Author: Irina Sirotkina
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135001432X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 245
Book Description
The touch and movement senses have a large place in the modern arts. This is widely discussed and celebrated, often enough as if it represents a breakthrough in a primarily visual age. This book turns to history to show just how significant movement and the sense of movement were to pioneers of modernism at the turn of the 20th century. It makes this history vivid through a picture of movement in the lives of an extraordinary generation of Russian artists, writers, theatre people and dancers bridging the last years of the tsars and the Revolution. Readers will gain a new perspective on the relation between art and life in the period 1890-1920 in great innovators like the poets Mayakovsky and Andrei Bely, the theatre director Meyerhold, the dancer Isadora Duncan and the young men and women in Russia inspired by her lead, and esoteric figures like Gurdjieff. Movement, and the turn to the body as a source of natural knowledge, was at the centre of idealistic creativity and hopes for a new age, for a 'new man', and this was true both for those who looked forward to the technology of the future and those who looked back to the harmony of Ancient Greece. The book weaves history and analysis into a colourful, thoughtful affirmation of movement in the expressive life.
The Sixth Sense of the Avant-Garde
Author: Irina Sirotkina
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135001432X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 245
Book Description
The touch and movement senses have a large place in the modern arts. This is widely discussed and celebrated, often enough as if it represents a breakthrough in a primarily visual age. This book turns to history to show just how significant movement and the sense of movement were to pioneers of modernism at the turn of the 20th century. It makes this history vivid through a picture of movement in the lives of an extraordinary generation of Russian artists, writers, theatre people and dancers bridging the last years of the tsars and the Revolution. Readers will gain a new perspective on the relation between art and life in the period 1890-1920 in great innovators like the poets Mayakovsky and Andrei Bely, the theatre director Meyerhold, the dancer Isadora Duncan and the young men and women in Russia inspired by her lead, and esoteric figures like Gurdjieff. Movement, and the turn to the body as a source of natural knowledge, was at the centre of idealistic creativity and hopes for a new age, for a 'new man', and this was true both for those who looked forward to the technology of the future and those who looked back to the harmony of Ancient Greece. The book weaves history and analysis into a colourful, thoughtful affirmation of movement in the expressive life.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135001432X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 245
Book Description
The touch and movement senses have a large place in the modern arts. This is widely discussed and celebrated, often enough as if it represents a breakthrough in a primarily visual age. This book turns to history to show just how significant movement and the sense of movement were to pioneers of modernism at the turn of the 20th century. It makes this history vivid through a picture of movement in the lives of an extraordinary generation of Russian artists, writers, theatre people and dancers bridging the last years of the tsars and the Revolution. Readers will gain a new perspective on the relation between art and life in the period 1890-1920 in great innovators like the poets Mayakovsky and Andrei Bely, the theatre director Meyerhold, the dancer Isadora Duncan and the young men and women in Russia inspired by her lead, and esoteric figures like Gurdjieff. Movement, and the turn to the body as a source of natural knowledge, was at the centre of idealistic creativity and hopes for a new age, for a 'new man', and this was true both for those who looked forward to the technology of the future and those who looked back to the harmony of Ancient Greece. The book weaves history and analysis into a colourful, thoughtful affirmation of movement in the expressive life.
