Conference: Staging Beckett and Contemporary Theatre and Performance Cultures

Minghella Building, University of Reading 10-11 April 2015

Staging Beckett and Contemporary Theatre and Performance Cultures
Minghella Building, University of Reading 10-11 April 2015
Conference Call for Papers

The Staging Beckett team is pleased to announce the project’s third and final conference, Staging Beckett and Contemporary Theatre and Performance Cultures. Building on the conversation begun at the first two events which addressed national and international performance histories and productions at the cultural ‘margins’ respectively, this conference aims to address how we can locate productions of Beckett’s theatre or the staging of any Beckett text within the wider landscape of contemporary theatre and performance in different cultural contexts. What are the legacies of productions of Beckett’s theatre or stage adaptations of other texts for contemporary theatre and performance practitioners? How can we best document and record those legacies? 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 Beckett’s theatre and wider theatre and performance practices and cultures. Issues to consider might be, but are not limited to, the following:

• Recent productions of Beckett’s drama
• The ‘Festivalisation’ of Beckett
• ‘West End’ Beckett
• Beckett and Contemporary Live Art / Experimental / Intermedial performance
• Beckett and Censorship
• International touring productions to the UK and Ireland (e.g. Robert Wilson and Peter Brook) or from the UK and Ireland (e.g. the Dublin Gate Theatre’s Beckett Festival)
• Beckett and contemporary stage design / dramaturgy
• Beckett, performance and the digital
• The adaptation / appropriation of Beckett’s non-theatre texts for performance
• Beckett and music in performance
• Beckett’s legacies for performance

Staging Beckett is a three year collaborative research project undertaken by the universities of Chester, Reading, and the Victoria & Albert Museum which started in September 2012, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project explores 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, and it is compiling a database of professional productions of Beckett’s plays in the UK and Ireland which will be available in 2015.

Please send proposals of c. 300 words to p.mctighe@reading.ac.uk by December 1, 2014.

More information on Staging Beckett project events and activities can be found at http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/staging-beckett/

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

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