'A theatre of ruins'. Edward Bond & Samuel Beckett: theatrical antagonists

The playwright Edward Bond has long made known his antagonism to dramatists allied to Martin Esslin’s Theatre of the Absurd. The work of Samuel Beckett has come in for particular criticism by Bond. Using published writings (and unpublished correspondence between myself and Bond), I hope to trace the development of this antagonism between ‘Bondian’ and ‘Beckettian’ views of theatre. However, this article will also set out to argue that both early work such as The Pope’s Wedding (1962), and more recent work such as Coffee (1995), make use of motifs, characters and ideas from Beckett’s theatre. The article will set out provisional reasons why Bond, despite his misgivings, is not averse to incorporating elements from Beckett’s ‘theatre of ruins’, as he terms it, into his own work.

Interdecadal enhancement of the Walker circulation over the Tropical Pacific in the late 1990s

The Walker circulation is one of the major components of the large-scale tropical atmospheric circulation and variations in its strength are critical to equatorial Pacific Ocean circulation. It has been argued in the literature that during the 20th century the Walker circulation weakened, and that this weakening was attributable to anthropogenic climate change. By using updated observations, we show that there has been a rapid interdecadal enhancement of the Walker circulation since the late 1990s. Associated with this enhancement is enhanced precipitation in the tropical western Pacific, anomalous westerlies in the upper troposphere, descent in the central and eastern tropical Pacific, and anomalous surface easterlies in the western and central tropical Pacific. The characteristics of associated oceanic changes are a strengthened thermocline slope and an enhanced zonal SST gradient across the tropical Pacific. Many characteristics of these changes are similar to those associated with the mid-1970s climate shift with an opposite sign. We also show that the interdecadal variability of the Walker circulation in the tropical Pacific is inversely correlated to the interdecadal variability of the zonal circulation in the tropical Atlantic. An enhancement of the Walker circulation in the tropical Pacific is associated with a weakening zonal circulation in the tropical Atlantic and vise versa, implying an inter-Atlantic-Pacific connection of the zonal overturning circulation variation. Whether these recent changes will be sustained is not yet clear, but our research highlights the importance of understanding the interdecadal variability, as well as the long-term trends, that influence tropical circulation.

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, this study 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.

Samuel Beckett, the Gate Theatre Dublin, and the contemporary Irish independent theater sector: fragments of performance history

From 1991, when the Dublin Gate Theatre launched their Samuel Beckett Festival featuring nineteen of Beckett’s stage plays, to more recent years, the Gate dominated Irish productions of Beckett’s theater. The Gate Beckett Festival was remounted in 1996 at the Lincoln Center, New York, and at the Barbican Centre, London, in 1999, and individual or grouped productions have toured regularly since then in Ireland and internationally. However, since the Irish premiere of Waiting of Godot at the Pike Theatre in 1955, in addition to several Beckett plays mounted by the National Theatre, many independent Irish theater companies, such as Focus Theatre, Druid Theatre, and more recently Pan Pan Theatre, Blue Raincoat Theatre, The Corn Exchange, and Company SJ (under director Sarah Jane Scaife), have produced Beckett’s drama. While acknowledging earlier Irish productions, this essay will consider the role of the Dublin Gate Beckett Festival and the Beckett Centenary celebrations in Dublin in 2006 in greatly enhancing the marketability of Beckett’s work, and will discuss the proliferation of productions of Beckett’s stage plays (as opposed to stage adaptations of the prose work, which is a topic for another essay) in the independent theater sector in the Republic of Ireland since 2006. In addition to giving an overview of these recent productions, the essay will consider some issues at stake in creating or constructing performance histories