The Sixth Sense
Author: Robert Finch
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487596928
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 599
Book Description
It has long been the custom to condemn eighteenth-century French poetry outright as generally unworthy of attention. However, in keeping with a recent change of attitude towards this vast and diverse body of literature, Professor Finch here undertakes to isolate a certain group of poets, belonging to the first half of the century, who may appropriately be called individualistes and who are in various ways characteristic of a definite and important trend of their time. The authors he has chosen were selected from the larger group of individualists because each provides, in addition to his poems, a complete statement of his own conception of poetry and of that conception which is common to the group as a whole. Since the works treated are comparatively unfamiliar the author has considered them from a historical and an analytical as well as a critical point of view. In addition he has devoted three special chapters to a literary historian (Evrard Titon du Tillet) and to three critical theorists (Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Yves-Marie André, and Charles Batteux) whose contemporary writings, while they may or may not have influenced the poets here examined, support, reflect, or confirm their ideas and practice. Texts of these poets are not easily available and the numerous representative quotations from the poems given in this book will be welcomed by the reader.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487596928
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 599
Book Description
It has long been the custom to condemn eighteenth-century French poetry outright as generally unworthy of attention. However, in keeping with a recent change of attitude towards this vast and diverse body of literature, Professor Finch here undertakes to isolate a certain group of poets, belonging to the first half of the century, who may appropriately be called individualistes and who are in various ways characteristic of a definite and important trend of their time. The authors he has chosen were selected from the larger group of individualists because each provides, in addition to his poems, a complete statement of his own conception of poetry and of that conception which is common to the group as a whole. Since the works treated are comparatively unfamiliar the author has considered them from a historical and an analytical as well as a critical point of view. In addition he has devoted three special chapters to a literary historian (Evrard Titon du Tillet) and to three critical theorists (Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Yves-Marie André, and Charles Batteux) whose contemporary writings, while they may or may not have influenced the poets here examined, support, reflect, or confirm their ideas and practice. Texts of these poets are not easily available and the numerous representative quotations from the poems given in this book will be welcomed by the reader.
The Sixth Sense of the Avant-Garde
Author: Irina Sirotkina
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350014311
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Machine generated contents note: -- List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Note on text/translation List of abbreviations Introduction: Movement and exuberant modernism Chapter 1 The sixth sense -- The senses -- Muscular feeling and kinaesthesia Chapter 2 Search for deeper knowledge -- The kinaesthetic intellect -- 'The higher sensitivity' -- Kinaesthesia and synaesthesia Chapter 3 Expression in dance -- The new dance -- The Russian Hellenes -- 'Ach, the devil take it, they're dancing here again' Chapter 4 Speaking movement -- The perfect language: Andrei Bely on gesture -- The dance-word: the creative union of Esenin and Duncan -- Word plasticity: the budetliane and the bare-footed Chapter 5 By 'the fourth way' -- The mystic arts -- From Dalcroze to Gurdjieff -- 'Presence' Chapter 6 Thinking with the body -- Mayakovsky dances the fox-trot -- Brik-dance -- Who thought up biomechanics? Chapter 7 Art as bodily knowledge -- Technique -- Kinaesthesia in culture Further reading -- Notes -- Index
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350014311
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Machine generated contents note: -- List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Note on text/translation List of abbreviations Introduction: Movement and exuberant modernism Chapter 1 The sixth sense -- The senses -- Muscular feeling and kinaesthesia Chapter 2 Search for deeper knowledge -- The kinaesthetic intellect -- 'The higher sensitivity' -- Kinaesthesia and synaesthesia Chapter 3 Expression in dance -- The new dance -- The Russian Hellenes -- 'Ach, the devil take it, they're dancing here again' Chapter 4 Speaking movement -- The perfect language: Andrei Bely on gesture -- The dance-word: the creative union of Esenin and Duncan -- Word plasticity: the budetliane and the bare-footed Chapter 5 By 'the fourth way' -- The mystic arts -- From Dalcroze to Gurdjieff -- 'Presence' Chapter 6 Thinking with the body -- Mayakovsky dances the fox-trot -- Brik-dance -- Who thought up biomechanics? Chapter 7 Art as bodily knowledge -- Technique -- Kinaesthesia in culture Further reading -- Notes -- Index
2024
Author: Günter Berghaus
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111435962
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 546
Book Description
The first part of Volume 14 of the Yearbook presents ten essays concerned with Futurism in Italy, Russia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Germany, and two focusing on dance and typography. Among other things, this publication provides analysis of the futurist manifestos from late 1910 and 1911 and Velimir Khlebnikov’s futurist essays, as well as the networks of Futurism in Odessa. In the second part, a section on Caricatures and Satires of Futurism in the Contemporary Press examines five humorous images from five countries, in which the movement and its leader were lampooned. This section is followed by nine reviews of recent exhibitions, conferences and publications, and an annual bibliography with details of 128 new books on Futurism. Futurism from international, comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives Transcultural view of international avant-gardes
