16.4.15
12.3.15
CFP: Women and Ageing: New Cultural and Critical Perspectives
University of Limerick, Ireland · 20-22 May 2015
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University of Limerick, Ireland
20-22 May 2014
A conference engaging with the symbolic aspects of women and ageing in culture and society, and the power these constructions exert over old age.
Conveners: Dr Cathy McGlynn, Dr Maggie O’Neill, Dr Michaela Schrage-Früh (University of Limerick)
Plenary Speakers: Prof Germaine Greer; Prof Margaret Harper
Events: Poetry reading by Medbh McGuckian; Roundtable on Women and Ageing
In a time when even Bridget Jones finds herself in her early fifties, it may at first glance seem unwarranted to speak of the invisibility of ageing women in literary and cultural contexts. In fact, in a review of Mad about the Boy in The Times, Sarah Lyall writes that, “Bridget’s amorous adventures … make the prospect of middle age not so bad at all”. Constructions like this open up questions about representations of women and ageing. What types of images of the “ageing woman” are created in cultural texts? Do women in later life, in order to become visible, need to find ways to “pass” as younger so that “age shall not wither them” as Kira Cochraine puts it in an article in The Guardian? Are these legitimate strategies or should women embrace the menopause as a new phase of life and liberation as advised by Germaine Greer? What impact do dominant representations of ageing women have on the sociocultural realities of women in their later years? And in what ways do they compare to earlier representations?
The rise of the new interdisciplinary field of ageing studies / cultural gerontology testifies to the need to reassess cultural representations of ageing and to view ageing not only as part of the life course but as a social and cultural construct. It is all the more surprising that ageing is a topic still marginalised in feminist theory, despite Simone de Beauvoir’s testimony to her dismay at ‘society’s secret shame’ in The Coming of Age in 1970. There are some notable exceptions, such as Germaine Greer’s work on the postmenopausal woman, Susan Bordo’s work on the body, or Lynne Segal’s recent reflection and analysis of the process of growing older. This conference will engage with the symbolic aspects of women and ageing in culture and society, and the power these constructions exert over public and private conceptions of old age.
The aim of this conference is to provide an opportunity to discuss intersections of the cultural, social and medical dimensions of women and ageing. It will engage with discourses on ageing in their various cultural manifestations through the ages but also across different cultures, genres and media. We invite papers from diverse disciplines such as literary and cultural studies, film and media studies, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics and the medical humanities.
Possible topics can include but are not limited to:
- Ageing, autobiography and lived experience
- Technologies, medicine and ageing
- Ageing and popular culture
- Ageing and neoliberalism
- Visual images of ageing
- Age and performance
- The ageing body as text
- Ageing and memory
- Stigma
- Myths about ageing, women in myth
- Age and creativity
- Queer ageing
- Love, loss and mourning
- Health, menopause, the post-maternal body
- Male representations of women and ageing
- Older and younger mothers
- The ageing spinster
- The cult of youth and perceptions of beauty
- Ageing, recession and dependency
- Ageing and women minorities
- Age, race, and colour
Queries may be directed to the conference organisers at ageing.women@gmail.com. Please submit proposals for papers or panels by 15 March 2015. Proposals should be 250 words and should include a 50-word biography.
Website: womenandageing.wordpress.com
11.3.15
Overbeck on Editing Samuel Beckett's Letters
Stefano Rosignoli asks Lois M. Overbeck about the ongoing four-volume edition
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| Samuel Beckett. Photograph: John Minihan |
At the end of a summer rich in events on Samuel Beckett, scattered largely between Dublin, Belfast and Enniskillen, academic research was encouraged in October with the publication by Cambridge University Press of the third volume of the writer’s correspondence. As in the previous volumes, Beckett’s statements about his own work, as well as the many intertextual references expanded on in the dense notes appended by the editors, demonstrate the scholarly value of the publication, which will become a primary resource especially for young researchers with no opportunity to explore public archives and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic. It is Beckett’s mocking depiction of intellectual life, however, rather than the crowded web of literary and artistic influences, that strikes the general reader and ensures that the letters are an enjoyable, rather than purely informative reading experience: “On m’a demandé un livret d’opéra bouffe! J’ai écrit une ligne – ‘J’ai pas envie de chanter ce soir’ – puis j’ai renoncé.” (“I have been asked for a libretto for a comic opera! I wrote one line: ‘I don’t feel like singing tonight’. Then I gave up.” SB to Jacoba Van Velde, 12.04.1958; in LSB III, 130-131). This trenchant tongue doesn’t appear to spare Beckett himself. In the same letter he declares, exhausted: “Il y a deux moments qui valent la peine, dans le travail, celui de la mise en route et celui de la mise en corbeille” (“There are two worthwhile moments in my work: the opening up and the basketing”; ibid.). This is just one of the many accounts of Beckett’s distress when facing the creation of new work, something that continues to spring at the author from the white page itself even during the years of his belated success.
