The staging and reception of Samuel Beckett’s theatre in France, Germany and the Czech Republic after the fall of the Berlin Wall

Research Area 1 – Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices

Contact : alice.clabaut.billier@gmail.com

My dissertation focuses on “the staging and reception of Samuel Beckett’s theatre in France, Germany and the Czech Republic after the fall of the Berlin Wall”. I am doing a joint thesis between Charles University and Sorbonne University (cotutelle contract).

My research aims to establish an aesthetic-political inventory of the staging and reception of Samuel Beckett’s plays in France, in Germany and in the Czech Republic since the playwright’s death. Beckett passed away in December 1989, one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The international comparison questions the consequences of the Cold War on the production and reception of Beckett’s plays. The three countries I am interested in faced the experience of the Iron Curtain very differently. Whilst Beckett’s work has always been highly praised in France, it was strictly censored in East Germany. While the Czechs used Waiting for Godot as a political argument during the revolution against the USSR, the French and West Germans regarded Beckett’s theatre as a revolutionary, yet philosophically and literarily, work.

Considering these differences, I discuss the extent to which aesthetic choices provide a critical prism through which various aspects of Beckett’s poetics can be emphasised. On the one hand, I point out how Beckett’s theatre highlights, in many ways, not only European traumas, left over from the Second World War and the Cold War, but also contemporary traumas. On the other hand, I observe the changing aesthetic choices in the productions, from the traditional performances inherited from Roger Blin to the most original ones, testifying to the inexhaustible importance of Beckett’s theatre.

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Formation

2017-2019: Master, Research speciality, Political Philosophy and Ethics, Sorbonne University Paris, with Honours
Thesis under the supervision of Hélène L’Heuillet: Les hommes face aux féminismes. De l’engagement masculin au masculinisme.

2016-2018: Master, Research speciality,  French and Comparative Literature, Sorbonne University Paris, Charles University Prague (Erasmus), with High Honours
Thesis under the supervision of Stéphane Desvignes: Réfléchir le temps, réfléchir au temps, avec Le roi se meurt d’Eugène Ionesco.

2012-2015: Preparatory class BL, Lycée Faidherbe Lille
Speciality: English, option: German

Teaching experience

2021-2022: Temporary lecturer for Bachelor’s students at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris (English seminar for non-specialists – “Duos et couples dans le théâtre anglophone”)

2018-2019: French language assistant, Humboldt Gymnasium, Zwickau, Germany

Communications

• “Beckett avant Beckett. Première réception des œuvres de Beckett en RDA.”, Doctoral seminar, PRITEPS Laboratory, Sorbonne University,  June 18, 2021
• “Krapp’s Last Tape :  Écouter et redécouvrir l’anglais dans toute son étrangeté”  –“Noise” Seminar, OVALE, Sorbonne University Paris, May 11, 2021
• “To archive the present or the very first Beckett production in East-Germany” – Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Conference, Memory Studies, 4EU+ research program, University of Warsaw, April 14, 2021
• “La littérature masculiniste aujourd’hui : faire parler plutôt que faire penser” – 6th Gender Masters Transdisciplinary Seminar, Sorbonne University Paris, March 14, 2018 

Articles

• “Beckett & Brecht au Palace de la République. Dialogue politique, polyphonie esthétique”, Beckett aujourd’hui, Beckett Today (in process, publication 2022)
• “To archive the present or the very first Beckett production in East-Germany” – European Pluralities Series, Memory Studies, 4EU+ research program, University of Warsaw (in process, publication 2022)

Events

• September 6 – 10, 2021: 4EU+ Summer School “Borderlands of Memory: Nationalism, Religion and Violence in Europe” organised at Charles University by the 4EU+ Alliance “Plurality of Memories in Europe in a Global Perspective” Consortium (series of lectures, workshops, and seminars from various disciplines).

Romanian conservative intellectuals and the backsliding of democracy in Central Eastern Europe in transnational perspective

Research Area 1, “Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices”.

Anemona Constantin is a political sociologist by training. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Paris Nanterre (2019), where she taught seminars in political science and social history of ideas for MA and BA students (2006-2011). Her works examine the transformations of the Romanian intellectual field after 1989, the public debates around fascism and communism that sparked in Eastern Europe during the post-socialist period, and the (re)-writing of national histories after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Romania, Bulgaria, and the Republic of Moldova.

