ACT. Johan Leysen plays Beckett

Beckett is dead but his legacy lives on in the minds of theatremakers, artists, and enthusiasts. His Stories and Texts for Nothing (1946-1952) – about an older man and his impossible search for his place in the world – is the basis of ACT. This curated Beckett evening presents a surprising mix of forms: a monologue by Johan Leysen; a video interview with scientist Jean Paul Van Bendegem about memory, neurology, machines and consciousness; and an autonomous scenography, a possible landscape for a Beckett text. Through this combination, theatremaker Kris Verdonck explores a fascination that he shares with Beckett, namely technology and the increasing conflict between humans and machines. Do we as humans still have a place in the world in which we are not only increasingly being replaced by machines, but which is also evolving towards inhabitability because of our own actions?

• As a director, Kris Verdonck explores the intersections of the visual arts, theatre, performance and architecture. He found beauty in the catastrophic in Conversations (at the end of the world) and Untitled. Over the next four years, he will research the connections between Beckett’s work – in which (the) Nothing occurs – and the secrets of 14^th-century Japanese No-theatre.