I met Lois M. Overbeck, research associate at Emory University and general editor of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, to discuss the series, which is now approaching its conclusion. The interview took place just a few days after a public lecture given in Reading by Dan Gunn, professor at the American University of Paris and editor of the Cambridge collection, and before a reception at the Irish Embassy in London, which hosted a reading of the letters given by Barry McGovern.
Samuel Beckett was particularly reluctant to acknowledge that archival material could shed light upon his published works. In his later years, he authorised the publication only of those letters “having bearing upon my work” (LSB III, xviii), which became the principle guiding the selection and annotation of his vast correspondence. How would you summarise the editors’ interpretation of Beckett’s guidelines?
That’s a big question. It occupied us greatly, because it is different for each volume. In the first one, we had a very difficult time drawing a line between life and work. Especially in this volume, all of Beckett’s writing in his letters is also his work. And because he was generating unfinished work, his letters – especially those to Thomas MacGreevy – are directions toward finished writing, or comments on the writing he was struggling to do. But, as time goes on, the difficulty doesn’t come from the distinction between life and work, but from the large number of letters about the work. So the questions are: how are we going to choose the ones that are most useful to readers but also the most representative of the body of the letters that we cannot include? There are hundreds of invitations for a coffee at the PLM [the Petit Café PLM at the Hôtel Saint-Jacques on Boulevard Saint-Jacques, Paris]. Which of these do we use? You know, they are virtually the same letter, or card. But this is not a decision related to work and life. We realised that all we could publish was a sample. We wanted this to be as good, representative, and literary as possible. But that doesn’t close the door to all the other letters. We do say where all the letters are, so that people will know where they can go for more. I think we have judged it right.
The Cambridge University Press edition has published so far “60 percent of the total corpus for the years 1929-1940, […] 40 percent for 1941-1956”, and “a little over 20 percent” for 1957-1965” (LSB III, xvii). What has been considered irrelevant to Beckett’s work and consequently left out?
In the third volume, it’s pretty clear what the major correspondences are. Of course we don’t impose a narrative, but rather try to discover the narrative that Beckett’s own creative cycles establish. Our job is to think of: where was he at this point? Who were the key people? What letters will tell the stories of his work? Several important narrative patterns are given by the alternation of language, for example. It’s pretty clear, in volume three, that his plays were begun in English, but that he translated them fairly quickly afterwards. If you look at the chronology, you realise that he was working in some way with his plays in every language, every year. And this is also because he not only wrote a play, but he directed it or helped to direct it. Part of that was due to his worldwide exposure, and his worldwide audience. He might have been writing primarily in English, but Comment c’est, for example, was clearly a struggle in French, and French was the language of greatest discipline for him. So the bifurcation may be dramatic versus fictional, meaning that he found one language more suitable for the kind of very precise control that he desired in his prose. The stage instead gave him a sense of freedom – though he managed this freedom tightly, in terms of the rigours of the theatre. He loved the three-dimensional aspect of the stage; the absorption he had for the visual is critical to see in the drama. You will see in volume four, particularly as he interacted with other playwrights (and especially Pinter), how central the visual and the stage performance was to him. What he found in the work for the stage was a kind of three-dimensional sculpture, made up of light, sound and movement.
Several letters reveal Beckett’s recurrent concern with his own body, most of all when health issues are involved. What kind of self-portrait emerges from the author’s correspondence in the period covered by the third volume, and how does it differ from earlier or later stages of his life?
