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Experimental Beckett

Contemporary Performance Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2020

Nicholas E. Johnson
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin
Jonathan Heron
Affiliation:
University of Warwick

Summary

How do twenty-first century theatre practitioners negotiate the dynamics of tradition and innovation across the works of Samuel Beckett? Beckett's own tendencies toward fluidity of genre, iteration/repetition, and collaboration – modes that also define the 'experimental' – allow for greater openness than is often assumed. Reading recent performances for creative uses of embodiment, environment, and technology reveals the increasingly interdisciplinary, international, and intermedial character of contemporary Beckettian practice. The experimentation of current practitioners challenges a discourse based on historical controversies, exposing a still-expanding terrain for Beckett in performance.
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