Description
Book SynopsisOffering fresh studies of Samuel Beckett in pre-production, in rehearsal, as an innovator of the script form, and as a speculative director and designer,
Beckett's Laboratory reconsiders Beckett's stringent approach to stage direction through the lens of the laboratory and reveals his experimentalism with stage representation and composition. Wakeling argues that acknowledging Beckett's experimental processes, from their composition to their reception, is crucial to understanding the innovative representations of humanity that emerged at different stages in Beckett's practice.Repositioning Beckett's performance oeuvre in relation to philosophy, Wakeling draws upon post-dramatic, symbolist, materialist and post-structural understandings of theatre performance to reappraise Beckett's plays as a composition for performance. The philosophical underpinnings of Beckett's practices are explored through an eclectic mix of familiar and unexplored contemporary theatre productions and film
Trade ReviewA refreshing and enlightening approach to Samuel Beckett’s 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
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1: Laboratory Acts Without Words Chapter 2: Sensory Deprivation Chapter 3: Impediment and the Symbolist Dramaturgical Inheritance Chapter 4: Dream Space, the Other Laboratory Chapter 5: Catastrophe and the Politics of Spectacle Chapter 6: Hypnosis: A Theory of Beckett Spectatorship Chapter 7:
Adaphatrôce, or the Contentious Fringes of Beckett’s Dramaturgy Notes Bibliography Index
