Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland

by McTighe, Trish; McTighe, Trish; Tucker, David

• ISBN13: 9781474240550
• ISBN10: 1474240550
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-06-30
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

Summary

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 Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials and re-examining familiar narratives, this volume traces the history of Beckett's drama at Dublin's Abbey and Gate Theatres as well as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.

Author Biography

Trish McTighe is currently a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Reading, UK and a visiting scholar at Fordham University, New York. Her book, The Haptic Aesthetic in Samuel Beckett's Drama, was published in 2013 and she has published in several international journals on aesthetics, corporeality and technology in performance.

David Tucker 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, Christopher Murray
Introduction, Trish McTighe and David Tucker
Section 1: Theatre and Performance Histories
1. Beckett at the Abbey, by Anthony Roche
2. Beckett out of Focus: Happy Days and Waiting for Godot at Dublin's Focus Theatre, by Siobhan O'Gorman
3. Reflections on a History of Creating Beckett's Drama in Ireland, by Barry McGovern
4. Beckett in Belfast, by David Grant
5. Voicing Landscapes in Druid's Productions, by Trish McTighe
6. The Gate Theatre's Beckett Festivals: Tensions between the Local and the Global, by David Clare
Section 2: Cultural Contexts
7. Waiting for Godot and the Mediation of Indigence in the Irish performance Tradition, by Paul Murphy
8. Staging Beckett in Ireland: Scenographic Remains, by Anna McMullan
9. In Bantu or in Erse: Beckett and Irish Translation, by Feargal Whelan
Section 3: Expanding the Frame
10. The Culturally Inscribed Body and Spaces of Performance in Samuel Beckett's Drama, by Sarah Jane Scaife
11. Beckett and Non-Place in Irish Performance, by Brian Singleton
12. "The Neatness of Identifications": Transgressing Beckett's Genres in Ireland and the United Kingdom, 2000-2015, by Nicolas Johnson
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index