This curated Beckett evening presents a surprising mix of forms: a monologue by Johan Leysen; an academic lecture about memory, neurology, machines and consciousness; a video installation with an immersive (post-)apocalyptic landscape; and a concert. Through this combination, Kris Verdonck explores a fascination that he shares with Beckett, namely technology and the increasing conflict between humans and machines.

‘I am here and I have nothing to say.’ These are the words with which John Cage opened his Lecture on Nothing at the New York Artists’ Club in 1949. The text was like a hypnotizing score that mirrored the structure of Cage’s recent musical compositions – including his particular attention to silence. Jérôme Bel is now presenting the lecture in French.

They’ve had enough of lonely nights onstage, so Laura van Dolron and Willem de Wolf from the KOE want to answer all your questions. The actors search and struggle, assisted by two musicians. Every evening, this results in a live philosophical theatre concert full of poetry, thought, action, hope and despair…and ultimately there is perhaps one answer that transcends all questions.

In Museum of Lungs, author and performer Stacy Hardy talks about her life with TBC, about the years before the diagnosis, and about her treatments since. She combines intimate, personal testimonies with historical archival materials. Together with musicians Neo Muyanga and Nancy Mounir, director Laila Soliman and Hardy also show how vulnerability and disease can initiate resistance and change.

Juli Apponen exposes an autobiography of her body. Inevitably, it is about identity, sex and gender. The result is a collage of unspeakable pain, anatomical reports of far too many operations, and bureaucratic adventures. Who or what determines who or what you are? This compelling lecture performance will satisfy your curiosity, perhaps even more than you would actually like.

What is happiness? In what dark and remote corners do we have to crawl individually and collectively to find it? Together with dancers from the EnKnapGroup, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper have created a bizarre, painful and hilarious horror comedy about voracious expansion in the Wild West and all the violence that ensued as a result.

Forced Entertainment’s new production creates a world of absurd disconnection, struggle and comic repetition. The performers take part in an impossible illusion, while something unfolds that is part chaotic TV programme, part cabaret act, and part telepathic feat. The result is a compelling performance about optimism, individual agency and the desire for change: pure magic!