Ecology in Beckett’s Theatre Garden: Or How to Cultivate the Oikos

This article seeks to offer a new way of engaging with the ecological potential of Beckett’s theatre by approaching it, metaphorically, as a theatre garden . In doing so, it brings together, for the first time, two disparate trends in Beckett’s scholarship – the ecocritical and haptic – and argues for an ecology grounded in affect and temporality. While many of Beckett’s works are mentioned in the article, special attention is given to the short play Footfalls , which is presented as a work where the oikos or what Jean-François Lyotard terms ‘the troublesome guest’ is allowed a space to emerge. As well as arguing for an alternative form of ecology, the decision to read Beckett’s theatre through the figure or trope of the garden is motivated by an attempt to question the so-called anthropocentric basis of the theatre medium in general and, more specifically, to find a mode of writing able to capture and express the ‘ecological affect’ of Beckett’s plays in performance.