I. Pain as a creative force. "Happily melancholy" : pleasure and pain in early Beckett / Mark Nixon ; Mourning becomes electric : mediating loss in Eh Joe / Graley Herren ; Beckettian pain, in the flesh : singularity, community and "the work" / Garin Dowd ; The body in pain and freedom of the mind : performing Beckett and Noh / Mariko Hori Tanaka -- II. Pain in the age of uncertainty. "Frankly now, is there pain?" : Beckett, medicine and the composition of pain / Peter Fifield ; "Strange pain" : archive, trauma and testimony in Samuel Beckett and Christian Boltanski / David Houston Jones ; Everyday life and the pain of existence in Happy days / Yoshiki Tajiri -- III. Pain at the limit of the human. "We have our being in justice" : Samuel Beckett's How it is / Jonathan Boulter ; "That or groan" : paining and de-paining in Beckett / Mary Bryden ; The appearance of the human at the limit of representation : Beckett and pain in the experience of language / Michiko Tsushima.