In this dissertation I discuss the concept of self-reference in the interface between text and production in Samuel Beckett's dramatic text Endgame and Alain Robbe-Grillet's/Alain Resnais' ciné-roman/movie Last Year at Marienbad. I place different mediums and practitioners in dialogue and I contend that self-reference lends these texts a socio-political dimension. My reflections depart from the texts and employ performance, landscape and space, survival, and subjectivity theories. In the first chapter I suggest that Beckett employs self-reference to create an (in)finite space that represents a totalitarian regime while the characters employ self-reference to survive this space. In the second chapter, I document the work of performers during the 2007 Shakespeare Santa Cruz production of Endgame, as it regards self-reference. Actors arrive at the same conclusion as mine, namely that self-reference lends the play a socio-political aspect, only through different, medium specific means. In this chapter, I address issues of adaptation of the written work to stage and I compare the work of theatre practitioners with that of literary critics. In the third chapter, I contend that Robbe-Grillet employs an extensive mise en abyme to undermine the realist plot structure and replace it with the “radical, self-referential subjective point of view” which is political because it is his alternative to the univocal, ordering realist narrative which reinforces the power of the middle class. In the last chapter I show how Resnais' movie Marienbad employs self-referential German Expressionist cinematic techniques to create horror effects. As such, the movie Marienbad enhances the radical self-referential subjective point of view I discussed in the third chapter. Marienbad is also comparable in its self-referential techniques with the American offshoots of German Expressionist cinema—Universal's horror movies of the 1930s and film noir. Marienbad displays some of the political dimensions of these two genres leading me ultimately to the conclusion that self-reference has several political implications in Marienbad. This chapter also addresses issues of adaptation of the cineroman to the screen.