Staging Beckett at the Margins

Congratulations to the Chester University branch of our project on the recent Staging Beckett at the Margins conference and our thanks to David Pattie and David Tucker for hosting. Thanks too to all the delegates who contributed to the event and showed once again the richness and diversity that characterizes international productions of Beckett’s work. Adding to the list of international locales which we saw discussed at Reading in April, we heard theatre surveys from Cyprus, Romania, and the city of Los Angeles, learning also of the malleability of the figure of Godot as metaphor across the history of Israeli theatre production in Shimon Levy’s talks. We heard accounts of the work that happens outside the UK’s major metropolitan cultural hubs at, for example, the West Yorkshire Playhouse, as discussed by Mark Taylor-Batty and even within them, as our own Matthew McFrederick’s discussion of Beckett’s time at the Riverside Studios revealed.

We had two keynotes, different but complementary: Carl Lavery connected an ecological understanding of theatre with the forms of attention which Beckett’s work demands of its audiences, calling up them to witness the undoing of time and subjectivity in the theatre as ‘garden’. The wonderful Tricia Kelly talked not only of the process of creating her role for Not I (in six days, no less) but gave us a captivating reading of the play, leaving us all spellbound and pinned to the spot by the frantic energy of her embodiment of Mouth. A recording was made of her talk and will be made available in the future via the Staging Beckett website.

And congratulations also to David Tucker on the very successful ‘Seeing Beckett’ exhibition, which was launched as part of the conference. Contributors were invited to make a piece of visual art responding to Beckett’s work. The results were sensitive and compelling pieces which fit beautifully into the conference theme, giving us a sense of the aesthetic fertility of the unseen, the hidden, the subtle and of course, the marginal. The exhibition can be seen at the Liverpool School of Art & Design from the  27th – 31st Oct 2014 as part of the Liverpool Irish Festival.

 

Registration now open for ‘Staging Beckett at the Margins’

From the conference  organisers:

“Our second conference, to be held at Kingsway, University of Chester, 11-12 September 2014, will focus on perceived notions of Beckett at the margins, on productions staged outside London and other major theatrical centres. What has the impact of Beckett’s drama been upon regional, small national, touring and marginal theatrical practices and cultures? What is at stake when staging Beckett in marginal cultures or lesser-known geographical areas? How does Beckett’s work move from a country’s capital city to its regions? Does Beckett’s work speak to national, or local, cultural contexts? How does it fit within established theatrical, cultural and economic infrastructures?

Keynote presentation by Professor Carl Lavery (University of Glasgow).

We have speakers coming from all over the world to talk about these topics and we expect this international aspect of the conference to be particularly productive. We hope to see you there!”

Conference organisers: Professor David Pattie & Dr David Tucker

For more information and to register:

http://www.chester.ac.uk/staging-beckett

 

 

“Performing the Archives” Conference

Some information below about an upcoming conference on the status and use of performing arts archives at NUI, Galway:

 

 

 

“Performing the Archives” Conference

NUI Galway 2015

22 – 24 July 2015

 

In 2013, the Abbey Theatre and NUI Galway launched ‘A Digital Journey through Irish Theatre History’ – the digitization of the Abbey Theatre archive, the largest theatre archive digitization project ever attempted. When this project is completed, more than 1 million items including scripts, costume designs, prompt books and performances will be available to study for generations of scholars to come. Theatre scholarship is being transformed at NUI Galway.

This conference capitalizes on NUI Galway’s unparalleled strength in Irish theatre and literary archives, taking advantage of other holdings including the Druid Theatre, Lyric Theatre Belfast, Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe, Thomas Kilroy, Siobhan McKenna and the Galway Arts Festival, among others, to facilitate a national and international conversation about the place of archives in not only theatre and performance research and teaching, but arts practice and perception of theatre history more broadly.

By emphasizing a collaborative approach between the archive service of the James Hardiman Library, academic staff of the Drama and Theatre Department, School of English, NUI Galway, as well as fostering and creating engagement between NUI Galway students, scholars and theatre practitioners and with wider national and international research community, this event will showcase NUI Galway as a hub for research in theatre and drama as well as a world leader in innovative research technologies and digital humanities.

