Element contents
Series: Elements in Beckett Studies
Carnivals of Ruin
Beckett, Ireland, and the Festival Form
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2023
Summary
Beckett's work is somewhat out of step with the logic of commemoration and celebration. Festival, with its association with celebration, spectacle, and publicity, would not seem the ideal vehicle for Beckett's work. Yet that work has become highly festivalised, and the incongruities between it and festival forms provide a useful basis from which to examine both Beckett as festivalised commodity and festivals themselves. Festivalising Beckett in Ireland might be characterised as a way of bringing him back home, as well as a way of returning him to the canonical fold - he showed little interest in either during his later years, it need hardly be added. This Element examines Beckett's dissidence in the face of these imperatives of nation, home and the canon, utilising Beckett's work in festival contexts to highlight in the negative the nature of the festival form and to critique the festivalisation of culture.
Keywords
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Series: Elements in Beckett StudiesOnline ISBN: 9781108963947Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 26 January 2023
References
Agence France-Presse (2006), ‘Dublin Comes Alive for Centenary of Beckett’s Birth’, 6 April.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1984 [1965]), Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Battersby, Eileen (1991), ‘Alarm Bells Still Ringing Out Over City of Culture’, The Irish Times, 13 August.Google Scholar
Beckett, Samuel (1993), The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett Vol 1: Waiting for Godot, ed. McMillan, Dougald and Knowlson, James, London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Beckett, Samuel (2014), The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Vol. III: 1957–1965, ed. Craig, George, Fehsenfeld, Martha Dow, Gunn, Dan and Overbeck, Lois More, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beckett, Samuel (2016), The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Vol. IV: 1966–1989, ed. Craig, George, Fehsenfeld, Martha Dow, Gunn, Dan and Overbeck, Lois More, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bénard, Julie (2018), ‘The Capital of the Ruins by Samuel Beckett: Re-construction as a “Re-distribution of the Sensible”’, Études britanniques contemporaines, 54. https://journals.openedition.org/ebc/4282#text.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter (2002), The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, Andy, Taylor, Jodie and Woodward, Ian (2014), The Festivalization of Culture, Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Boland, Philip (2010), ‘“Capital of Culture – you must be having a laugh!” Challenging the Official Rhetoric of Liverpool as the 2008 European Cultural Capital’, Social and Cultural Geography, 11:7, pp. 627–45.Google Scholar
Clare, David (2016), ‘The Gate Theatre’s Beckett Festivals: Tensions between the Local and the Global’, in McTighe, Trish and Tucker, David (eds.), Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland, London: Bloomsbury-Methuen, pp. 39–50.Google Scholar
Colgan, Gerry (1991), ‘Beckett Brought Home in Radiant Darkness’, The Irish Times, 22 October, p. 8.Google Scholar
Colgan, Michael (2001), ‘In Conversation with Crowley, Jeananne’, in Chambers, Lillian, Fitzgibbon, Ger and Jordan, Eamonn (eds.), Theatre Talk: Voices of Irish Practitioners, Dublin: Carysfort Press, pp. 76–89.Google Scholar
Coopers, Lybrand (1994), The Employment and Economic Significance of the Cultural Industries in Ireland, Dublin: Coopers & Lybrand Corporate Finance Service.Google Scholar
d’Eramo, Marco (2021), The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry into the Tourist Age, London: Verso.Google Scholar
Davies, William (2017), ‘A Text Become Provisional: Revisiting The Capital of the Ruins’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 26:2, pp. 169–87.Google Scholar
de Valera, Eamon (17 March 1943), ‘The Ireland that We Dreamed Of’, RTE Archives. www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/eamon-de-valera/719124-address-by-mr-de-valera/.Google Scholar
Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (2016), Dublin UNESCO City of Literature Strategic Plan 2016–2018. www.dublincityofliterature.net/wp-content/uploads/Strategic-Plan-2016-2018.pdf.Google Scholar
Dilks, Stephen (2011), Samuel Beckett in the Literary Marketplace, New York: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Doran, Sean (2018), ‘Interviewed by Trish McTighe’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 28:1, pp. 150–4.Google Scholar
Dowd, Garin (2003), ‘Karaoke Beckett, or Jeremy Irons, Mimicry and Travesty in “Ohio Impromptu” on Film’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, 13, pp. 169–82.Google Scholar