In 1957, Beckett was fifty-one years old, so he started creaking at the joints as we all do… but I think he was much more accepting of that. He complained, of course! He did have serious issues, such as the anticipation of cataract surgery, then more of an ordeal than it is today. His brother died of lung cancer, so whenever he got a bronchial infection… it worried him. He had an area in his jaw that was very badly infected, and of course that was on his mind. And people die, all through this volume. He mourned, but there is a matter-of-factness about death in the letters. I think he was growing more mature about these elements in life. It really depends to whom Beckett was writing. He wrote very personally about his health to his family in Ireland, where there were people who wanted to know about his health. He always wrote to the person. As readers we are outside of this correspondence, and we only know what we read, and perhaps what the footnotes suggest is also happening. It depends on the recipient, how much Beckett needed or wanted to express about something, including his health.
The involvement of Samuel Beckett, of several authors at Les Éditions de Minuit and of the publisher himself, Jérôme Lindon, with contemporary history resurfaces in more than one passage. How would you describe Beckett’s response to the Algerian struggle for independence and to the following turmoil in France?
Well, he was there. He was in the middle of it. In the letters, he wrote that he was listening, anxiously, to the radio, that there were explosions and rioting in the streets, etc. He was physically there at the time this was all occurring. Suzanne, of course, was also very involved, in terms of her strong sense of what was right or wrong in any of these political struggles. Beckett didn’t feel, for instance, that he could sign a petition on behalf of Jérôme Lindon, who was accused for his publications and for his political positions. But this was because he was not a French citizen, and not because he lacked passion about injustice. Indeed, he circulated a petition among his English friends and literary affiliates, and encouraged them to address the situation, to create an international response to the political problem. So, he was not a-political, but you’re not seeing it written about in letters as much as that he was living through it. It was part of the fabric of what was happening. We have these wonderful rose-coloured glasses of time, but he didn’t have them. I mean, he was aware of what was happening, but one doesn’t take a longer view of history in the middle of it. We cannot sense the ultimate shape of history until after it has been experienced. Sometimes our expectations as readers are not realistic or fair.
Many passages in Beckett’s letters refer to convivial gatherings with friends and colleagues, including Avigdor Arikha and Patrick Magee, and to a few trips abroad, such as the 1958 trip to Yugoslavia, also motivated by the need to spend his royalties locally. To what extent did Beckett’s quality of life improve during these years and how did this affect his writing?
He was always generous, and liked to be able to take people to dinner. Hospitality was part of his rapport with people, and he enjoyed doing that. So I don’t think that the trip to Yugoslavia is particularly a benchmark about lifestyle. He and Suzanne regularly took holidays, and they gravitated toward warm, dry climates, because Beckett needed, physically, to get out of Paris. All along, Suzanne tried to make sure that he got into a place where he could relax, without his energies being completely absorbed by people wanting to see him. You can see that very clearly in volume two as well, but in the period covered by volume three, it is more possible to afford regular travel. Beckett used the Nobel Prize funds to help others rather than enrich his lifestyle, as you will see in volume four. When he moved to the apartment over Rue Saint-Jacques in 1960, he was just around the corner from where the Arikhas lived, so he could walk over and have a drink, or listen to music with them… their apartment was a kind of second living room, in a way. With other people, of course, it was different. He liked and enjoyed the company of all his publishers: John Calder was a very congenial person, Barney Rosset was much the same but out of a different milieu completely. Both of them came to their full bearing in the Sixties, and they naturally gravitated to the radical fringe. Challenging censorship was at the core of their publishing values and ventures. He was very close to his Irish friends as well: Pat Magee was a wonderful person, full of stories… and very strong. Jack MacGowran, on the other hand, was talented and delightful but more fragile.
The large number of letters to contemporary writers testifies to Beckett’s growing international fame. This is also proven by the enthusiasm aroused in the younger generation, represented in volume three primarily by Harold Pinter and Aidan Higgins. Among his followers, the closest might have been Robert Pinget: how would you describe their friendship, leading to the adaptation of La Manivelle into English (The Old Tune)?