Coinciding with the Galway Arts Festival, the conference will immerse participants in the living performance culture of Galway as the Galway Arts Festival links together artists from around the world to mount Ireland’s largest international arts festival. Through working with further campus-city relationships, such as the Druid Academy, Galway – its University and City, as well as the west of Ireland will be shown to be a cultural landmark as well as an innovator in leading collaboration.

The conference will primarily be based in the new Hardiman Research Building, providing a base to showcase the central research point on campus for the Humanities as well as linking into adjacent exhibition space, providing an access point for local and visiting scholars to experience why the Hardiman Building is a critical and crucial exponent for encountering research and fostering discovery on campus.

“Performing the Archives” will gather together scholars, artists and archivists engaged in working with archival materials on research and performance projects to explore the uses and possibilities of the archive today from theoretical and methodological perspectives. We will debate:

  • What is the status of archival research methodologies in published research and graduate training today?
  • What are the possibilities of collaboration between researchers and practitioners working together to remount work based on the archives or research on new material? What working models exist and what have yet to be imagined?
  • How has the digital humanities begun to reshape the possibilities of archival engagement?
  • How can we support the labour of not only archival research methodologies but the maintenance of the archives themselves? How does the holding location of archives (university vs. community archive) affect the circulation of these resources?  How can partnerships be expanded or reimagined?
  • How has the cataloguing of new/recent archives contributed to new learning and change?
  • ‘From Stage to Street’ – Connection of archives, theatre and society: Documentary theatre and socially responsive theatre
  • Theatre, Peace and Conflict – How memory of theatre and conflict, especially that of Northern Ireland, is newly understood and experienced through the archives and contributing to resolution and reconciliation
  • The craft of the playwright: Drafting, editing and writing for stage or radio

 

For more information, contact Barry Houlihan (barry.houihan@nuigalway.ie)

or Charlotte McIvor (charlotte.mcivor@nuigalway.ie).

http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/collections/archives/

http://www.nuigalway.ie/drama/

http://nuigarchives.blogspot.ie

@NUIGarchives

@NUIGDrama

https://www.facebook.com/nuiglibrary

https://www.facebook.com/groups/NUIGDrama/

 

 

Publication: Last Tape on Stage in Translation Unwinding Beckett’s Spool in Turkey

One of the most exciting aspects of our recent conference was the opportunity to get a sense of  the variety of work being done on Beckett’s drama internationally – courtesy of our many international delegates. Continuing in this vein, I would like to draw attention to a publication by one of our conference delegates, Burç İdem Dinçel, which addresses translated productions of Krapp’s Last Tape in Turkey.

 

Picture of Last Tape on Stage in Translation

From Cambridge Scholars Publishing:

Samuel Beckett’s theatrical works maintain a prominent position within contemporary theatre. His plays provide a prodigious potential to study several forms of acting, staging, and dramaturgy, as well as language and translation, thereby setting a fertile ground to tackle the problematic issue of the relationship between theatre criticism and theatre-translation criticism. That is precisely what this study aims at by drawing attention to the fundamental characteristics of translated theatre texts as blueprints for productions and taking several aspects into account from directing to acting, from staging to performance, together with the language factor. To that end, Burç İdem Dinçel focuses on one of Beckett’s significant plays, namely, Krapp’s Last Tape, situating it within the author’s oeuvre and along the way scrutinising not only the theatrical pieces but also the prose. By looking into the Turkish translations and productions of the play, this book brings forth a new dimension into approaching theatre through translation.

For more information and a sample chapter, click here.

For purchase at Amazon UK/ USA

 

