Beckett, body and Bible on agenda at new city festival

Focusing on the themes of the writer Samuel Beckett, the body and the Bible, the inaugural York Festival of Ideas, is a partnership between the University of York, York Theatre Royal, the National Centre for Early Music, York St John University and York Museums Trust.

It brings together a range of world-class speakers, exhibitions, and artistic performances exploring a series of intriguing links between past and present as well as showcasing contemporary ideas, arts and culture.

The festival will run from Thursday, June 16 to Sunday, July 10. It will explore the work of the 20th century dramatist Beckett, through readings by Nobel Laureate J M Coetzee and fellow novelist John Banville (a winner of the Booker Prize). The festival will feature performances of the playwright’s works by the Gare St Lazare Players.

The theme of the body as a site of pleasure, or as a catalyst for artistic and racial controversy, will see the City Art Gallery showcasing the controversial career of York painter William Etty.

Inspired by Rubens and Titian, Etty became the first major British artist to specialise in depicting the nude.

The festival will also celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, with a series of events.

These will include the exhibition A Book Fit for a King at York Minster’s Old Palace and a blend of early Renaissance music and digital imagery in The Greatest Story Ever Told, inspired by the Mystery Plays, at the National Centre for Early Music.

People will also have the chance to learn about Viking ice-skates and medieval stained glass, the history of the Jews in York, as well as discovering the history of Museum Gardens’ champion trees in a series of sessions and trails at the Yorkshire Museum.

One of the organisers Professor Jane Moody, the Director of the Humanities Research Centre at the University of York, said: “The festival will bring ideas into conversation with the heritage of the city to reveal new and exciting stories about York, Britain and the world. It is a celebration of ideas that has the community at its heart.”