Pinget had difficulty with his publisher and so he moved to Les Éditions de Minuit. Beckett encouraged him, having him commissioned with the translation of Embers for the Italia prize, for example, and suggesting he write for the BBC. Beckett knew how important it was to be known to an English-speaking audience. Barbara Bray was instrumental in getting Pinget’s connection with the BBC worked through: she was very gifted both as a translator and as an adapter. She worked closely with Beckett on the translation of Pinget’s La Manivelle; although he did not always accept a suggestion, it freed him to know that he had a partnership going. Beckett and Aidan Higgins met through John Beckett. When Higgins asked Samuel Beckett for advice, Beckett suggested, rather, that he consult Arland Ussher “for wisdom”. There are wonderful letters at Trinity College Dublin, between Higgins and Ussher, both of them interested in Beckett’s work. Higgins for a time was in London, and so was John Beckett; they saw the plays and wrote to each other about them. Their corollary correspondence is very interesting, and very helpful. Sam’s friends were also friends with other friends, so if you did the sociological mapping, you would find a lot of interlocking circles, and that’s crucial to understand. As Martha Fehsenfeld and I began our research, we found a different kind of community in Dublin than in Paris and London. In Ireland, particularly, the circles were very tight. Beckett was willing to help Higgins, and arranged for the French translation of Langrishe, Go Down. Is it a coincidence that Harold Pinter decided to write the screenplay for Langrishe? Beckett suggested that Higgins work with Calder to publish his work in English [Felo de Se, issued by Grove Press in the US as Killachter Meadow; LSB II, 705]. Beckett was a mentor. I think the word “influence” is always a difficult word for writers: they don’t like to admit being influenced, but how can you help but be? [Read More]
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
Modernism's Chronic Conditions: Temporality, Medicine, and Disorders of the Self
Free Public Event · University of Exeter, 17 April 2015
Xfi Building, University of Exeter
Friday 17 April 2015
Registration is Free
Speakers
- Dr Marion Coutts, author of The Iceberg (Goldsmiths)
- Prof Lois Oppenheim (Montclair State University)
- Dr Lisa Baraitser (Birkbeck)
- Prof Jeremy Holmes (University of Exeter)
- Jonathan Heron (University of Warwick)
- Dr Kirsty Martin (University of Exeter)
- Prof Zoe Playdon (University of London)
Respondents
- Prof Alan Bleakley (University of Falmouth)
- Prof Chris Code (University of Exeter)
- Prof Paul Dieppe (Exeter Medical School)
- Dr Joanne Winning (Birkbeck)
About the Event
This workshop brings together scholars, creative practitioners, medical educators, and clinicians concerned with disorders of the embodied mind, to consider how artistic modernism might offer specific resources for understanding what it means to live with conditions which resist narrative shapes of closure and completion.This workshop is the first event organized by the AHRC funded network ‘Modernism, Medicine and the Embodied Mind: Investigating Disorders of the Self’. [Read More]
Infinite Fictions: Essays on Literature and Theory
A collection of essays by upcoming literary critic, David Winters
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| David Winters |
For a taster of David Winters' writing style, take a look at his website, http://davidwinters.uk/
CFP: Scale: Malta, 2015
European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts · Malta · 15-18 June 2015
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| A still from Terrence Malick's Tree of Life (2011) |
This year’s conference is dedicated to the theme of Scale. In one way or another, scale is an issue deeply embedded in every discipline and every aspect of scholarly and scientific research. As the Call for Papers puts it, in the grand scheme of things Scale is the scheme of things itself. We do very much hope, therefore, that you will be as excited by the prospect of an interdisciplinary conference on Scale as we are. We are very pleased that the location of the conference will be Malta, an island in the middle of the Mediterranean with a rich history and culture, where effects of scale have exerted intriguing and complex energies for centuries, and which provides a particularly fitting and appealing venue for this year’s event.
The Call for Papers sets out a number of scale-related topics that cut across disciplines, with six threads identified that should themselves help to provide further prompts for thought. You will see that there is a distinguished group of keynote speakers – Bruce Clarke (Texas Tech), Marcus du Sautoy (Oxford) Gaetana Marrone-Puglia (Princeton), Tom McCarthy, Franco Moretti (Stanford) and Cary Wolfe (Rice) – which can only help to enrich intellectual and academic exchange when we meet in Malta in June. ‘Scale’ therefore promises to be an event that provides rich and rewarding interdisciplinary debate.
