Performing Beckett at the Irish Border

Abstract

This article examines the place of Beckett’s work amongst recent artworks sited at the Northern Irish border/ north of Ireland border. Using Dylan Quinn’s Fulcrum, the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival’s Walking for Waiting for Godot, and the collaborative community project Across and In-Between as key examples, I explore how Beckett’s work has become absorbed into the kinds of wider arts and political discourses—and indeed crises—that this border-site reflects. These projects share a concern for placing bodies at the border, asking us to see from the situation of the border, to trace its often-impalpable contours with the frail tools of words and bodies.