Call for Papers for the Samuel Beckett Working Group at the IFTR

World Congress in Nafplio, Greece, 28 June–2 July 2027

Hybrid Beckettian Ecosystems in Performance

In the early 1980s, Samuel Beckett laboured over a piece – in all likelihood for American actor Rick Cluchey – which he struggled to title (Little 2018; McAllister 2026): known in Beckett Studies as “Mongrel Mime,” this archival dramatic artefact holds a special status within the oeuvre, for it may well be the only time Beckett considered exposing the hybridity of his creation, rather than classifying it within an existing genre or avoiding the question altogether. Although the mime was never published or performed, it progressed from manuscript to typescript, and it is in the course of this material migration that it became “Mongrel Mime for old small (M)[an]” (Beckett quoted in McAllister 2026). This title repurposes a term that Beckett came across in the 1930s when he read the book that would become “the most important scientific work in [his] library” (Van Hulle and Nixon 2013): Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. In the “Whoroscope Notebook,” Beckett jotted down the definition of “mongrel,” precisely in comparison with “hybrid,” surfacing how the former relates to crossed varieties and the latter to crossed species. On the one hand, genetic criticism and this Darwinian echo reveal how Beckett was conscious of creation as a process bound to engage with various forms of hybridisation by this late stage of his career. On the other hand, the title “Mongrel Mime” may betray the author’s vulnerability within the European cultural industry in “the age of media” (Lehmann 2006), where the existence and survival of theatrical works that were not, or less, text-based depended on clear marketing. We therefore propose to take this instance as a starting point to ask how Beckettian dramatic ecosystems rely on, push against, and perform hybridity in response to the broader cultural ecologies from Beckett’s time to ours.

As scholarship in Beckett studies has shown, Beckett’s oeuvre engages with hybridity at several levels, whether genetic, thematic or aesthetic. The first wave of Beckett scholars demonstrated that hybridity is a distinct marker of Beckett’s language and style (Cohn 1962; Coe 1983), notably marked by multilingualism. More recently, Marion Fries-Dieckmann (2007) and Chiara Montini (2015) highlighted how Beckett grafts idiomatic structures from one language to another through literal translation, producing neither entirely foreign nor fully assimilated linguistic forms. This integration also performatively occurs in dialogue with readers and audiences, who are prompted to co-create the play’s meanings by synthesising Beckett’s creative ecology (Van Hulle 2022), knowledge and interests – such as maths (Brits 2019) and music (Longuenesse 2014) – with their own. In performance, this hybridity generates a dramaturgical grammar, creating a site of encounter, contamination and transformation (Esslin 1961; Bignell, McMullan and Verhulst 2023; Carville and Verhulst 2025). The Beckettian dramaturgical language has placed his dramatic oeuvre at the turning point between modernism and postmodernism, offering striking assemblages to rethink what theatre is and what it is made of. Perhaps such creative frictions echo most strongly in the bodies that inhabit Beckettian dramatic ecosystems. The characters are rarely whole human subjects, but rather exist at the limits of recognisable embodiment, sometimes even in the liminal space between life and death (Hubert 1987; Tajiri 2007; Lecossois 2008; McMullan 2020). Read alongside the histories of racist and eugenic discourses, this persistent refusal of bodily “purity” acquires a political resonance: as Hannah Simpson argues, damaged Beckettian bodies unsettle the categories through which bodies are rendered, ordered and hierarchised, or in other words, the “fascist aesthetics of the body” (2020). At a time when we witness new forms of imperialism, Beckett’s theatre continues to be a creative space of resistance to violence. Political readings encourage understanding hybridity not as an incidental feature of Beckettian aesthetics, but as a challenge to el pensamiento único.

What happens when Beckett’s works are considered not as autonomous texts, but as components of broader theatrical ecosystems? Where do Beckett’s plays resist hybridisation, and what does that mean? In what ways do Beckettian performative ecosystems provide a space for encounter, contamination and transformation in the twenty-first century? How do Beckettian performance practices continue to transform, experimentally, what theatre is and does?

Papers may respond to the following themes, though submissions on any aspect of Beckett’s drama or Beckett in performance are welcome. We invite papers written in English, French, Spanish and German, but all oral presentations at the conference should be in English.