We very much look forward to receiving abstracts exploring scale and its various aspects and effects within and across disciplines. The conference will be particularly attractive to academics and researchers working in SLSA’s main areas of focus – literary studies, the sciences, the arts and the spaces (and scales …) in between, but we also hope to hear from delegates from other fields, who are most welcome to attend and participate.
This SLSAeu conference is organised in collaboration with the Humanities, Medicine and Sciences Programme at the University of Malta, and with the further support of the University’s Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Science and the Department of English, whose help is here warmly acknowledged.
Looking forward to scale-related conversations in June, in Malta. [Read More]
27.2.15
Beckett’s Bodies: Affect, Disability, Performance
SAMLA 85: Durham, NC Nov 13-15, 2015
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| Samuel Beckett rehearsing with the San Quentin Drama Workshop |
Conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA)
Chair/contact: Michelle Rada, Brown University
Beckett’s Bodies: Affect, Disability, Performance
This panel seeks to explore the ways in which bodies are figured and disfigured in Beckett’s work. On their own constituting an expansive “body of work,” Beckett’s prose texts, poems, plays, radio, television, and film works posit human, non-human, and inhuman bodies in different and often surprising forms. What kinds of bodies are incorporated, disembodied, or stripped bare in Beckett’s work? How can we trace the life, vulnerability, and survival of the body in single texts and across works? Are Beckettian physical and textual bodies susceptible to or immune from affect? Which bodies, metaphorical or otherwise, are excluded from consideration and care in a quite prolific archive of Beckett criticism? How does the body function and dysfunction across genre and media, prose and performance? The purpose of this panel is to provide a multidisciplinary platform for thinking about the body in Beckett’s work through emerging reading practices, which could engender new connections and ideas for such an extensively critiqued range of texts. In keeping with SAMLA’s theme for the 2015 conference, “In Concert: Literature and the Other Arts,” emphasis placed on thinking across genre, media, and theoretical approaches is encouraged, and will be a significant part of our conversation at this panel.
Possible approaches and topics may include, but are not limited to:
Queer bodies in Beckett’s work
Beckett and disability studies
Bodily capacity and its limits in performance
Affect and its embodied forms
Gendered bodies and feminist approaches to Beckett
Abject and aging bodies, dead bodies, and animal bodies
Material bodies and the life of the object
Beckett’s body of work and its sustained life in/through/as Beckett criticism
The precarious body, vulnerability, and the pains of survival
Ill-sensing: perception and the phenomenological body in Beckett
Food studies, consuming bodies, oral fixations, sucking stones
Sex and reproduction in Beckett
Adaptations of Beckett and the political, gendered, and racialized body
Dance, stage directions, choreography, and demands on the performing body
Please send a 250-300 word abstract, a brief bio, and any questions to: michelle_rada@brown.edu by 1 June 2015.
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
27.10.14
Samuel Beckett: Small vs. Large Theatres
George Hunka on the size and space of Beckett productions
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A little poking around reveals that many of Beckett’s early plays had their New York premieres in theatres that, compared to the Harvey, are hopelessly tiny. Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape both premiered at the 179-seat Cherry Lane Theatre, where they enjoyed substantial if not particularly long runs, and as Kalb points out in his review, when Beckett’s later plays were premiered at Lincoln Center they ran in the 299-seat Newhouse (then the Forum) Theatre instead of the far more cavernous (but more comparable to the Harvey) 1,200-seat Beaumont.
Putting these intense but contemplative miniatures in large houses with star casts for limited runs tends to render these Beckett productions exclusive, expensive, and somewhat elitist (in a bad way) Cultural Events (caps sic) rather than theatrical revivals. This may work for Waiting for Godot (the recent Broadway Stewart/McKellen revival, for example), but because Beckett’s vision intensified in the following years, suggesting more of a premium on intimacy, this puts upon these plays a burden of celebrity, including Beckett’s own, that they may not be able to sustain. It’s also no surprise that as this dramatic and theatrical vision became more sharply focused, Beckett made his first forays into television plays. Setting aside the Beckett on Film project, these television plays such as Nacht und Traume and … but the clouds … take advantage of the television medium to create a one-on-one precise, concise intimacy between spectator and expression, permitting an attention to detail through close-ups and to perspective through mise-en-scene well-nigh impossible even in a 99-seat theatre. Even though in theory these television plays were viewed by thousands of people simultaneously, in practice the viewer was alone in a small room while experiencing these plays. The spectatorial experience was more acute, far more intimate than that of a theatre. [Read More]
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
London Premiere: Gare St Lazare to perform Beckett's First Love
Arcola Theatre, London · 19 November - 13 December 2014
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| Conor Lovett in First Love. Photo: Ros Kavanagh |
In this acclaimed staging, Conor Lovett - who has performed in 18 roles by Beckett - plays the narrator who can't forget his expulsion from the family home, his happening upon a park bench, and his infatuation with the woman he met there. A perfect blend of tragedy and comedy, it is a powerful, lyrical tale from one of the twentieth century's most celebrated writers.
