Beckett's Laboratory: Experiments in the Theatre Enclosure

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Offering fresh studies of Samuel Beckett in pre-production, in rehearsal, as an innovator of the script form, and as a speculative director and designer, Becketts Laboratory reconsiders Becketts stringent approach to stage direction through the lens of the laboratory and reveals his experimentalism with stage representation and composition. Wakeling argues that acknowledging Becketts experimental processes, from their composition to their reception, is crucial to understanding the innovative representations of humanity that emerged at different stages in Becketts practice. Repositioning Becketts performance oeuvre in relation to philosophy, Wakeling draws upon post-dramatic, symbolist, materialist and post-structural understandings of theatre performance to reappraise Becketts plays as a composition for performance. The philosophical underpinnings of Becketts practices are explored through an eclectic mix of familiar and unexplored contemporary theatre productions and films of Becketts works, including Not I, Nacht und Trume, Happy Days, Footfalls and Catastrophe. Becketts Laboratory is a provocative examination of Becketts experimentalism with the human spectacle and his playful reliance upon the interpretative powers of the actors and audience.

Reviews

A refreshing and enlightening approach to Samuel Becketts work as a laboratory where media of expression, liveness, the status of the audience in the creative act and the writing process itself are tested and cultivated. -- Mark Taylor-Batty, University of Leeds, UK

Author Bio

Corey Wakeling is an Associate Professor at Kobe College, Japan.