Staging Beckett in Great Britain

by Tucker, David; McTighe, Trish

• ISBN13: 9781474240178
• ISBN10: 1474240178
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-06-30
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

Summary

Samuel 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 analyses, this volume examines 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 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 considers how the plays have been staged in London's West End. Production analyses are mapped to the political, economic and cultural contexts of Great Britain so that Beckett's drama resonates in new ways.
With contributions from experts in 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 on UK theatre practices. Together with its companion volume, Staging Samuel Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland it will prove a terrific resource for students, scholars and theatre practitioners.

Author Biography

Trish McTighe is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Reading, UK. She is the author of The Haptic Aesthetic in Samuel Beckett's Drama (2013), and has published in several international journals on aesthetics, corporeality and technology in performance.
David Tucker is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Chester, UK. He is the author of a number of publications on Beckett, including Samuel Beckett and Arnold Geulincx: Tracing 'a literary fantasia' (Bloomsbury, 2012), and is co-editor with Mark Nixon and Dirk Van Hulle of Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui, Vol. 26 (2014): 'Revisiting Molloy, Malone muert/Malone Dies and L'Innommable/The Unnamable'.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Information on Contributors
Foreword, James Knowlson
Introduction, David Tucker and Trish McTighe
Section 1: Origins, Theatres, Directors
1. The Arrival of Godot: Beckett, British Theatre and the 1950s, by David Pattie
2. Beckett at the Royal Court, by S.E. Gontarski
3. Beckett at the Riverside Studios, by Matthew McFrederick,
4. Beckett at The West Yorkshire Playhouse, by Mark Taylor-Batty
5. Beckett in London's West End, by John Stokes
6. Beckett and Peter Hall, by Sos Eltis
Section 2: Productions, Locations, Legacies
7. A Production History of Krapp's Last Tape in the UK, by Andrew Head
8. Staging Beckett's Shorts, by Derval Tubridy
9. Talawa's Waiting for Godot, by Kene Igweonu
10. Mindscapes Amongst Thistle: Producing Samuel Beckett's Plays in Scotland, by Ksenija Horvat
11. Beckett Goes Nude: Breath, Oh! Calcutta! and the Sexual Revolution, Graham Saunders
12. 'That first last look in the shadows': Beckett's Legacies for Harold Pinter, David Tucker
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index