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111435962
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 546
Book Description
The first part of Volume 14 of the Yearbook presents ten essays concerned with Futurism in Italy, Russia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Germany, and two focusing on dance and typography. Among other things, this publication provides analysis of the futurist manifestos from late 1910 and 1911 and Velimir Khlebnikov’s futurist essays, as well as the networks of Futurism in Odessa. In the second part, a section on Caricatures and Satires of Futurism in the Contemporary Press examines five humorous images from five countries, in which the movement and its leader were lampooned. This section is followed by nine reviews of recent exhibitions, conferences and publications, and an annual bibliography with details of 128 new books on Futurism. Futurism from international, comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives Transcultural view of international avant-gardes
The Sixth Sense of the Avant-garde
Author: Irina Sirotkina
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781350014343
Category : Avant-garde (Aesthetics)
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
The touch and movement senses have a large place in the modern arts. This is widely discussed and celebrated, often enough as if it represents a breakthrough in a primarily visual age. This text turns to history to show just how significant movement and the sense of movement were to pioneers of modernism at the turn of the 20th century. It makes this history vivid through a picture of movement in the lives of an extraordinary generation of Russian artists, writers, theatre people and dancers bridging the last years of the tsars and the revolution
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781350014343
Category : Avant-garde (Aesthetics)
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
The touch and movement senses have a large place in the modern arts. This is widely discussed and celebrated, often enough as if it represents a breakthrough in a primarily visual age. This text turns to history to show just how significant movement and the sense of movement were to pioneers of modernism at the turn of the 20th century. It makes this history vivid through a picture of movement in the lives of an extraordinary generation of Russian artists, writers, theatre people and dancers bridging the last years of the tsars and the revolution
Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics
Author: Margarete Vöhringer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000911071
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics presents an innovative look at the Russian avant-garde and its cultural encounters with the sciences in the 1920s. The book examines some of the lesser known entanglements between architects, filmmakers and philosophers, on the one hand, and experimental psychologists and physiologists on the other. In Russia, famous avant-garde artists, such as El Lissitzky, Vassily Kandinsky and Dziga Vertov, helped propagate a movement referred to as "psychotechnics" that was emerging at the time in Germany and the United States and eventually led to a "psychotechnical boom." At the end of the story told in the book, it becomes clear that this boom continues to the present day. By analyzing concrete projects undertaken by Russian artists and scientists in cooperation with one another, and by drawing on as-yet-unpublished archival material, Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics challenges the established notion of socialist sciences. At the same time, it provides an entirely new picture of what was thought to be modern art, thereby demonstrating that artistic experimentation had much more than a mere metaphorical meaning in Russian arts in the 1920s. In 2007 Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics was acknowledged with an award for interdisciplinary research by the Wilhelm-Ostwald-Society, Großbothen. In 2011 the book received funding from the VolkswagenStiftung to be translated into English and Russian (the Russian edition was published by NLO books in 2019). The original German edition also received favorable reviews in NZZ, NTM, Derive, Junge Welt and Sehepunkte.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000911071
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics presents an innovative look at the Russian avant-garde and its cultural encounters with the sciences in the 1920s. The book examines some of the lesser known entanglements between architects, filmmakers and philosophers, on the one hand, and experimental psychologists and physiologists on the other. In Russia, famous avant-garde artists, such as El Lissitzky, Vassily Kandinsky and Dziga Vertov, helped propagate a movement referred to as "psychotechnics" that was emerging at the time in Germany and the United States and eventually led to a "psychotechnical boom." At the end of the story told in the book, it becomes clear that this boom continues to the present day. By analyzing concrete projects undertaken by Russian artists and scientists in cooperation with one another, and by drawing on as-yet-unpublished archival material, Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics challenges the established notion of socialist sciences. At the same time, it provides an entirely new picture of what was thought to be modern art, thereby demonstrating that artistic experimentation had much more than a mere metaphorical meaning in Russian arts in the 1920s. In 2007 Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics was acknowledged with an award for interdisciplinary research by the Wilhelm-Ostwald-Society, Großbothen. In 2011 the book received funding from the VolkswagenStiftung to be translated into English and Russian (the Russian edition was published by NLO books in 2019). The original German edition also received favorable reviews in NZZ, NTM, Derive, Junge Welt and Sehepunkte.
