Overview

Beckett’s relationship with British theatre is complex and underexplored, yet his impact has been immense. Uniquely placing performance history at the centre of its analysis, this volume examines Samuel Beckett’s drama as it has been staged in Great Britain, bringing to light a wide range of untold histories and in turn illuminating six decades of drama in Britain. Ranging from studies of the first English tour of Waiting for Godot in 1955 to Talawa’s 2012 all-black co-production of the same play, Staging Samuel Beckett in Great Britain excavates a host of archival resources in order to historicize how Beckett’s drama has interacted with specific theatres, directors and theatre cultures in the UK. It traces production histories of plays such as Krapp’s Last Tape; presents Beckett’s working relationships with the Royal Court, Riverside and West Yorkshire Playhouse, as well as with directors such as Peter Hall; looks at the history of Beckett’s drama in Scotland and how the plays have been staged in London’s West End. Production analyses are mapped onto political, economic and cultural contexts of Great Britain so that Beckett’s drama resonates in new ways, through theatre practice, against the complex contexts of Great Britain’s regions. With contributions from experts in the fields of both Beckett studies and UK drama, including S.E. Gontarski, David Pattie, Mark Taylor-Batty and Sos Eltis, the volume offers an exceptional and unique understanding of Beckett’s reception on the UK stage and the impact of his drama within UK theatre practices. Together with its sister volume, Staging Samuel Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland it will prove a terrific resource for students, scholars and theatre practitioners.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dr David Tucker (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK) ,  Trish McTighe (Queen's University Belfast, UK)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Methuen Drama
Dimensions:   Width: 13.80cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 21.60cm
Weight:   0.481kg
ISBN:  

9781474240178

ISBN 10:   1474240178
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   30 June 2016
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Information on Contributors Foreword, James Knowlson Introduction, David Tucker and Trish McTighe Section 1: Origins, Theatres, Directors 1. The Arrival of Godot: Beckett, British Theatre and the 1950s, by David Pattie 2. Beckett at the Royal Court, by S.E. Gontarski 3. Beckett at the Riverside Studios, by Matthew McFrederick, 4. Beckett at The West Yorkshire Playhouse, by Mark Taylor-Batty 5. Beckett in London’s West End, by John Stokes 6. Beckett and Peter Hall, by Sos Eltis Section 2: Productions, Locations, Legacies 7. A Production History of Krapp’s Last Tape in the UK, by Andrew Head 8. Staging Beckett’s Shorts, by Derval Tubridy 9. Talawa’s Waiting for Godot, by Kene Igweonu 10. Mindscapes Amongst Thistle: Producing Samuel Beckett’s Plays in Scotland, by Ksenija Horvat 11. Beckett Goes Nude: Breath, Oh! Calcutta! and the Sexual Revolution, Graham Saunders 12. ‘That first last look in the shadows’: Beckett’s Legacies for Harold Pinter, David Tucker Endnotes Bibliography Index

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Author Information

Trish McTighe is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Reading, UK. She is the author of The Haptic Aesthetic in Samuel Beckett’s Drama (2013), and has published in several international journals on aesthetics, corporeality and technology in performance. 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’.

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