Jocelyn Herbert and Samuel Beckett: An Exhibition

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Exhibition dates:

25 March – 10 April 2015
Opening event:
Tuesday 24 March, 5 – 8pm

Wimbledon College of Art, Merton Hall Road, London

 

MA Curating and Collections at Chelsea College of Arts present an exhibition exploring the working relationship between the acclaimed theatre and film designer, Jocelyn Herbert, and the playwright and author, Samuel Beckett.

The materials for the exhibition are selected from the Jocelyn Herbert Archive at the National Theatre, the NT’s only archive dedicated to a designer. The archive includes sketchbooks, set and costume drawings, annotated scripts, research material, notebooks and diaries, masks and puppets, correspondence, personal photographs and official production photography from rehearsals and performances. Herbert’s working relationship with Beckett spans from the 1950’s to the 1970’s; using artefacts from the archive the exhibition will reveal aspects of the biography of Jocelyn Herbert, her personal and professional relationships, and will give a unique insight into the theatre making process.

JH Quote

This show is curated by the Exhibition Studio Workshop – the practice-based unit of Chelsea’s MA Curating and Collections course. It is part of a series of shows entitled Work From the Collections, and is the inaugural exhibition in what is hoped will be an ongoing series exploring the Jocelyn Herbert Archive at the National Theatre.

For further information visit: http://events.arts.ac.uk/event/2015/3/25/Work-From-the-Collections-3-Jocelyn-Herbert-and-Samuel-Beckett/

Image: Samuel Beckett and Jocelyn Herbert. Photo from the Jocelyn Herbert Archive at the National Theatre.
Photographer: John Haynes

Registration Now Open for April Conference!

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!

Staging Beckett and Contemporary Theatre and Performance Cultures

Minghella Building,
University of Reading

9th-11th April 2015

ONLINE REGISTRATION:

http://store.rdg.ac/UoR-StagingBeckettConference


 

SCHEDULE
Thursday 9th April

10.00 -11.00 Registration & coffee

 

11.00 – 11.30 Welcome and opening address

 

11.30 – 13.30 Panel 1: Performance and the Archive

David Houston Jones (University of Exeter), Performing the Archive in Samuel Beckett

Sinead Mooney (De Montfort University), ‘Centre and Circumference’: Traces of Provincial Godots in the Theatrical Archive, 1955-1970

Racquel Merino (University of the Basque Country), Beckett and Spanish stage censorship (1955-1976)

Kene Igweonu (Canterbury Christ Church University), Talawa’s Waiting for Godot

 

13.30 – 14.30 Lunch (served each day in the foyer of the Minghella Building)

 

14.30 – 16.30 Panel 2: The Performing Body

Hannah Simpson (Boston University), “Is there anything you ever write for an actor that isn’t physically painful?”: The Actor’s Physical Suffering in the Beckettian Production.

Andrew Head (University of Hull), Beckett’s Implied Actor: Debts, Legacies and a Contemporary Performance Culture.

Niamh Bowe (University of Reading), Ethics in Contemporary Performance: Not I, Footfalls and Rockaby at the Royal Court Theatre, 2014.

Andrew Lennon (University of Birmingham), Beckett and Darkness: The drive to and the flight from …

 

16.30-17.00 Coffee

 

17.00 – 18.00 Keynote 1: Phillip Zarrilli, Embodied consciousness in the actor’s practice: reflections from “inside” Beckett’s texts in performance

 

18.00 – 19.30 Wine reception and launch of the exhibition ‘Waiting for Godot: 60 years on’ and the Staging Beckett database

 

Friday 10th April

8.30 – 9.00 Registration & coffee

 

9.00 – 11.00 Panel 3: Sonic Legacies & Radiophonic Echoes

Pim Verhulst (University of Antwerp), Beckett’s ‘Adaphatroce’: Rethinking Theatre through Radio

Paul Stewart (University of Nicosia), Adapting Lessness: Lessons from Radio and Stage

Lisa Fitzgerald (NUI Galway), Radio Waves: Pan Pan, the BBC and Performing the Radiophonic Body

