can engulf the crystalline details of the individual works. (Okay, there’s probably always room for the 35-second “Breath.”) And so, following the 92nd Street Y’s example, I’m capping the evening at three, one of which isn’t even a play.

The evening’s centerpiece is most definitely a play; in fact, it is “Play.” Going from a woman-in-dirt play to a two-women-and-one-man-in-urns play might be a bit risky, but not as risky as my casting scheme. What better way to honor this phenomenally influential writer than to use three of his forebears? Why not cast three other playwrights? (London’s Royal Court Theatre had a similar idea when it cast Harold Pinter in “Krapp’s Last Tape,” but Mr. Pinter’s health con cerns have made this production questionable.)

For the two women, I’m picturing Caryl Churchill, whose often-topical plays have obscured their deep affinity with Beckett’s works, and Maria Irene Fornes. The man would be played by either Edward Albee and Vaclav Havel. To stay in keeping with the multitasking-playwright theme, Tony Kushner would direct: Beckett’s piercing minimalism and Mr. Kushner’s robust maximalism would make for a heck of a collaboration.

“Play” would work as a finale; the evening would open with “Not I,” a devastatingly powerful 15-minute monologue performed by a disembodied mouth. Marian Seldes did a perfectly respectable job with the piece a few years ago in “Beckett/Albee,” but I’m inclined to go with the magisterial Billie Whitelaw, whom Beckett him self once called “the perfect actress”; her 1973 film of “Not I” is perhaps the finest filmed representation of Beckett thus far. In between the two staged works would be a screening of 1964’s “Film,” an essentially silent work that features Buster Keaton.With all those playwrights kicking around, a little bit of quiet might be nice. And if the evening’s running 35 seconds short, there’s always “Breath.”

4. Mr. Irwin has pointed out that “Texts for Nothing” and “Waiting for Godot” were written around the same time, and he considers the two works to be companion pieces. Since my dream season began with “Texts,” and since even a dream season needs to pay some attention to the box office, it would be foolish not to close with Beckett’s scorched-earth masterpiece.

But we’re not going to throw togeth er a bunch of big names and ask them to navigate the iconic text. (Mr. Irwin, who played Lucky in the famously flawed Robin Williams-Steve Martin production at Lincoln Center, would likely approve.) Instead, we’ll find a company that draws upon a smallish handful of gifted actors again and again. Ideally, it would be a company well-schooled in tackling the 20thcentury canon’s thornier works, and if we’re really lucky, they would also be able to conjure up exquisite physical productions on a limited budget.

Is this totally unrealistic? As it happens, no. The Classical Theatre of Harlem, which has done wonders with Jean Genet and Adrienne Kennedy, announced last week that it will give its premiere of “Godot,” the year’s only major New York staging of Beckett, on May 12. The dream season is suddenly 25% complete. Who’s next?