A multi-disiciplinary event marking the centenary of Samuel Beckett’s formative cycling holiday to Tours has just been announced for 28 May 2026 with the organisers issuing a call for papers, presentations and performances. Titled Beckett’s Beginnings/ Comment C’est, Commencez avec Beckett: Beckett, France and the Touraine – 1926-2026/Beckett, la France et la Touraine – 1926-2026, the one-day event will ‘mark the centenary of Samuel Beckett’s first visit to France one hundred years ago, on a bicycle-bound literary pilgrimage to Tours and environs’, this one-day event ‘will revisit a moment both anecdotal and symbolic: the debut of an artist in the making’ by providing ‘an opportunity to rediscover the landscapes the young Beckett traversed, cycling through Touraine with his copy of Henri Debraye’s En Touraine et sur les bords de la Loire‘.
Organised by the University of Tours, co-hosted by the Théâtre Olympia Centre Dramatique National de Tours with the support of Pléiade (UR 7338), the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, and the Embassy of Ireland in France, this event also invites discussion on the refractions and resonances of Beckettian afterlives in the ecosystems of contemporary theatre, performance, and the arts both locally (CDNT, CCNT Tours) and globally.
Adapting the inclusive model of the Beckett Brunch, inaugurated by Dúnlaith Bird at the Centre culturel irlandais Paris in 2010, this Beckett’s Beginnings Brunch welcomes participation in various forms, levels of interest, and expertise: proposals for academic talks, interventions in round table discussions, performances, readings, discussions, conversations, and participation from auditors and spectators. In this spirit, this bi-lingual event welcomes interventions (talks, readings, performances) on the topic of beginnings.
Proposals (title and short abstract) for interventions no longer than 15 minutes should be sent by April 13th 2026 to adrienne.janus@univ-tours.fr and martine.pelletier@univ-tours.fr
A full and more in-depth outline and call for interventions in both English and French is available to download below
MASTHEAD: Le Tour de France, 1926
The Samuel Beckett Society 