Experimental Beckett: Contemporary Performance Practices

Description

How do twenty-first century theatre practitioners negotiate the dynamics of tradition and innovation across the works of Samuel Beckett? Beckett's own tendencies toward fluidity of genre, iteration/repetition, and collaboration – modes that also define the 'experimental' – allow for greater openness than is often assumed. Reading recent performances for creative uses of embodiment, environment, and technology reveals the increasingly interdisciplinary, international, and intermedial character of contemporary Beckettian practice. The experimentation of current practitioners challenges a discourse based on historical controversies, exposing a still-expanding terrain for Beckett in performance. Cover Title page Copyright page Experimental Beckett Contents 1 Positioning the ‘Experimental’ in Beckett Introduction: A Living Legacy ‘Accursed progenitor’: An Evolutionary Model Living Laboratories: An Experimental Model Performance Cultures: An Emerging Model 2 Text and Embodiment (‘First the body’) Introduction: The Biomechanical Body Variations on Happy Days Interventions with Not I Translations in Return to Absence 3 Space and Environment (‘First the place’) Introduction: Bodied Spaces Bodies in Places: Moving the Audience Places through Bodies: Site-Responsive Performance Transforming Place: Intermedial Environments 4 Media and Technology (‘First both’) Inside the Theatre: Light and Sound Beyond the Theatre: Video and Internet Towards the Virtual: Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence 5 Beckett Beyond Boundaries: A Dialogue References Acknowledgements