Duffy, Patrick J. (1997), ‘Writing Ireland: Literature and Art in the Representation of Irish Place’, in Graham, Brian (ed.), In Search of Ireland: A Cultural Geography, London: Routledge, pp. 64–83.Google Scholar
Edinburgh Evening News (14 February 2018), ‘Figures Reveal Percentage of Locals Attending Edinburgh Festivals’. www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/whats-on/figures-reveal-percentage-locals-attending-edinburgh-festivals-588857.Google Scholar
Everding, Robert G. (1998), ‘Planting Mulberry: A History of Shaw Festivals’, Shaw, 18, pp. 67–91.Google Scholar
Falassi, Alessandro (1987), ‘Festival: Definition and Morphology’, in Falassi, Alessandro (ed.), Time Out of Time: Essays on the Festival, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 1–10.Google Scholar
Fallon, Brian (1991), ‘Beckett Show at Douglas Hyde Gallery’, The Irish Times, 15 October.Google Scholar
Fallon, Brian (1998), An Age of Innocence: Irish Culture 1930–1960, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan.Google Scholar
Festival of Britain (1952), The Story of the Festival of Britain, London: Festival Council.Google Scholar
Fischer-Lichte, Erika (2014), The Routledge Introduction to Performance Studies, trans. Minou Arjomand, Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick Dean, Joan (2014), All Dressed Up: Modern Irish Historical Pageantry, New York: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Florida, Richard (2004), The Rise of the Creative Class and How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, New York: Basic Civitas Books.Google Scholar
Focus Ireland (2013), Annual Report. www.focusireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Focus-Ireland-Annual-Report-2013.pdf.Google Scholar
Foster, Robert (Roy) (2001), The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It up in Ireland, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Freeman, Elizabeth (2010), Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories, North Carolina: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Frost, Everett C. and McMullan, Anna (2003), ‘The Blue Angel Beckett on Film Project: Questions of Adaptation, Aesthetics and Audience in Filming Beckett’s Theatrical Canon’, in Ben-Zvi, Linda (ed.), Drawing on Beckett: Portraits, Performances and Cultural Contexts, Tel Aviv: Assaph Books, pp. 215–38.Google Scholar
Getz, Donald (2010), ‘The Nature and Scope of Festival Studies’, International Journal of Event Management Research, 5:1, pp. 1–47.Google Scholar
Gontarski, Stanley E. (2016), ‘“I think this does call for a firm stand”: Beckett at the Royal Court’, in Tucker, David and McTighe, Trish (eds.), Staging Beckett in Great Britain, London: Bloomsbury-Methuen, pp. 21–36.Google Scholar
Greene, Alexis (1996), ‘The Reviews: The Beckett Festival’, Theaterweek, 16 September, pp. 12–15.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1974), ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopaedia Article’, trans. Sarah Lennox and Frank Lennox, New German Critique, 3, pp. 49–55.Google Scholar
Habicht, Werner (2001), ‘Shakespeare Celebrations in Times of War’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 52:4, pp. 441–55.Google Scholar
Harrington, John (2008), ‘Festivals National and International: The Beckett Festival’, in Grene, Nicholas, Lonergan, Patrick and Chambers, Lillian (eds.), Interactions: Dublin Theatre Festival 1957–2007, Dublin: Carysfort Press, pp. 131–42.Google Scholar
Harvey, David (1989), ‘From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 71:1, pp. 3–17.Google Scholar
Harvie, Jen (2003), ‘Cultural Effects of the Edinburgh International Festival: Elitism, Identities, Industries’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 13:4, pp. 12–26.Google Scholar
Hauptfleisch, Temple, Lev-Aladgem, Shulamith, Martin, Jacqueline, Sauter, Willmar and Schoenmakers, Henri, eds. (2007), Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture, Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (2002), Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Noeri, Gunzelin Schmid, California: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
The Irish Times (2006), ‘Worldwide Plans for Beckett Centenary Unveiled’, 28 February. www.irishtimes.com/news/worldwide-plans-for-beckett-centenary-unveiled-1.773613.Google Scholar
Johnson, Nicholas (2017), ‘Keynote Address at Beckett, Ireland and the Biographical Festival: A Symposium’, Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast, 17–18 November.Google Scholar
Nicholas, Johnson (2021), ‘Coda: Viral Beckett’, in Kiryushina, Galina, Adar, Einat and Nixon, Mark (eds.), Samuel Beckett and Technology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 255–62.Google Scholar
Johnson, Nuala (2004), ‘Fictional Journeys: Paper Landscapes, Tourist Trails and Dublin’s Literary Texts’, Social & Cultural Geography, 5:1, pp. 91–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, Coppèlia (2001), ‘Remembering Shakespeare Imperially: The 1916 Tercentenary’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 52:4, pp. 456–78.Google Scholar
