Women Responding to Beckett: A TheatreProject from Jennifer Barclay & Hannah Khalil By Feargal Whelan

Creative artists responding to Beckett’s works and to his biography is nothing new. From the direct involvement of Alberto Giacometti in the stage design for En Attendant Godot, through the illustrations of prose works by Jasper Johns and Edward Gorey, and musical works by Morton Feldman and György Kurtág, engaging with Beckett has been a constant source of creative inspiration. Most recently, a whole subgenre of novel has emerged which draws on his biographical narrative by fictionalizing moments in his life. Possibly the most interesting and potentially fruitful development has been the invitation of creative artists into the Beckett archive in the interest of inspiring new work inspired by the interaction. The Creative Fellows project at the Beckett Archive at the University of Reading was begun in 2017 and invites one or two artists per year to immerse themselves in the substantial holdings of Beckett material in its archives. In return, the creative fellow produces a work of art entirely of their choosing which has  informed by their time there. In 2022, a sister project was inaugurated in Trinity College Dublin providing access to their substantial Beckett holdings. Now, a new theatre project will seek to develop the idea of a creative ‘response’ to Beckett by developing and commissioning an ambitious collection of short plays to be performed in six different locations next year.  

Playwrights Jennifer Barclay and Hannah Khalil first collaborated when they co-wrote the extraordinary Murdered Men Do Bleed and Drip (2023), a play which was performed simultaneously before audiences in venues in Washington DC and in Dublin, with the two protagonists interacting in real time from the separate locations. Commissioned to write a collaborative piece, the pair never actually met in person, mainly for covid-related reasons, until the after the performance, having spent a year ‘co-writing the play over a year between google docs and zoom’, as Barclay tells me during an interview with both authors. Barclay is a DC-based playwright whose 2018 play Ripe Frenzy won several awards in the US and is also an associate professor at the University of Maryland. Khalil is based in London and is known for a long list of successful plays including A Museum in Baghdad (2020) and Hakawatis (2021). She was writer-in- residence at the Globe Theatre in 2022 and a Creative Fellow at the Samuel Beckett Archive in Reading 2021-2022.

Wanting to collaborate on a bigger project, and following on from Khalil’s experience at Reading, the pair have decided to develop a novel, highly collaborative project which aims to present six separate responses to Beckett from six different authors, unified by a shared cultural heritage. At present, they have secured funding for two of the play commissions from the Beckett Archive at Reading. They also have agreed a partnership with the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, and are in advanced discussions with partners based in London, Dublin, Philadelphia, and New York. The project will involve the presentation of what Barclay describes as ‘a set of six plays making up one evening of theatre’ in what they are calling ‘an international rolling world premier’ to take place in six separate venues over a period of a few months in the Summer of 2024. Included as one of the plays will be Khalil’s The Lighthouse Keeper’s Son (2022) which was her final contribution as Creative Fellow at the Beckett archive, and which was performed at the Beckett at Reading 50 Anniversary celebrations last November.

The pair are keen to emphasise that these plays will not be adaptations of Beckett works but will develop from ‘a seed of inspiration from his canon or his biography’ from which they will create a response. In addition, ‘all the writers will be fem-identifying and of diversified Irish descent to include more writers of the global majority’. Barclay is an Irish-American whose father emigrated to the US as a child, while Khalil is Palestinian-Irish who spent an extended part of each year in her mother’s native Kilkenny. It is this conversation between dislocation and heritage which attracts both in their thinking on Beckett, as Khalil says she is interested in ‘exploring what it is to be Irish when you’re not there’. They are interested in exploring ‘the possibilities and the different identities of being “Irish and –”,’ Barclay adds.

They emphasise that they want to make the whole process as collaborative as possible, in order ‘to try and involve people, and to create opportunities for other writers’, they say, ‘in the spirit of Beckett’s kindness’ according to Khalil. ‘We want to give each of the theatres a great deal of autonomy. We are providing the script but beyond that so much is left open…production value, hiring of actors, producers. We are also making it very affordable because we want to make it as easy as possible to create this ambitious international collaboration. But we want to make it feasible,’ Barclay adds. To aid their aims, the pair are appealing to the Beckett community and to the wider public for help with sponsorship and partnership from individuals and institutions and are also keen to collaborate with academic scholars interested in the project. To this end, they have produced a pitch document which we attach here, which provides full details of the aims and scope of the project and outlines how anyone interested might contribute.

Download the full Women on Beckett (Shorts) pitch document here:

(https://beckettcirclemembers.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/women-on-beckett-pitch.pdf)