Staging Beckett Conference: Constructing Performance Histories

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN:
 April 4-5th 2014, Minghella Building, University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus.
Staging Beckett’s Inaugural conference on 4th – 5th April 2014 will focus on the history, documentation and analysis of Beckett’s theatre in performance in the UK, Ireland and internationally. 
Staging Beckett: The Impact of Productions of Samuel Beckett’s Plays in the UK and Ireland is an AHRC-funded project which runs from 2012-2015. It is a collaboration between the Universities of Reading and Chester and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The project is compiling a database of all professional productions of Beckett’s plays in the UK and Ireland, with accompanying research resources. The project’s conferences are: Staging Beckett: Constructing Performance Histories (Reading April 4-5, 2014), Staging Beckett in the Regions (Chester, 11-12 September, 2014), and Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Theatre Cultures (Reading, April 2015). 
Staging Beckett: Constructing Performance Histories features papers on productions of Beckett from across the globe, including Belgium, Brazil, Hungary, India, Ireland, Mexico, Poland, Turkey, the United States and the UK. Topics will cover Beckett and stage design, Beckett’s theatrical intersections with Pinter and with Shakespeare, staging Beckett in situations of censorship, or crisis and resistance from besieged Sarajevo to the Occupy movement in Zuccotti Park New York, staging Beckett beyond the theatrical frame, and performance histories and perspectives.
Registration fee: £50 per day waged; £30 per day students, seniors and unwaged.
Keynote Lecture: ‘Beckett and the Non-Place in Irish Performance’, Professor Brian Singleton, Trinity College Dublin, Friday 4th April, 2.30pm
Practitioners’ Panel: ‘Staging Beckett Now’: Saturday 5th April, 3pm.  
Natalie Abrahami (Associate Director, Young Vic Theatre, director of Happy Days, starring Juliet Stevenson at the Young Vic, London, Feb-March 2014)
Lisa Dwan (recent performances of Not I / Footfalls / Rockaby at the Royal Court and Duchess Theatre, London, on tour during 2014)
Sarah Jane Scaife (director of site specific performances of Act Without Words II and Rough for Theatre 1 in Dublin (2013), Limerick, London and New York).
 More details at:
The Staging Beckett Research Team: Matthew McFrederick (Reading), Anna McMullan (Reading), Patricia McTighe (Reading), David Pattie (Chester), Graham Saunders (Reading), David Tucker (Chester).
Provisional Schedule
 
Friday April 4th
9.00-10.15 Tea / Coffee and Registration
10.15-10.30 Welcome (Professor James Knowlson) and Introduction
10.30-12.00 Panel 1: Historical Intersections
  • Raquel Merino Alvarez ‘Staging Beckett on Spanish censored stages: 1955-1976’
  • Paulo Henrique Da Silva Gregorio ‘Beckett and the Shakespeare Revolution in the 1960s’
  • David Tucker That first last look in the shadows’: Using Performance Histories of Beckett and Pinter’
12.00-12.15 Tea / Coffee
12.15 – 1.45 Panel 2: Staging Beckett Globally 1
  • Priyanka Chatterjee ‘Staging Beckett in Bengal: Revisiting History and Art’
  • Burç Dincel ‘”They…To Play”: A Turkish Take On Beckett’
  • Brendan McCall and E. K. McFall, ‘Staging Krapp’s Last Tape in Turkey, Western Australia and Norway’
1.45 – 2.30 Lunch (served in the Minghella Foyer)
2.30 – 3.30 Keynote Lecture, Professor Brian Singleton, ‘Beckett and the Non-Place in Irish Performance’
3.30 – 4.00 Tea / coffee
4.00-5.30 Panel 3: Beyond the Theatrical Frame
  • Luz María Sánchez Cardona, ‘Beckett, the electronic medium of radio, and Krapp’s Last Tape
  • Brenda O’Connell, ‘Culture Shock: (Re) Staging Beckett in caves and car parks’
  • Lisa FitzGerald ‘Coming out of the Dark: Performing Place in Pan Pan’s Production of Beckett’s All that Fall
5.30 -7.00 Book launch and wine reception (served in the Minghella)
  • Patricia McTighe, The Haptic Aesthetic in Samuel Beckett’s Drama, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
  • David Tucker, A Dream and its Legacies: The Samuel Beckett Theatre Project, Oxford c. 1967-76, Oxford: Colin Smythe, 2013.
8pm Dinner: Pepe Sale, 3, Queen’s Walk, Reading city centre (£27.50pp): http://www.pepesale.co.uk
 