Keenan, Siobhan and Shellard, Dominic, eds. (2016), Shakespeare’s Cultural Capital: His Economic Impact from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Seán (2009), ‘Samuel Beckett’s Reception in Ireland’, in Nixon, Mark and Feldman, Mathew (eds.), The International Reception of Samuel Beckett, London: Continuum, pp. 55–74.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Sr Stanislaus (2013), ‘There is an Urgent Need to Tackle Family Homelessness; Five Children are Becoming Homeless in Dublin Every Week, and This is Unacceptable’, The Irish Times, 18 December, p. 16.Google Scholar
Kilroy, Thomas (2013), ‘A Memoir of the 1950s’, in Dawe, Gerald, Jones, Darryl and Pelizzari, Nora (eds.), Beautiful Strangers: Ireland and the World of the 1950s, Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 7–20.Google Scholar
Knowles, Ric, (2020a), ‘Indigenous Festivals’, in Knowles, Ric (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 70–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knowles, Ric, (2020b), ‘Introduction’, in Knowles, Ric (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–12.Google Scholar
Knowlson, James (1996), Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Lanigan Wood, Helen (1990), Enniskillen: Historic Images of an Island Town, Belfast: Friar’s Bush.Google Scholar
Lavery, Carl (2018), ‘Ecology in Beckett’s Theatre Garden: Or How to Cultivate the Oikos’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 28:1, pp. 10–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri (1991), The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Hans-Thies (2006), Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lloyd, David (2010), ‘Frames of Referrance: Samuel Beckett as an Irish Question’, in Kennedy, Seán (ed.), Beckett and Ireland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 31–55.Google Scholar
Lonergan, Patrick (2008), Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
MacCannell, Dean (1999 [1976]), The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Maprayil, Ros (2018), ‘Review of Purgatorio: Walking for Waiting for Godot, UNESCO Global Geopark, Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. Happy Days International Enniskillen Beckett Festival’, The Beckett Circle, Autumn.Google Scholar
Marshall, Colin (2017), ‘“Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better”: How Samuel Beckett Created the Unlikely Mantra That Inspires Entrepreneurs’, Open Culture, 7 December. www.openculture.com/2017/12/try-again-fail-again-fail-better-how-samuel-beckett-created-the-unlikely-mantra-that-inspires-entrepreneurs-today.html.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Mark (2005), ‘Historico-Geographical Explorations of Ireland’s Heritages: Towards a Critical Understanding of Nature of Memory and Identity’, in McCarthy, Mark (ed.), Ireland’s Heritages: Critical Perspectives on Memory and Identity, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 3–51.Google Scholar
McDonald, Rónán (2009), ‘Groves of Blarney: Beckett’s Academic Reception in Ireland’, Nordic Irish Studies, 8:1, pp. 29–45.Google Scholar
McFrederick, Matthew (2016), ‘Staging Beckett: A Production History of Samuel Beckett’s Drama in London (1955–2010)’, unpublished doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Reading.Google Scholar
McMullan, Anna (1993), Theatre on Trial: Samuel Beckett’s Later Drama, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
McMullan, Anna (2004), ‘Irish/Postcolonial Beckett’, in Oppenheim, Lois (ed.), Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 89–109.Google Scholar
McTighe, Trish (2018a), ‘“Be again, be again”: The Gate’s Beckett Country’, in Clare, David, Lally, Des and Lonergan, Patrick (eds.), The Gate Theatre, Dublin: Inspiration and Craft, Dublin: Carysfort Press, pp. 299–314.Google Scholar
McTighe, Trish (2018b), ‘In Caves, in Ruins: Place as Archive at the Happy Days International Beckett Festival’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 28:1, pp. 27–38.Google Scholar
Meenan, James (1970), The Irish Economy Since 1922, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Morash, Christopher (2002), A History of Irish Theatre, 1601–2000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Murray, Christopher (2000), Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror up to Nation, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Négrier, Emmanuel (2015), ‘Festivalisation: Patterns and Limits’, in Newbold, Christopher, Maughan, Christopher, Jordan, Jennie, and Franco, Bianchini (eds.), Focus on Festivals: Contemporary European Case Studies and Perspectives, Oxford: Goodfellow, pp. 18–27.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Eoin (1986), The Beckett Country: Samuel Beckett’s Ireland, London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
