This curated Beckett evening presents a surprising mix of forms: a monologue by Johan Leysen; a video lecture by philosopher and mathematician Jean Paul Van Bendegem; and a performative scenography as a possible landscape for a Beckett text. Through this combination, Kris Verdonck explores a fascination that he shares with Beckett, namely technology and the increasing conflict between humans and machines.

During a meditative crying marathon that lasts almost an hour, two futuristic female characters question the mechanisms that turn personal emotions into political phenomena. In a choreography that uses video and large sheets of paper – simultaneously protest signs and drying laundry – their tears of weakness become an act of political power.

In the late 1920s, Nâzım Hikmet introduced free verse to Turkish poetry, and he was thus the first modern Turkish poet. He wrote the majority of Human Landscapes, his magnum opus, while in prison. The five hundred-page epic was only published posthumously, divided into five ‘books’. Michiel Vandevelde staged Book I last year, commissioned by steierische herbst. Book II now follows.