Theatre and Installation: Perspectives on Beckett

The article explores the intersections between drama, live performance and the visual arts with specific reference to the aesthetics of installation art and the importance of site in selected productions and stage adaptations of Samuel Beckett’s drama for theatre and radio by contemporary Irish companies, Pan Pan Theatre and Company SJ. These productions extend the boundaries of theatre and engage with modalities of installation art that lend new perspectives to contemporary theatre. The intermedial condition of contemporary art, performance practice and theatre-making opens a new site for the production of theatre, and of art. By considering Beckett through the lens of installation we can better understand what is radical in his theatre, and consider the extent to which the strategies of installation art inform what is most complex and radical in contemporary theatre.