Nicholas Duddy

Thesis: Suicide and the Modern Stage: Miller, Beckett, Kane, and Beyond

Supervisor: Professor Sos Eltis

Research Interests: 

• Modern and contemporary literature 
• Theatre and performance
• Dramaturgy and creative writing
• Medical humanities 
• Philosophy and literature 
• Australian literature

My research examines representations of suicide and suicidality in three influential plays staged after the Second World War: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot, 1953), and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis (2000). Through these case studies, I consider how dramatists have experimented with theatrical form to explore the ethics, aetiology, and experience of suicide. This project draws on ideas developed in several disciplines – suicidology, existential philosophy, the medical humanities – during the twentieth century. Through a long-form account of suicide in postwar theatre, I attempt to reposition dramatic art centre stage in studies of the suicidal act.