The latest on-line version of Waiting for Godot is the first project of American company The New Group Off Stage, and is described as ‘an experimental exploration of a storied play, bringing together a roster of lauded artists from across the cultural spectrum. A combination of theatrical invention and innovative filmmaking. At once both a…
Read More
A call for papers from Ros Maprayil and Zoë Tweed at the University of Reading. “places belong to our bodies and our bodies belong to these places. We learn how to orientate and re-orientate ourselves in relation to them and form internalized representations of them (cognitive maps) which play a powerful role in how we…
Read More
This issue once again reflects the COVID restricted nature of our times. Performances are on-line but show signs of adapting to the restrictions of form. We feature reviews of five different approaches to the problem and interview actor Marty Rea about his experience in the live broadcast of Happy Days. New Beckett Society President, Laura…
Read More
The Samuel Beckett Society is delighted to congratulate its long-time member, friend and colleague Martha Dow Fehsenfeld on the award of an honorary Doctorate in Letters from Beckett’s alma mater Trinity College Dublin. The ceremony took place online in accordance with COVID restrictions for the first time in the University’s history. The occasions Public Orator,…
Read More
The death has been announced of Anne Atik, author and close friend of Samuel Beckett’s. Along with her husband, the painter Avigdor Arikha and her two daughters, Alba and Noga, the family were frequent hosts to Beckett in their home in Paris. Her book How It Was: A Memoir of Samuel Beckett (1991) recounts the…
Read More
On 12 February, Cal Revely-Calder began his critique of the current state of Beckett studies by allowing readers of the Times Literary Supplement to drop their jaws at the bad behaviour that can go on at academic conferences. The essay made its revelation broadly in the name of ‘care’ – care for the work of an author…
Read More
Landmark Productions will broadcast Happy Days from the Olympia Theatre, Dublin on January 30-31, directed by Caitríona McLaughlin with Siobhán McSweeney as Winnie and Marty Rea as Willie. Here is an edited version of Stiene Thillman’s interview with Rea about the role and his engagement with Beckett. The full version and a performance review will…
Read More
Clockwise from top: Katherine Wess, Nadia Louar, Jonathan Basile, and Brenda O’Connell As with all events in the recent calendar, the annual MLA convention has had to be reconfigured to accommodate the inability of attendees to travel and present. However, given that all papers will now be delivered remotely, there is a greater opportunity for…
Read More
Inside this issue The second issue of the Beckett Circle to be posted in the time of pandemic bears the scars of the community’s endurance of uncertainty and loss. As performance, in its normal sense has disappeared, we hear from practitioners Sarah Jane Scaife and Cathal Quinn about their attempts to overcome the restricted environment.…
Read More
“This issue covers performances in the US (among them the Happy Days Renaissance Theaterworks production in downtown Milwaukee and Richard Sullivan Jr.’s Waiting for Godot in Providence, RI), Australia (Mark Byron reviews the Red Line Productions’ staging of Krapp’s Last Tape at the Old Fitz Theatre in Sydney), London, Paris and Dublin. We have rich resources to rethink the Beckett oeuvre in the context of contemporary music, as the Farmleigh Music and Arts festival and the What is the Word… concert organised by Benjamin Dwyer at the Centre Culturel Irlandaise in Paris show. A panel on the Battle of Ideas Festival at the Barbican, the role played by Beckett in shaping the “Fail Better” series of the Poet in the City at Wilton’s Music Hall in London, and an account of number of symposia keep demonstrating Beckett’s continuous cultural importance…”
— Extract from the joint President’s Address from Daniela Caselli (sitting president) and Laura Salisbury (president elect).
Read More