Catherine Laws (University of York), The Legacy of Beckett in Music Theatre

 

11.00 – 11.15 Coffee

 

11.15-12.45 Panel 4: Word and Gesture

Jack Belloli (University of Cambridge), Beckett, Forced Entertainment and the Grace of Audience Gesture

Burç İdem Dinçel (Trinity College Dublin), ‘”The motion alone is not enough”: Hearing Beckett’s Footfalls in Suzuki’s Grammar of the Feet’

David Tucker (University of Chester), ‘Smile Off’: Beckett’s Stage Directions and Performance History

 

12.45-1.30 Lunch

Exhibition open 12 – 2pm

 

1.30 – 14.30 Keynote 2: Derval Tubridy, Practice, Performance and the Figural Body

 

14.30 – 14.45 Coffee

 

14.45 – 16.45 Panel 5: Irish Theatre and Performance Cultures

David Clare (NUI, Galway), The Gate Theatre’s Beckett Festivals: Tensions between the Local and the Global

Siobhan O’Gorman (Trinity College, Dublin), Beckett out of Focus: Happy Days and Waiting for Godot at Dublin’s Focus Theatre

Rodney Sharkey (Weill Cornell Medical College, Qatar), “The Dark Back Streets:” Beckett in the City

 

16.45 – 17.00 Coffee

 

17.00. – 18.00 Keynote 3: S. E. Gontarski, Samuel Beckett in Performance: The Questions We Ask

 

18.00 – 19.00 Wine reception and launch of Jim Knowlson’s Festschrift

 

20.00 Conference dinner at Loch Fyne, The Maltings Bear Wharf, Fobney St, Reading. See separate registration via the Online Store. If attending the dinner, you must book in advance.

 

Saturday 11th April

9.00-9.30 Registration and coffee

 

9.30-11.00 Panel 6: Staging Beckett in International Theatre Cultures

Anita Rákóczy (Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences & Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary), Earth That Shakes. Earth That Covers. Godot and Happy Days, 2014: Two Beckett Premières in Katona József Theatre, Budapest

Luzmaria Sanchez (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana / Lerma (Mexico), Beckett in Mexico

Stefano Rosignoli (University of London), Oh les beaux jours: Venice Premiere and Reception in Italy

 

11.00-11.15 Coffee

 

11.15- 1.15: Panel 7: Adaptation, Performance & Intermediality

Sozita Goudouna (Royal Holloway, University of London), Beckett’s Intermedial Breath: Defying The Boundaries Between Staging and Displaying

Nicholas Johnson (Trinity College, Dublin), “The Neatness of Identifications”: Transgressing Beckett’s Genres in Ireland and Northern Ireland, 2000-2015

James Little (Trinity College, Dublin), The Politics of Performance at 14 Henrietta Street: Beckett and Anú Productions

Roman Fohr (University of Amiens), Life Flashing in a Work of Art

 

1.15 – 2.00 Lunch

Exhibition open 12 – 2pm

 

2.00 – 3.00 Keynote 4: Ronald Pickup in conversation

 

3.00 – 3.30 Coffee

 

3.30 – 17.30 Samuel Beckett Laboratory Workshop: Samuel Beckett and Experimental Cultures: a performance workshop on The Unnamable & Not I

Co-facilitators: Jonathan Heron & Nicholas Johnson

Please note that places for the workshop are limited and available on a first registered basis only

 

3.30 – 17.30 Making Performance Histories: Staging Beckett & Beyond

This is an interactive session utilizing the ‘Waiting for Godot at 60’ exhibition materials in order to critically reflect on how such archival materials help to generate performance histories. The session will provide an opportunity to engage with issues which are important within Beckett Studies and in theatre and performance studies more generally such as the processes of documenting performance, the ways in which we remember (and forget) performance, the elements of performance that the archive fails to record, the problematics of generating narrative from archival remnants, and the relationship between the archive and the institution.

 

17.30 – 18.30 Closing remarks and repair to Park House on the University of Reading campus.