Staging Beckett: Constructing Histories of Performance

Abstract

This multi-authored essay presents some selected initial findings from the AHRC Staging Beckett research project led by the Universities of Reading and Chester with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. For example, how did changes in economic and cultural climates, such as funding structures, impact on productions of Beckett's plays in the UK and Ireland from the 1950s to the first decade of the twenty-first century? The paper will raise historiographical questions raised by the attempts to map or construct performance histories of Beckett's theatre in the UK and Ireland.

Staging Beckett in Great Britain

“…It bears mentioning that some of the theoretical groundwork for this volume has been done in an essay co-authored by Pattie, Tucker, McTighe and Anna McMullan on 'Staging Beckett: Constructing Histories of Performance,' which outlines Beckett's changing status in a rapidly evolving post-war British theatre scene, and his equally complex reception in Ireland. 2 Across the twelve essays in the volume there are distinctive recurring focal points. The 1955 London premiere of Waiting for Godot is invoked as an event seething with fraught potential for British dramatic culture, although David Pattie elegantly problematizes this characterisation of Godot by situating the production within the constellation of factors that enabled change in the stage industry at that moment.…”