The project conducted at CEFRES examines in a transnational perspective the contributions of Romanian conservative intellectuals to the political debates that have challenged since 2007 the “liberal consensus” established in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) after the demise of state socialism. The project brings four innovations to the literature on populism and democratic backsliding in CEE: 1) It maps the diversity of Romanian conservative intellectual networks and discourses and provides a prosopography of these actors with their transnational collaborations; 2) It historicizes the diverse (national and transnational) roots of these discourses and place them in the long history of the Cold War and the inter-war period; 3) It investigates the direct and indirect impact of conservative intellectuals on the ideology and activity of national political parties; 4) It places the Romanian case study in wider CEE trends in order to evaluate the potential peculiarity of conservative intellectuals and ideas within the regional phenomenon. This is a timely project for the current European and global political context, as discourses against minority rights, rule of law, and cultural diversity have attained worldwide currency.

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Education

2019: PhD in Political Science, University of Paris Nanterre, Thesis: “Regime change and the genesis of a new official history in Romania. Battles over the fascist and the communist past after 1989”

2006: Postgraduate Diploma (DEA) in Comparative Political Sociology, University of Paris Nanterre, Dissertation: “The social conditions of the rallying to fascism of Romanian intellectuals during the 1930s”

2005: MA in Political Science, University of Paris Nanterre

Fellowships & Participation in Collective Research Projects

December 2020 – November 2021: Fellowship at the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest, Division: Social Sciences, Research Project: “The Internationalization of Romanian Anticommunism. Transnational Biographies and the Circulation of Knowledge”

May 2018 – Avril 2020 : Team member at University of Bucharest, Department of Political Science, Center for the Study Of  Equal Opportunity Policies, Research Project Transitional Justice and Memory in Romania in Global Perspective, https://transnationalmemory.wordpress.com/our-project/. Research project: „Teaching the history of communism in Bulgaria, Romania and Republic of Moldova”

2016 – 2018 : Team member at University of Paris Nanterre, Department of Law and Political Science, French-British Research project LABEX “Les passés dans le présent” (France) and Arts and Humanities Research Council “Care for the Future” (UK) –Research Project The Criminalization of Dictatorial Pasts in Europe and Latin America in Global Perspective, https://criminalizationofdictatorialpasts.wordpress.com/about/, Research project: „Sighet Memorial of the victims of communism and the reception of Black Book of Communism in Romania”

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• “L’enseignement de l’histoire du communisme à l’Est : Bulgarie, Roumanie, République de Moldavie“, Passés Futurs, no 9, July 2021, https://www.politika.io/index.php/fr/article/lenseignement-lhistoire-du-communisme-a-lest
• (co-authored with Valentin Behr, Muriel Blaive, Laure Neumayer, Maté Zombory), “Anti-Communist Consensus: The Black Book of Communism in a Pan-European Perspective”, Special Issue „Transnational Activism and the Globalization of Anti-Communism after 1989”, Revue d’Études Comparatives Est-Ouest, vol. 51, no 2-3, 2020, https://www.cairn.info/revue-revue-d-etudes-comparatives-est-ouest-2020-2-page-55.htm.
• “Le Mémorial de Sighet entre ‘devoir de mémoire’ et contraintes de l’histoire. Analyse sociologique d’une réussite improbable”, Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review, 3, 2018, https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/60116.

Book chapters

• “L’influence des facteurs transnationaux sur l’enseignement de l’histoire du communisme en Roumanie“ in Marie Vergnon, Renaud d’Enfert, Frédéric Molle (eds.), Circulations en éducation. Passages, transferts, trajectoires, Grenoble, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2021 (forthcoming)
• “Sortir du communisme : les dé-conversions politiques d’un ‘fils du peuple roumain’“ in Jean-Philippe Heurtin, Patrick Michel, (eds.), La conversion et ses convertis, Paris, Centre Maurice Halbwachs, Politika.io, 2021
• “Roumanie : des minériades à l’intégration européenne“ in Dominique Andolfatto and Sylvie Contrepois, Syndicats et dialogue social : les modèles occidentaux à l’épreuve, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2016
• “L’échec d’une « seconde Révolution » Place de l’Université (1990)“ in Jérôme Heurtaux, Cédric Pellen (eds.), 1989 à l’est de l’Europe. Une mémoire controversée, La Tour d’Aigues, Éditions de l’Aube, 2009

Encyclopedia and Handbook Entries

• “L’écriture de récits communs : les commissions d’historiens”, “L’Institut d’Investigation des Crimes du Communisme en Roumanie”, “La Commission Tismăneanu en Roumanie (2006)“ in Sophie Baby, Laure Neumayer, Fréderic Zalewski (eds.), Condamner le passé ? Mémoires des passés autoritaires en Europe et en Amérique latine (ebook), Nanterre, Presses Universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2019