Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance

Becketts plays have attracted a striking range of disability performances that is, performances that cast disabled actors, regardless of whether their roles are explicitly described as disabled in the text. Grounded in the history of disability performance of Becketts work and a new theorising of Becketts treatment of the impaired body, Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance examines four contemporary disability performances of Becketts plays, staged in the UK and US, and brings the rich fields of Beckett studies and disability studies into mutually illuminating conversation. Pairing original interviews with the actors and directors involved in these productions alongside critical analysis underpinned by recent disability and performance theory, this book explores how these productions emphasise or rework previously undetected indicators of disability in Becketts work. More broadly, it reveals how Becketts theatre compulsively interrogates alternative embodiments, unexpected forms of agency, and the extraordinary social interdependency of the human body. Winner of the TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize, 2023.