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Résumé
On ne peut comprendre l’importance majeure de l’œuvre de Beckett dans l’art contemporain sans revenir sur la réception de l’écrivain par les « néo-avant-gardes » américaines des années 1960 – l’art minimal en particulier –, qui marquent le moment inaugural, précisément, de l’art contemporain. Beckett fournit alors aux artistes ainsi qu’aux critiques qui les défendent une référence essentielle dans leur tentative de repenser la notion d’œuvre d’art et l’expérience esthétique contre les fondamentaux du modernisme tel que les conçoit Clement Greenberg. Pourtant, Beckett lui-même n’a semble-t-il jamais participé aux débats sur le minimalisme américain ni seulement évoqué les artistes new-yorkais. Et pour cause : les artistes de son temps qui l’intéressent sont tous des peintres de l’expressionnisme abstrait, autrement dit le courant moderniste contre lequel se positionne la nouvelle avant-garde new-yorkaise. Le hiatus est donc profond entre les références artistiques de l’écrivain et les artistes qu’il a lui-même inspirés. On s’intéressera ici à ce moment originel, qui reste largement ignoré par la critique française, ainsi qu’aux différentes lectures qui, rétrospectivement, en ont été proposées par la critique anglo-américaine des vingt dernières années.
Abstract
Spectrality remains a key motif and metaphor in Beckett’s writing; many of his wandering and destitute creations seem on their way towards another kind of life, uncomfortably close to death, and remarkably close to the spirit world. This article outlines some of the paradoxes that surround Beckett’s relation to the ghost as a dramatic device; it emphasises how uneasily Beckett’s work sits within the tradition of the ghost play, and unravels some of the preoccupations and interests shaping Beckett’s treatment of dialogues with the dead.
Abstract
This article provides a short introduction to a theatre project entitled Beckett sa Chreig: Laethanta Sona (Beckett in the Rock: Happy Days), which breaks the boundaries of the traditional ‘Beckett space’. The project was a collaboration between the landscape, language and people of Inis Oírr, Samuel Beckett and Company SJ, and involved Mícheál Ó Conghaile’s translation of Happy Days into Irish (as Laethanta Sona) and its performance by Bríd Ní Neachtain. The set, built by local stone masons, was immersed in the landscape of Inis Oírr, the westernmost island of Ireland, arising sculpturally from the flaggy rock of a stone field, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean.
Abstract
The woman’s wordless scream in Not I and Happy Days acts as a spectral-yet-embodied rendering of unspoken and apparently unspeakable sexual trauma. If trauma symptomology is itself a form of bodily haunting—the past intruding into the present—the wordless scream performs this phenomenon on Beckett’s stage, as a disruptive return of the repressed through the body itself. This essay explores how the performed scream returns embodied trauma to embodied expression in Not I and Happy Days, emphasising the voice as a simultaneously spectral yet profoundly corporeal force. It then examines the potential therapeutic effect of the scream in performance, drawing on a range of actor testimonies.
Abstract
This article examines the place of Beckett’s work amongst recent artworks sited at the Northern Irish border/ north of Ireland border. Using Dylan Quinn’s Fulcrum, the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival’s Walking for Waiting for Godot, and the collaborative community project Across and In-Between as key examples, I explore how Beckett’s work has become absorbed into the kinds of wider arts and political discourses—and indeed crises—that this border-site reflects. These projects share a concern for placing bodies at the border, asking us to see from the situation of the border, to trace its often-impalpable contours with the frail tools of words and bodies.
Abstract
This article focuses on Company SJ’s The Women Speak as performed at the National Ballroom, Dublin, in 2015, and explores how a space, including through social relations and through its position in a cultural landscape, can function as a form of archive when utilized as the site of a theatrical performance. The article investigates how Company SJ’s site-specific production (which features performances of Not I, Footfalls, Rockaby and Come and Go) functioned as a kind of archive, an archaeological record of human interaction, which was framed by the scenographic design to prompt and draw on the audience’s embodied responses.
Abstract
This article examines Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape in the context of Argentinian post-dictatorship theatre. I offer a brief history of Beckett’s influence on theatre in Argentina together with a summary of the performance history of his plays, and I reflect on the ways in which they have been interpreted in Argentina’s recent history. This contextualization enables me to focus on the figure of Krapp and discuss the stops and starts that Krapp performs while playing and recording his tapes. By examining Krapp’s archive, the article engages in a discussion about individual and collective memory: I draw attention to the play’s resonances in relation to the political processes unfolding in Argentina today, where archives are of vital importance in recovering from the social trauma of the last dictatorship.