Gare St Lazare are internationally regarded to be among the finest exponents of Beckett’s work, and have toured to over 80 cities worldwide. First Love marks their first Beckett performance in London since Lessness at the National Theatre in 2002. [Read More]
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
Staging Beckett and Contemporary Theatre and Performance Cultures
Minghella Building, University of Reading 10-11 April 2015
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| Samuel Beckett. Photograph: Reg Lancaster/Getty Images |
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
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).
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
Samuel Beckett Society Inaugural Conference (2015)
How to get involved
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| Design: Rhys Tranter |
Conference Registration
We have set up an easy online registration system for the conference. Please navigate to our Reg Online site and sign up ($175 for faculty; $100 for students) at your earliest convenience.
Samuel Beckett Society Membership
All non-ASU affiliated attendees must be current members of the Samuel Beckett Society ($35 per year faculty; $20 per year students). If you are not a member, please visit the SBS Membership Page.
Accommodations
We have secured a discounted conference rate of $139 per night at the Clarendon Hotel. February is peak season in the Phoenix area, so please reserve your room as soon as possible. Space is limited. For more information, please visit the accommodations page of the official conference website.
Facebook Page
Like us on Facebook and receive updates regarding conference programming, meal menus, area tours, and more.
Questions
If you have any questions about the conference please contact us at beckettconference2015@gmail.com.
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
8.9.14
David Lynch's Industrial Symphony No. 1
Open Culture tracks down a copy of the 1989 musical play
From Open Culture:
It is time, I thought to myself just a couple weeks ago; time, I thought, to watch Twin Peaks again. How I had missed Leland Palmer’s crazed dancing/crying jags, Agent Cooper’s straight-shooting cornball savvy, Audrey Horne’s tongue-in-cheek slinkiness, and the absolute nightmare of Bob. How I had especially missed the haunting score of Angelo Badalamenti and the ethereal interludes of Julee Cruise. Immersed now in the second season, I already mourn the premature end. But you can imagine my delight when I discovered the film above, a Lynch musical play scored by Badalamenti and showcasing the otherworldly voice of Cruise, who appears as “The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman.” Cast as the actual heartbroken woman is Lynch stalwart Laura Dern, whose heart is broken over the phone by then-young-heartbreaker Nicolas Cage. Rounding out the cast is another familiar face, Michael J. Anderson—Twin Peaks’ “Little Man From Another Place”—appearing here as “Woodsman/Twin A.” Logs are sawn, neon signs flicker, dancers writhe, and Badalamenti’s twisted cool jazz lulls us into bizarre Lynchian neo-noir terrain. [Read More]
Find on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
1.9.14
John Haynes' Photography
New website showcases Beckett, Pinter and the London stage
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| Samuel Beckett. Photograph: John Haynes |
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| Harold Pinter. Photograph: John Haynes |
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| Billie Whitelaw and Samuel Beckett. Photograph: John Haynes |
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| Billie Whitelaw and Samuel Beckett. Photograph: John Haynes |
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
28.7.14
Journal of Beckett Studies: ‘The Performance Issue’
Co-edited by Jonathan Heron (Warwick) and Nicholas Johnson (TCD)
First the body. No. First the place. No. First both.In April of 2014, Edinburgh University Press published a special issue of the Journal of Beckett Studies (23:1), ‘The Performance Issue’, which seeks to link the heritage of scholarship on Beckett and performance with current practices and methodologies. Noting the link between performance and associated discourses of phenomenology and embodiment, the edition attempts to treat performance as both an ‘issue’ subject to debate that has not been fully resolved, and an ‘issue’ in the sense of that which comes forth and flows out. The edition explores the tension between ‘the archive and the repertoire’, as articulated by Diana Taylor in 2003, which continues to ghost our memories of Beckett in performance, and has withstood both the theoretical and materialist ‘turns’ of the field. In doing so, the co-editors have drawn upon recent work in Beckett Studies and Performance Studies, including Catherine Laws (2007), Tracy C. Davis (2008), Ulrika Maude (2009), Anna McMullan (2010), Baz Kershaw (2011) and Mark Fleishman (2012).
Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983
Following an introduction provided by general editors Mark Nixon and Dirk Van Hulle, the contents of the special issue include the first article on Beckett performance histories by the team of the Staging Beckett AHRC-funded research project (Anna McMullan, Trish McTighe, David Pattie, and David Tucker), complemented by studies of Beckett and Performance Art (Derval Tubridy) and Beckett and New Musical Composition (Catherine Laws). The first results from the Samuel Beckett Laboratory, a performance-based workshop held as part of the annual Samuel Beckett Summer School and facilitated by Johnson and Heron, are published in the form of a “Dossier,” including contributions from directors Gavin Quinn and Sarah Jane Scaife, as well as Summer School participants Burç Îdem Dinçel and Áine Josephine Tyrrell. Directors Ian Rickson and Robert Wilson were interviewed specially for the edition, and artists featured in a new “Practitioners’ Voices” section include Rosemary Pountney, Rieko Suzuki, and Barry McGovern. Obituaries of Frederick Neumann and Herbert Blau follow. The edition concludes out with production reviews of Peter Stein’s 2012 Krapp’s Last Tape and Pan Pan’s 2013 Edinburgh productions of All That Fall and Embers, as well as book reviews focusing on Beckett’s televisual work and laughter in Beckett. A full table of contents is available online at [Journal of Beckett Studies].
About the editors
Jonathan Heron, Artistic Director of Fail Better Productions and IATL Senior Teaching Fellow at University of Warwick, is a core member of AHRC Beckett and Brain Science and co-convenor of the IFTR Performance-as-Research Working Group. His writing has been published in Open-space Learning (Bloomsbury, 2011) and Performing Early Modern Drama Today (CUP, 2012).Nicholas Johnson is Assistant Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin and co-director of the Samuel Beckett Summer School, as well as a director and performer. His research has been published in The Plays of Samuel Beckett (Methuen, 2013), Theatre Research International, Forum Modernes Theater, the Journal of Art Historiography, and the Journal of Beckett Studies.
Find Samuel Beckett on Amazon: US | UK
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20.6.14
The Samuel Beckett Theatre Project Oxford c.1967-76
A glossy, illustrated volume explores the history of an underground theatre
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| Image of the underground Samuel Beckett Theatre |
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| Image of the underground Samuel Beckett Theatre |
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| Samuel Beckett in Paris with Albert Latner, one of the key Canadian backers of the project |
A Dream and its Legacies: The Samuel Beckett Theatre Project, Oxford c.1967-76, by Dr David Tucker, tells the history of the plans to build what was to be the Samuel Beckett Theatre in St Peter’s College, Oxford around forty years ago.
It describes the direct involvement of Beckett, artists such as Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, architects Norman Foster and Richard Buckminster Fuller, as well as a range of British playwrights, actors and directors. The book presents a previously untold part of Beckett’s life story which reveals much about the collaborative friendships of the time, as well as Beckett’s thinking about certain of his texts. [Read More]
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14.6.14
Bookshops That Will Change Your Life
An online selection from Buzzfeed
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| City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco |
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| City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco |
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| Brattle Book Shop in Boston |
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| Brattle Book Shop in Boston |
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| Librairie Ptyx in Brussels |
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| Librairie Ptyx in Brussels |
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5.6.14
The Haptic Aesthetic in Samuel Beckett’s Drama
New title from Palgrave in the series New Interpretations of Beckett in the 21st Century
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| Trish McTighe, The Haptic Aesthetic in Samuel Beckett's Drama |
In their sparse and isolated spaces, Samuel Beckett's figures imagine the touch of a lost love or dream of the comfort and care that the hands of a dear one might bring. Applying philosophical writings that feature sensation, particularly touch, Trish McTighe examines how Beckett's later work for stage and screen dramatizes moments of contact between self and self, self and world, and self and other. With implications for how gender and ethics can be approached within Beckett's aesthetic, this study explores the employment of haptic imagery as an alternative to certain dominant codes of visual representation. [Read More]
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6.5.14
Arcola Theatre: Waiting for Godot
Arcola Theatre, London · 7 May - 14 June 2014
From godotarcola.com:
Two washed-up young drifters wait by the road for a man they’ve never met, hoping against all proof that now, as night closes in and their patter runs dry, they may finally catch a break. Over the bare horizon, a figure leads another on a leash. Can this be what they are waiting for? Totally Tom, Edinburgh comedy favourites and stars of Live at the Electric, bring sharp-eyed, contemporary character-comedy to this timeless vision of life as a horrifying joke.