Literature and the Sixth Sense
Author: Philip Rahv
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin
ISBN:
Category : Literature, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 472
Book Description
Includes essays on Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet letter), Henry Miller, Henry James, Arthur Koestler, Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Herman Melville, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, and others.
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin
ISBN:
Category : Literature, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 472
Book Description
Includes essays on Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet letter), Henry Miller, Henry James, Arthur Koestler, Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Herman Melville, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, and others.
Mr. B
Author: Jennifer Homans
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812984781
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 817
Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • “A fascinating read about a true genius and his unrelenting thirst for beauty in art and in life.”—MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography and the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Baillie Gifford Prize Based on a decade of unprecedented research, the first major biography of George Balanchine, a broad-canvas portrait set against the backdrop of the tumultuous century that shaped the man The New York Times called “the Shakespeare of dancing”—from the bestselling author of Apollo’s Angels New York Times Editors’ Choice • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, Oprah Daily Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—The New York Times called him “the Shakespeare of dancing.” His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr. B carries us through Balanchine’s tumultuous and high-pitched life story and into the making of his extraordinary dances. Balanchine’s life intersected with some of the biggest historical events of his century. Born in Russia under the last czar, Balanchine experienced the upheavals of World War I, the Russian Revolution, exile, World War II, and the Cold War. A co-founder of the New York City Ballet, he pressed ballet in America to the forefront of modernism and made it a popular art. None of this was easy, and we see his loneliness and failures, his five marriages—all to dancers—and many loves. We follow his bouts of ill health and spiritual crises, and learn of his profound musical skills and sensibility and his immense determination to make some of the most glorious, strange, and beautiful dances ever to grace the modern stage. With full access to Balanchine’s papers and many of his dancers, Jennifer Homans, the dance critic for The New Yorker and a former dancer herself, has spent more than a decade researching Balanchine’s life and times to write a vast history of the twentieth century through the lens of one of its greatest artists: the definitive biography of the man his dancers called Mr. B.
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812984781
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 817
Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • “A fascinating read about a true genius and his unrelenting thirst for beauty in art and in life.”—MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography and the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Baillie Gifford Prize Based on a decade of unprecedented research, the first major biography of George Balanchine, a broad-canvas portrait set against the backdrop of the tumultuous century that shaped the man The New York Times called “the Shakespeare of dancing”—from the bestselling author of Apollo’s Angels New York Times Editors’ Choice • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, Oprah Daily Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century—The New York Times called him “the Shakespeare of dancing.” His radical approach to choreography—and life—reinvented the art of ballet and made him a legend. Written with enormous style and artistry, and based on more than one hundred interviews and research in archives across Russia, Europe, and the Americas, Mr. B carries us through Balanchine’s tumultuous and high-pitched life story and into the making of his extraordinary dances. Balanchine’s life intersected with some of the biggest historical events of his century. Born in Russia under the last czar, Balanchine experienced the upheavals of World War I, the Russian Revolution, exile, World War II, and the Cold War. A co-founder of the New York City Ballet, he pressed ballet in America to the forefront of modernism and made it a popular art. None of this was easy, and we see his loneliness and failures, his five marriages—all to dancers—and many loves. We follow his bouts of ill health and spiritual crises, and learn of his profound musical skills and sensibility and his immense determination to make some of the most glorious, strange, and beautiful dances ever to grace the modern stage. With full access to Balanchine’s papers and many of his dancers, Jennifer Homans, the dance critic for The New Yorker and a former dancer herself, has spent more than a decade researching Balanchine’s life and times to write a vast history of the twentieth century through the lens of one of its greatest artists: the definitive biography of the man his dancers called Mr. B.