Cross- and interculturalism in Beckettian creative ecosystems: Beckettian theatres within and beyond Europe, with a special interest in the Arab world, the Greek-speaking world, Asia, Latin America and the francophonie

A multiplicity of morphing bodies in Beckettian theatres: queer, disabled, abled, prosthetic, organic, cyborg, posthuman, more-than-human, non-human bodies and identities

Hybridity, identity and normativity in performance: gender, race, religion, ethnicity, discourses on eugenics, political systems, theatrical or non-theatrical institutions

The performativity of modernist linguistic hybridity: multilingualism and neologisms; grammatical disruptions and linguistic experimentations; losses, gains and troubles in translation

Hybrid creative practices and readings: defying traditional theatrical genres, blending non-dramatic forms with dramatic ones, performing the non-dramatic grey canon (such as doodles and letters), remediating plays (notably via music, fine and digital arts, as well as comics) 

Resisting and transforming performance and pedagogical ecologies through and beyond hybridity: amateur/professional, director/ensemble, performers/audiences, academic/artistic, canon/experimental, archive/live event, rehearsal/performance, local/global, foreign/domestic, centre/periphery 

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bstracts should be submitted via the IFTR website when the submission platform opens on 1 October 2026. Please note that you must renew your membership or become a member in order to submit.

The deadline for abstract submission is 2nd November 2026.

Papers of up to 3,000 words in length are to be distributed by 28 May 2027.

The Samuel Beckett Working Group is an evolving international community of researchers, which seeks to support the development of excellent research on Beckett’s drama and Beckett in performance. We welcome postgraduate and early-career researchers, as well as faculty, independent researchers and artists. We value the participation of Beckett and non-Beckett experts alike, as both categories partake in the maintenance of a healthy interdisciplinary ecosystem. The submission of work at various levels of development is encouraged from early ideas on a project to work in progress to nearly finished papers. This community strives to offer rigorous and constructive feedback through respectful engagement with each other’s work. Our core values are inclusivity, diversity and care.

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For information about the general conference, please check the IFTR website. Please also check for updates on the Samuel Beckett Working Group page at https://www.iftr.org/working-groups/samuel-beckett.

If you have questions about the group or about attending, please contact the working group convenors, Alice Clabaut, Alicia Nudler and Céline Thobois-Gupta at sbwg.iftr@gmail.com.

Please note that papers to be presented at the Working Group are distributed and read by all the participants ahead of the meeting. At the Working Group sessions presenters give short résumés of their work in English, followed by a lengthy discussion period (each presenter has around 30 in all, depending on the number of presenters). This is an extremely effective method, which allows ideas to be discussed, debated and evaluated, with participants suggesting directions for the presenters’ work-in-progress. There is limited space for presenters; there will also be a limited space for auditors, who may also be sent the papers to read and be encouraged to engage in the discussions during the sessions.

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Works Cited

Bignell, Jonathan, Anna McMullan and Pim Verhulst (eds.), Beckett’s Afterlives: Adaptation, Remediation, Appropriation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023.

Brits, Baylee. “Beckett and Mathematics,” in The New Samuel Beckett Studies, edited by Jean-Michel Rabaté: 215–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Carville, Conor, and Pim Verhulst. “Introduction: Beckett and Contemporary Aesthetic Form.” Journal of Beckett Studies 34, no. 1 (2025): 1–13. 

Coe, Richard N. “Beckett’s English.” In Samuel Beckett’s Humanistic Perspectives, edited by Morris Beja, S. E. Gontarski and Pierre Astier. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1983: 36–55.

Cohn, Ruby. Samuel Beckett: the Comic Gamut. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1962.

Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1961.

Fries-Dieckmann, Marion. “Beckett and The German Language: Text and Image,” Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 18 (2007): 201–211. 

Hubert, Marie-Claude. Langage et corps fantasmé dans le théâtre des années cinquante: Ionesco, Beckett, Adamov. Paris: Librairie J. Corti, 1987.

Lecossois, Hélène. “Les vestiges du corps dans le théâtre de Samuel Beckett.” Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 20 (2008): 259–69.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. 

Little, James. “Beckett’s ‘Mongrel Mime:’ Politics and Aesthetics,” Journal of Beckett Studies 27, no. 2 (2018): 193–210. 

Longuenesse, Pierre. “Beckett et la musique.” In Un tombeau pour Beckett, ed. Elisabeth Angel-Perez and Alexandra Poulain. Brussels: Éditions Aden, 2014.

McAllister, Jonathan. Beckett, Performance and the Miming Body in Theatre, Film and Television. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2026.

McMullan, Anna. Performing Embodiment in Samuel Beckett’s Drama. London and New York: Routledge, 2020.

Montini, Chiara. “L’impossible récit. L’autobiographie au miroir de l’autotraduction (Company/ Compagnie),” Revue d’étude du roman des xxe et xxie siècles 60 (2015): 83–93.

Simpson, Hannah. “Waiting for Godot and the Fascist Aesthetic of the Body.” In Beckett and Politics, edited by W. Davies and H. Bailey, 155–71. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020.

Tajiri, Yoshiki. Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body: The Organs and Senses in Modernism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Van Hulle, Dirk. Genetic Criticism: Tracing Creativity in Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Van Hulle, Dirk, and Mark Nixon. Samuel Beckett’s Library. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.