Samuel Beckett and Irish Scenography

Over the last few decades, Beckett’s complex and contestatory
relationships with his native Ireland have been much debated. These
studies have tended to focus on Beckett’s texts and historical contexts,
including the hibernicization of Waiting for Godot when it was first
staged at the Pike Theatre Dublin in 1955.1 Less has been written about
productions of Beckett’s theatre in Ireland in the context of Irish
performance histories, though a major exception to this is Christopher
Murray’s account of productions of Beckett’s theatre in Ireland up until
1983 as part of the 1984 special issue of Irish University Review on Beckett.
In this essay we will draw on Murray’s writings on Beckett in order to
begin tracing the parallel histories of Beckett and Irish scenography, and
explore how they have impacted on each other. In particular, we will
investigate the intersections between Beckett and theatre in Dublin in
the 1920s and 1930s. We will then focus on Louis le Brocquy’s designs
for the Gate Theatre production of Waiting for Godot in 1988, which went
on to constitute the core of their Beckett Festival, launched in 1991, with
various revivals and national and international tours since then.