A Companion to Experimental Cinema
Author: Federico Windhausen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111910792X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
An exploration of what experimental cinema was, is, and might become A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a collection of original essays organized around both theoretical and historical issues of concern to film scholars, programmers, filmmakers, and viewers. Newly-commissioned essays written by specialists in the field, along with dialogues conducted with a diverse range of practitioners, focus on core subjects to present an international array of overlapping and contrasting perspectives. This unique text not only provides detailed accounts of particular films and filmmakers, but also discusses new approaches of understanding, characterizing, and shaping experimental cinema. The Companion offers readers an accessible point of entry to the material while seeking to contribute to scholarly debates. Essays explore a wide range of topics within the realm of experimental film, including the shift from traditional biography to broader contexts, the increased attention afforded to local and transnational circuits of exchange, and the deepening of theoretical considerations regarding cultural identity and cinematic aesthetics. Key themes and concepts are inter-woven throughout the text, offering fresh perspectives on experimental cinema’s dialogues with other modes and practices of film and video, its interactions with the non-cinematic arts, its responses to changing technological landscapes, and more. An essential addition to the field, the Companion: Balances introductory summaries and scholarly dialogue with existing literature Explores how the study of experimental cinema can benefit from scholarship in other disciplines Includes numerous analyses of films that are readily available to view via digital media Discusses both canonical and obscure or neglected works Examines the effects of the growing diversification of experimental film scholarship A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a valuable resource for scholars of film studies and art history, curators and programmers, critics and bloggers, filmmakers and artists, and anyone interested in exploring experimental or avant-garde cinema.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111910792X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 484
Book Description
An exploration of what experimental cinema was, is, and might become A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a collection of original essays organized around both theoretical and historical issues of concern to film scholars, programmers, filmmakers, and viewers. Newly-commissioned essays written by specialists in the field, along with dialogues conducted with a diverse range of practitioners, focus on core subjects to present an international array of overlapping and contrasting perspectives. This unique text not only provides detailed accounts of particular films and filmmakers, but also discusses new approaches of understanding, characterizing, and shaping experimental cinema. The Companion offers readers an accessible point of entry to the material while seeking to contribute to scholarly debates. Essays explore a wide range of topics within the realm of experimental film, including the shift from traditional biography to broader contexts, the increased attention afforded to local and transnational circuits of exchange, and the deepening of theoretical considerations regarding cultural identity and cinematic aesthetics. Key themes and concepts are inter-woven throughout the text, offering fresh perspectives on experimental cinema’s dialogues with other modes and practices of film and video, its interactions with the non-cinematic arts, its responses to changing technological landscapes, and more. An essential addition to the field, the Companion: Balances introductory summaries and scholarly dialogue with existing literature Explores how the study of experimental cinema can benefit from scholarship in other disciplines Includes numerous analyses of films that are readily available to view via digital media Discusses both canonical and obscure or neglected works Examines the effects of the growing diversification of experimental film scholarship A Companion to Experimental Cinema is a valuable resource for scholars of film studies and art history, curators and programmers, critics and bloggers, filmmakers and artists, and anyone interested in exploring experimental or avant-garde cinema.
Beckett's Laboratory
Author: Corey Wakeling
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350153133
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
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, 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 films of Beckett's works, including Not I, Nacht und Träume, Happy Days, Footfalls and Catastrophe. Beckett's Laboratory is a provocative examination of Beckett's experimentalism with the human spectacle and his playful reliance upon the interpretative powers of the actors and audience.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350153133
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
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, 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 films of Beckett's works, including Not I, Nacht und Träume, Happy Days, Footfalls and Catastrophe. Beckett's Laboratory is a provocative examination of Beckett's experimentalism with the human spectacle and his playful reliance upon the interpretative powers of the actors and audience.