Introduction: staging Beckett at the margins

This Introduction contextualises the SBT/A 29.2 (2017) special issue on Staging Beckett at the Margins. The Beckett community of scholars and theatre practitioners is a truly global one: for decades, Beckett’s plays have been produced across the world in major metropolitan centres from New York to Tokyo and in regional theatres from Birmingham to Bengal. Individual accounts of those productions have been published in journals1 and edited volumes, and The International Reception of Samuel Beckett (2009) edited by Mark Nixon and Matthew Feldman includes reception histories of Beckett’s theatre in particular cultural contexts, though it has a broader focus on Beckett’s work in general and its shifting cultural and academic reception. Beckett’s own directorial decisions or his collaborations with directors such as Roger Blin or Alan Schneider in Paris, New York, Berlin or London have been documented and analysed.2 This volume turns its attention both to the margins of some of those capital centres, and to lesser known production contexts, such as Romania, Turkey and Korea, for example, which have not been addressed in any detail in Beckett criticism