Staging Beckett: Constructing Histories of Performance

Abstract

This multi-authored essay presents some selected initial findings from the AHRC Staging Beckett research project led by the Universities of Reading and Chester with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. For example, how did changes in economic and cultural climates, such as funding structures, impact on productions of Beckett's plays in the UK and Ireland from the 1950s to the first decade of the twenty-first century? The paper will raise historiographical questions raised by the attempts to map or construct performance histories of Beckett's theatre in the UK and Ireland.