An original exploration of Samuel Beckett’s compositional experiments with theatre space, spectatorship and figurations of humanity.

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.