TOTALLY TOM (Tom Stourton and Tom Palmer) made their name with the hit viral video, High Renaissance Man before being nominated for Edinburgh Foster's Comedy Award in 2011. Stars of BBC Three’s Live at the Electric and E4's Comedy Lab, they continue to perform sell-out shows across the country.
Simon Dormandy directs. He has worked with Cheek by Jowl, the RSC, the Donmar and the Royal Court. In March 2014 he will direct the UK premiere of von Mayenburg’s Eldorado at Arcola. [Read More]
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25.4.14
Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies 2014
5pm on Tuesdays in Trinity Term, 2014. University of Oxford
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| Design: Rhys Tranter |
Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies 2014
University of Oxford
5.30pm on Tuesdays in Trinity Term, 2014.
New Seminar Room, St John’s College, Oxford.
Attendance is free and open to all.
29 April — Dr Erik Tonning
(University of Bergen, Norway)
“‘Friendship of this world is fornication against Thee.’ Rereading Beckett on Saint Augustine.”
6 May — Dr David Tucker
(University of Chester)
“‘That first last look in the shadows’: Beckett’s Legacies for Harold Pinter.”
Thursday 15 May — Dr David Cunningham
(University of Westminster)
“What is Quad about? Beckett and the Literal.”
20 May — Dr Adam Winstanley
(University of York and Queen Mary, University of London)
“‘I feel / I feel it's coming’: Beckett, Dostoevsky and Epilepsy.”
27 May — Dr Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield
(University of Reading)
“Wandering the archive of wandering.”
3 June — Dr Conor Carville
(University of Reading)
“Beckett, ‘Formes’ and Fascism.”
10 June — Dr Rhys Tranter
(Cardiff University)
“Late Stage: Trauma and Subjectivity in Samuel Beckett's Not I”
17 June — Half-Day Postgraduate Symposium, followed by: Dr Matthew Feldman (University of Teeside) “Beckett’s ‘late style’ and the influence of radio adaptations.”
You can find out more by visiting the official Debts and Legaces website. [Read More]
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7.4.14
Staging Beckett at the Margins
University of Chester, 11-12 September 2014
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| Samuel Beckett. Photograph: Reg Lancaster/Getty Images |
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. The project explores Beckett’s impact 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.
Our second conference, to be held at the University of Chester, 11-12 September 2014, will focus on perceived notions of Beckett at the margins, on productions staged outside London and other major theatrical centres. What has the impact of Beckett’s drama been upon regional, small national, touring and marginal theatrical practices and cultures? What is at stake when staging Beckett in marginal cultures or lesser-known geographical areas? How does Beckett’s work move from a country’s capital city to its regions? Does Beckett’s work speak to national, or local, cultural contexts? How does it fit within established theatrical, cultural and economic infrastructures?
We are keen to hear from academics and practitioners interested in how Beckett has been, or might be, staged in areas beyond the major theatrical centres of London, Dublin, Paris, New York, Sydney, Tokyo, etc. Issues to consider might be, but are not limited to, the following:
- Theatre and local politics
- Cultural marginalisation
- Small-scale productions
- Amateur productions
- Planned productions that failed to be realised
- Festivals
- Beckett in Scotland
- Beckett in Wales
- Beckett on tour, nationally and internationally
- Beckett as a marginal author
- Beckett and subaltern cultures
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