Staging Beckett and Contemporary Theatre and Performance Cultures

McMullan, Anna; Saunders, Graham

doi:10.1080/10486801.2017.1405393

Cited by 4 publications

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“…In order to articulate a better failure for Beckett Studies, the next section uses examples from theatre and performance cultures (cf. McMullan and Saunders, 2018) to demonstrate how failure is a necessary part of the cultural practices that sustain his writing and develop new audiences with the passing of each generation.…”

Section: Try Againmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Heron¹

2021

Journal of Beckett Studies

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Recalling Beckett's treatment of failure ( Three Dialogues, 1949; Worstward Ho, 1983), this article considers ‘fidelity to failure’ as a performative and political issue. In dealing with both the aesthetics and ethics of Beckett's failure, the article is informed by recent publications and events within the field ( Kenny ; Morin ; Maprayil; 2020 ). These interventions build upon a body of literature on Beckett ( McMullan, 1994 ; Calder, 2001 ; Anderton, 2016 ; Thomas, 2018) and culture ( Bersani and Dutoit, 1993 ; Ridout, 2006 ; Bailes, 2011 ; Halberstam, 2011 ). The article examines the phenomenon of failure within Beckettian production and wider ethical implications surrounding the (mis)appropriations of ‘failing better’. Having established the uses – and misuses – of this phrase, the article proceeds in three interlinked parts: a) experimental failure in the theatre work, from Beckett's own practice of generative failure in rehearsals (e.g. Play, 1964; dir. Devine) through to his legacy in experimental theatre cultures; b) performance more broadly, including intersections with disability culture (e.g. Not I, 2017; dir. Pountney) and public acts of failure within contemporary politics, from Brexit in Europe to the US Presidential Election; c) communities that enact Beckett's writing online, intersecting with the ‘queer art of failure’ ( Halberstam, 2011 ) and Black Lives Matter ( West, 2020 ).

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Section: Try Againmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Heron¹

2021

Journal of Beckett Studies

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Experimental Beckett

Johnson

Heron

2020

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How do twenty-first century theatre practitioners negotiate the dynamics of tradition and innovation across the works of Samuel Beckett? Beckett's own tendencies toward fluidity of genre, iteration/repetition, and collaboration – modes that also define the 'experimental' – allow for greater openness than is often assumed. Reading recent performances for creative uses of embodiment, environment, and technology reveals the increasingly interdisciplinary, international, and intermedial character of contemporary Beckettian practice. The experimentation of current practitioners challenges a discourse based on historical controversies, exposing a still-expanding terrain for Beckett in performance.

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Beckettian Pedagogies: Learning through Samuel Beckett

Heron¹,

Johnson²

2020

Journal of Beckett Studies

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This essay considers what it might mean to learn ‘through’ Beckett, inaugurating a critical pedagogy that could be called ‘Beckettian’. By integrating existing strands of scholarship on Beckett and his relationship to education, the essay draws a distinction between the ‘practical’ and ‘biographical’ ways of thinking about Beckett and learning. This draws on previous work within the field, but also proposes a new vocabulary – derived from an interdisciplinary encounter with the scholarship of teaching and learning and the philosophy of education, especially ‘critical pedagogy’ – through which the possibility of ‘Beckettian pedagogies’ might be manifested. Recalling Beckett's biographers, his work's fundamental silence haunts most attempts to contain, explain, avoid or domesticate it. The essay proposes that a critical pedagogy of Beckett must be grounded in the concept of openness, especially in the notion that ‘void’ is a productive category, and in the embodiment of an evolving ecology of praxis. This alternative pathway reflects on the philosophy of education inherent within Beckett as an idea, engaging with ‘Beckettian pedagogies’ in an entangled sense of instruction, guidance and teaching with a particular focus on the latter in terms of the theory or principles of education. This move does not require abandoning existing traditions, but rather gathering them under new light, by placing the biographical Beckett (1906–89) in juxtaposition with the praxis of Beckett (ongoing) and the contemporaneous notion of critical pedagogy, as expounded by several scholars including Paulo Freire (1921–97). Beckettian pedagogies therefore remove dormant assumptions, habits of mind, and hierarchies that impede exploration to enable a move away from the curriculum, or toward a curriculum of unlearning and uncertainty, thereby disrupting the entrenched powers that Beckett saw fit to resist.

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Staging Beckett and Contemporary Theatre and Performance Cultures

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

#failbetter

#failbetter

Experimental Beckett

Beckettian Pedagogies: Learning through Samuel Beckett

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