 
Saturday April 5th
8.30-9.00 Tea / Coffee and day registration
9.00-10.30 Panel 4: Staging Beckett Globally 2
  • Robson Corrêa de Camargo ‘Playing Beckett in Brazil’
  • Anita Rákóczy ‘Godots That Arrived: Waiting for Godot In Budapest Before and After 1989′.
  • Ewa Brzeska ‘Violating Becketts’ Prescriptions For Theatre in Poland’
10.30-10.45: Tea / Coffee
10.45-12.15: Panel 5 Staging Beckett and Survival / Resistance
  • Thomas Saunders ‘Ownership and orphaned Irish identity in Susan Sontag’s staging of Waiting for Godot
  • Arthur Rose ‘Developing Beckett in New Orleans’
  • Lance Duerfahrd ‘An Unprotesting Play within a Protest: Waiting for Godot in Zuccotti Park’
12.15-12.30 Tea / Coffee
12.30-2.00 Panel 6: Designing Beckett
  • Sophie Jump, ‘Physicalising the Text: Jocelyn Herbert and Samuel Beckett’
  • Anna McMullan ‘Beckett and Irish Scenography’
  • Trish McTighe ‘The Tree at the Gate: Beckett and Le Brocquy’
2.00-3.00: Lunch (served in the Minghella Foyer)
3.00-4.15 Practitioner Panel: Staging Beckett Now
  • Natalie Abrahami (director of Happy Days, starring Juliet Stevenson at the Young Vic, London, Feb-March 2014)
  • Lisa Dwan (recent performances of Not I / Footfalls / Rockaby at the Royal Court and Duchess Theatre, London, on tour during 2014)
  • Sarah Jane Scaife (director of site specific performances of Act Without Words II and Rough for Theatre 1 in Dublin (2013), Limerick, London and New York)
4.15-4.30 Tea / Coffee
4.30-6.00 Panel 7: Performance Histories and Perspectives
  • Kate Dorney, ‘Beckett in the Frame: a visual history of productions documented at the Victoria & Albert Museum’
  • Matthew McFrederick ‘Staging Beckett at the Royal Court Theatre’
  • Nicholas Johnson and Jonathan Heron ‘The Performance Issue’

6-7pm Launch of Journal Of Beckett Studies special issue on Performance, and closing of conferen

Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby set for West End transfer

Lisa Dwan and Walter Asmus at rehearsals of Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby in the Royal Court Theatre ahead of their upcoming production, which is also now transferring to the Duchess Theatre, London.

Lisa Dwan and Walter Asmus at rehearsals of Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby in the Royal Court Theatre ahead of their upcoming production, which is also now transferring to the Duchess Theatre, London.

In February 2014 Samuel Beckett’s drama will return to London’s West End. His three short plays, Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby, will transfer to the intimate Duchess Theatre for a limited two week run from 3rd-15th February 2014 after its original run at the Royal Court Theatre from 9th-18th January 2014 sold out. This production will see Lisa Dwan reprise her critically acclaimed performance of Not I alongside Footfalls and Rockaby, directed by Beckett’s long-time collaborator, Walter Asmus.

In a unique collaboration with Nica Burns and her company Nimax Theatres, all tickets will be sold at Royal Court prices (£12- £25).

Lisa Dwan first performed in Not I at the Battersea Arts Centre in 2005 and subsequently performed the role of Mouth at the Purcell Room in the Southbank Centre, the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival (at the Steele Hall in Portora Royal School in 2012 and in the Marble Arch Caves in 2013), the Bulmershe Theatre at the University of Reading, the Hay Festival and also at the Royal Court most recently in May 2013.

Walter Asmus was Assistant Director to Samuel Beckett when his celebrated production of Warten auf Godot from the Schiller Theatre Berlin toured to the Royal Court Theatre in 1976. He later collaborated with Beckett on many television productions in Stuttgart and at the Riverside Studios London for the 1984 San Quentin Drama Workshop production of Waiting for Godot. Since then Walter has directed Beckett’s work internationally, including his acclaimed Gate Theatre Dublin production of Godot, which went on a 32 county tour of Ireland in 2008.

Further creatives include: Design: Alex Eales, Lighting Design: James Farncombe, Composer: Tom Smail, Sound Design: David McSeveney, Stage Manager: Cath Binks, Assistant Director: Matthew McFrederick.