O’Connell, Brenda and Johnson, Nicholas (2014), ‘Three Dialogues on Enniskillen’, The Beckett Circle, Spring. www.researchgate.net/publication/307937544_Nicholas_Johnson_and_Brenda_O%27Connell_%27Three_dialogues_on_Enniskillen%27.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, Thomas (2012), note in the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival programme, held by the author.Google Scholar
Pilkington, Lionel (2001), Theatre and State in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Cultivating the People, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pine, B. Joseph and Gilmore, James (2011), The Experience Economy, Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review.Google Scholar
Quinn, Bernadette (2010), ‘Arts Festivals, Urban Tourism and Cultural Policy’, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 2:3, pp. 264–79.Google Scholar
Rancière, Jacques (2004), The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill, London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Rebellato, Dan (1999), 1956 and All That: The Making of Modern British Drama, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Richards, Greg and Palmer, Robert (2010), Eventful Cities: Cultural Management and Urban Revitalization, London: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Robinson, Lennox (1951), Ireland’s Abbey Theatre – A History 1899–1951, London: Sidgwick and Jackson.Google Scholar
Samuels, Ellen (2017), ‘Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time’, Disability Studies Quarterly, 37:3. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5824/4684.Google Scholar
Scaife, Sarah Jane (2016), ‘Practice in Focus: Beckett in the City’, in McTighe, Trish and Tucker, David (eds.), Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland, London: Methuen Bloomsbury, pp. 153–68.Google Scholar
Scott, Susie (2007), Shyness and Society: The Illusion of Competence, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sharkey, Rodney (2021), ‘Beckett’s Present Moments’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 30:1, pp. 8–25.Google Scholar
Siggins, Lorna (1986), ‘Paris Marks Beckett’s Birthday’, The Irish Times, 1 April p. 10.Google Scholar
Simpson, Hannah (2018), ‘Samuel Beckett and Nobel Catastrophe’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, 30, pp. 337–52.Google Scholar
Singleton, Brian (2004), ‘The Revival Revised’, in Richards, Shaun (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 259–70.Google Scholar
Singleton, Brian (2016), ‘Beckett and the Non-Place in Irish Performance’, in McTighe, Trish and Tucker, David (eds.), Staging Beckett in Ireland and Northern Ireland, London: Methuen Bloomsbury, pp. 169–84.Google Scholar
Sisson, Elaine (2011), ‘Experimentalism and the Irish Stage: Theatre and German Expressionism in the 1920s’, in King, Linda and Sisson, Elaine (eds.), Ireland, Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity, 1922–1992, Cork: Cork University Press, pp. 39–58.Google Scholar
Snow, Georgia (2019), ‘Edinburgh Fringe Ticket Sales Reach 3 Million for First Time’, Stage.com, 27 August. www.thestage.co.uk/news/edinburgh-fringe-ticket-sales-reach-3-million-for-first-time.Google Scholar
Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon (1986), The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Turk, Edward B. (2011), French Theatre Today: The View from New York, Paris, and Avignon, Des Moines: University of Iowa Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor (1987), ‘Carnival, Ritual, and Play in Rio de Janeiro’, in Falassi, Alessandro (ed.), Time Out of Time: Essays on the Festival, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 74–90.Google Scholar
Waterman, Stanley (1998), ‘Carnivals for Élites? The Cultural Politics of Arts Festivals’, Progress in Human Geography, 22:1, pp. 54–74.Google Scholar
Wehle, Phillipa (1984), ‘A History of the Avignon Festival’, The Drama Review: TDR, 28:1, pp. 52–61.Google Scholar
Whelan, Gerard (2002), Spiked: Church-State Intrigue and ‘The Rose Tattoo’, Dublin: New Island.Google Scholar
Wilkie, Fiona (2002), ‘Mapping the Terrain: A Survey of Site-Specific Performance in Britain’, New Theatre Quarterly, 18:2, pp. 140–60.Google Scholar
Wilmer, Stephen E. (2002), Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson Nightingale, Andrea (2004), Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wolf, Matt (1991), ‘Just How Irish is Samuel Beckett?’, American Theatre, review held at the Gate Theatre Dublin archives, PF77 c.Google Scholar
Zaiontz, Keren (2020), ‘From Post-War to “Second Wave”: International Performing Arts Festivals’, in Knowles, Ric (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–35.Google Scholar
Zuelow, Eric G. (2005), ‘The Tourism Nexus: National Identity and the Meanings of Tourism since the Irish Civil War’, in Mark McCarthy (ed.), Ireland’s Heritages: Critical Perspectives on Memory and Identity, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 189–204.Google Scholar
- 5
- Cited by