Staging Beckett in Great Britain
Staging Beckett in Great Britain

Author: David Tucker

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-06-30

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1474240186

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Beckett's relationship with British theatre is complex and underexplored, yet his impact has been immense. Uniquely placing performance history at the centre of its analysis, this volume examines Samuel Beckett's drama as it has been staged in Great Britain, bringing to light a wide range of untold histories and in turn illuminating six decades of drama in Britain. Ranging from studies of the first English tour of Waiting for Godot in 1955 to Talawa's 2012 all-black co-production of the same play, Staging Samuel Beckett in Great Britain excavates a host of archival resources in order to historicize how Beckett's drama has interacted with specific theatres, directors and theatre cultures in the UK. It traces production histories of plays such as Krapp's Last Tape; presents Beckett's working relationships with the Royal Court, Riverside and West Yorkshire Playhouse, as well as with directors such as Peter Hall; looks at the history of Beckett's drama in Scotland and how the plays have been staged in London's West End. Production analyses are mapped onto political, economic and cultural contexts of Great Britain so that Beckett's drama resonates in new ways, through theatre practice, against the complex contexts of Great Britain's regions. With contributions from experts in the fields of both Beckett studies and UK drama, including S.E. Gontarski, David Pattie, Mark Taylor-Batty and Sos Eltis, the volume offers an exceptional and unique understanding of Beckett's reception on the UK stage and the impact of his drama within UK theatre practices. Together with its sister volume, Staging Samuel Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland it will prove a terrific resource for students, scholars and theatre practitioners.

Beckett’s Late Stage
Beckett’s Late Stage

Author: Rhys Tranter

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2018-02-28

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 3838210352

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Beckett’s Late Stage reexamines the Nobel laureate’s post-war prose and drama in the light of contemporary trauma theory. Through a series of sustained close-readings, the study demonstrates how the comings and goings of Beckett’s prose unsettles the Western philosophical tradition; it reveals how Beckett’s live theatrical productions are haunted by the rehearsal of traumatic repetition, and asks what his ghostly radio recordings might signal for twentieth-century modernity. Drawing from psychoanalytic and poststructuralist traditions, Beckett’s Late Stage explores how the traumatic symptom allows us to rethink the relationship between language, meaning, and identity after 1945.

Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland
Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland

Author:

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-06-30

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1474240577

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This is the first full-length study to focus on the staging of Samuel Beckett's drama in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Beckett's relationship with his native land was a complex one, but the importance of his drama as a creative force both historically and in contemporary practice in Ireland and Northern Ireland cannot be underestimated. Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials and re-examining familiar narratives, this volume traces the history of Beckett's drama at Dublin's Abbey and Gate Theatres as well as bringing to light unexamined and little-known productions such as those performed in the Irish language, Druid Theatre Company's productions, and those of Dublin's Focus Theatre. Leading scholars in Beckett studies and in Irish drama, including Anna McMullan and Anthony Roche, and renowned interpreters of Beckett's dramatic work such as Barry McGovern, explore Beckett's drama within the context of Irish creative theatrical practice and heritage, and analyse its legacies. As with its companion volume, Staging Beckett in Great Britain, production analyses are underpinned by a consideration of the political, economic and cultural contexts. Readers are invited to experience Beckett's drama as resonating in new ways, through theatre practice, against the complex and connected histories of Ireland, north and south.

Beckett's afterlives
Beckett's afterlives

Author: Jonathan Bignell

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2023-02-21

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1526153785

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Despite the steady rise in adaptations of Samuel Beckett’s work across the world following the author’s death in 1989, Beckett’s afterlives is the first book-length study dedicated to this creative phenomenon. The collection employs interrelated concepts of adaptation, remediation and appropriation to reflect on Beckett’s own evolving approach to crossing genre boundaries and to analyse the ways in which contemporary artists across different media and diverse cultural contexts – including the UK, Europe, the USA and Latin America – continue to engage with Beckett. The book offers fresh insights into how his work has kept inspiring both practitioners and audiences in the twenty-first century, operating through methodologies and approaches that aim to facilitate and establish the study of modern-day adaptations, not just of Beckett but other (multimedia) authors as well.

Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett
Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett

Author: Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-03-03

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0231538928

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Evolutionary theory made its stage debut as early as the 1840s, reflecting a scientific advancement that was fast changing the world. Tracing this development in dozens of mainstream European and American plays, as well as in circus, vaudeville, pantomime, and "missing link" performances, Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett reveals the deep, transformative entanglement among science, art, and culture in modern times. The stage proved to be no mere handmaiden to evolutionary science, though, often resisting and altering the ideas at its core. Many dramatists cast suspicion on the arguments of evolutionary theory and rejected its claims, even as they entertained its thrilling possibilities. Engaging directly with the relation of science and culture, this book considers the influence of not only Darwin but also Lamarck, Chambers, Spencer, Wallace, Haeckel, de Vries, and other evolutionists on 150 years of theater. It shares significant new insights into the work of Ibsen, Shaw, Wilder, and Beckett, and writes female playwrights, such as Susan Glaspell and Elizabeth Baker, into the theatrical record, unpacking their dramatic explorations of biological determinism, gender essentialism, the maternal instinct, and the "cult of motherhood." It is likely that more people encountered evolution at the theater than through any other art form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Considering the liveliness and immediacy of the theater and its reliance on a diverse community of spectators and the power that entails, this book is a key text for grasping the extent of the public's adaptation to the new theory and the legacy of its representation on the perceived legitimacy (or illegitimacy) of scientific work.

Ireland on Stage
Ireland on Stage

Author: Hiroko Mikami

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9781904505235

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Essays on Irish theatre in the second half of the twentieth century

Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland
Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland

Author:

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-06-30

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1474240569

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This is the first full-length study to focus on the staging of Samuel Beckett's drama in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Beckett's relationship with his native land was a complex one, but the importance of his drama as a creative force both historically and in contemporary practice in Ireland and Northern Ireland cannot be underestimated. Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials and re-examining familiar narratives, this volume traces the history of Beckett's drama at Dublin's Abbey and Gate Theatres as well as bringing to light unexamined and little-known productions such as those performed in the Irish language, Druid Theatre Company's productions, and those of Dublin's Focus Theatre. Leading scholars in Beckett studies and in Irish drama, including Anna McMullan and Anthony Roche, and renowned interpreters of Beckett's dramatic work such as Barry McGovern, explore Beckett's drama within the context of Irish creative theatrical practice and heritage, and analyse its legacies. As with its companion volume, Staging Beckett in Great Britain, production analyses are underpinned by a consideration of the political, economic and cultural contexts. Readers are invited to experience Beckett's drama as resonating in new ways, through theatre practice, against the complex and connected histories of Ireland, north and south.

Beckett in Performance
Beckett in Performance

Author: Jonathan Kalb

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1991-09-05

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780521423793

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A critical look at the work of one of the twentieth century's most influential playwrights emerges from the viewpoint of numerous Beckett actors and directors and includes the author's personal experiences as well.

The Volcano Lover
The Volcano Lover

Author: Susan Sontag

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780312420079

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Set in 18th century Naples, based on the lives of Sir William Hamilton, his celebrated wife Emma, and Lord Nelson, and peopled with many of the great figures of the day, this unconventional, bestselling historical romance from the National Book Award-winning author of In America touches on themes of sex and revolution, the fate of nature, art and the collector's obsessions, and, above all, love.

Samuel Beckett is Closed
Samuel Beckett is Closed

Author: Michael Coffey

Publisher: OR Books

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9781944869595

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A powerful, genre-defying meditation, with Beckett at its origin, that touches on mysteries as varied as literary celebrity, baseball, and why we feel the need to be cruel to one another Following the schema of Samuel Beckett's unpublished "Long Observation of the Ray," of which only six manuscript pages exist, poet and critic Michael Coffey interleaves multiple narratives according to an arithmetic sequence laid out by Beckett in his notes. This rhythm of themes and genres--involving personal memoir, literary criticism, Beckett studies, contemporary political reportage and accounts of state-sponsored torture in appropriated texts, plus an Arabian Tale and even a baseballplay-by-play--produce a work at once sculptural, theatrical, mathematical and above all lyrical, a new form of narrative answering to a freshened rule set. In executing Beckett's most radical undertaking--one scholar referred to "Long Observation of the Ray" as a "monument to extinction"--Coffey gives readers access to an open field in which ruminations on writing mix with an engagement with Beckett scholarship as well as the unsettling chaos in today's world. Although Beckett, like any writer, had his share of abandoned works, he was in the habit of "unabandoning" on occasion. Coffey's effort here salvages a Beckett project from a half-century ago and brings it to the surface, with the contemporary markings of its hauling.