ExVoCo / CrossingLines

When Samuel Beckett wrote the television play »Quad« for four actors, lighting and percussion for Süddeutscher Rundfunk in 1981, it was the realisation of an idea he had already formulated in 1937: the creation of a completely new form of theatrical expression through the elimination of language. In this geometric pantomime, which Gilles Deleuze certified in one of his last essays in 1995 as having »no other determinations« »than its formal peculiarities«, Beckett brings theatre closer to music than ever before. Consequently, the Greek composer Zesses Seglias, a master student of Beat Furrer, has undertaken to fully musicalise Beckett's television play: His sound theatre »Qu4d« is now receiving its spectacular world premiere at the Vienna Konzerthaus by united vocal and instrumental ensembles from Stuttgart and Barcelona.