The Duchess Theatre has proved a familiar venue for West End productions of Beckett’s plays in recent years, with productions of Endgame featuring Simon McBurney and Mark Rylance in 2009 and Krapp’s Last Tape with Michael Gambon in 2011 in residence.

Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby will also tour to: Cambridge Arts Theatre (9th-13th September 2014), Birmingham Repertory Theatre (16th- 20th September 2014) and The Lowry, Salford (23rd-27th September 2014), with international dates to be added.

The Staging Beckett Team is pleased to announce Lisa Dwan is also one of our confirmed speakers for our ‘Staging Beckett: Constructing Performance Histories’ Conference, which will be held in the Minghella Building at the University of Reading from 4th-5th April 2014. More speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

For more information about Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby at the Duchess Theatre visit: http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/not-i-footfalls-rockaby-duchess-theatre

Staging Beckett Conference April 2014 CFP

Conference Call For Papers

Staging Beckett: Constructing Performance Histories

Minghella Building, University of Reading 4-5 April 2014

Staging Beckett is a three year research collaboration between the universities of Chester, Reading, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project started in September 2012, and is exploring the impact of productions of Beckett’s plays on British and Irish theatre practice and cultures while also looking at how Beckett has been staged internationally. It is compiling a database of professional productions of Beckett’s plays in the UK and Ireland.

The project’s first conference (4-5 April 2014) will focus on the history, documentation and analysis of Beckett’s theatre in performance: while Beckett’s directing practice has been much discussed, and critical attention has been paid to selected premiere productions (the French, British, Irish or US premieres of Godot, for example), or ‘deviant’ productions such as the 1984 American Repertory Theatre production of Endgame, there is a great deal of work to be done in researching the diversity of productions of Beckett’s theatre in the UK, Ireland and internationally. Questions we are asking include:

  • How did approaches to staging Beckett’s theatre change from the 1950s to the twenty-first century?
  • Have there been distinct approaches to staging Beckett at particular moments and in particular theatre cultures?
  • How have productions of Beckett’s plays commented on or reflected wider political / economic contexts?
  • What kinds of dialogues can we trace between productions of Beckett’s plays and local, national or international theatre histories?
  • Can we trace cross-influences in approaches to staging Beckett across productions?
  • What can particular case studies of individual or comparative productions contribute to constructing performance histories of Beckett’s theatre?
  • How can future performance practice of Beckett’s theatre be informed or inspired by previous productions?
  • We are also interested in methodological issues around Beckett, performance and the archive, and around Beckett, performance and the digital.

We are keen to hear from academics and practitioners (whether UK, Irish or international) interested in the legacies of particular performances, the documentation and analysis of Beckett in performance, and in the dialogues between productions of Beckett’s theatre and wider theatre practices and cultural / political contexts. Issues to consider might be, but are not limited to, the following:

  • How particular directors / performers have approached staging Beckett.
  • How particular economic, funding, and / or political contexts have influenced productions of Beckett’s plays
  • Beckett and stage design / scenography
  • Technical innovation in productions of Beckett
  • ‘Deviant’ or ‘alternative’ productions (ie that have flouted Beckett’s stage directions)
  • Productions that were planned and didn’t happen (refused permission, for example)
  • Beckett and particular local, national or international theatre cultures
  • The ‘festivalisation’ of Beckett
  • International touring productions to the UK and Ireland
  • UK and Irish productions that have toured (such as Dublin Gate Beckett Festival)
  • Digital archives of Beckett in performance / Beckett performance on the web

Please send proposals of c. 150 words to Anna McMullan (a.e.mcmullan@reading.ac.uk)  by  Friday 13th December 2013.

Informal enquiries can be sent to Anna at the above email address, or to Graham Saunders (g.saunders@reading.ac.uk) or Trish McTighe (p.mctighe@reading.ac.uk).

Future Staging Beckett conferences are: Staging Beckett in the Regions (University of Chester, September 2014), and Beckett and Theatre and Performance Cultures (University of Reading, April 2015).

Staging Beckett team: Matthew McFrederick (Reading) Anna McMullan (Reading), Trish McTighe (Reading) David Pattie (Chester), Graham Saunders (Reading) David Tucker (Chester).