'A specialist of neither more nor less importance than the other specialists involved': Beckett's Collaborative Ecologies across Media

Pim Verhulst, Olga Beloborodova, James Little

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

Beckett’s collaborative work involved much negotiation with other specialists, who were intimately involved in the making and re-making of his work across different media. Analysing such collaborations as an illustrative example of distributed cognition, this chapter investigates Beckett’s increasingly collaborative working practice in his theatre, film and television works of the 1960s and 70s, using a series of short case studies to investigate the creative ecologies of 'Play' (1964), 'Film' (1965), 'Eh Joe' (1966) and 'Not I' (1972). In (re-)creating these works in different environments (New York, Royal Court, BBC, SDR, among others), creative work was necessarily distributed between different agents. Tracking these creative collaborations across different media, our chapter explores how Beckett’s work in the TV and film studio informed a more collaborative aesthetic onstage (and vice versa), while also outlining the limits of such collaboration.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSamuel Beckett and Ecology
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherBloomsbury
Pages31-42
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9781350366046, 9781350366053
ISBN (Print)9781350366022
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 20 Feb 2025

Publication series

NameMethuen Drama

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