What is the Semantic Laboratory?

The Semantic Laboratory is an investigation by Red Tape's company
members into the works and ideas of artists and intellectuals across all media and disciplines. It is an opportunity to explore the language and semiotics that define the structure of our work. The purpose is to build a shared "semantic" language with which to collaborate. These labs take place at St. Peter's Church.  Please feel free to join the discussion even if you haven't had the opporunity to read the books!

For more information on upcoming events, please contact us at info@redtapetheatre.com.


Red Tape's Suggested Reading

The Precession of Simulacra by Jean Baudrillard

"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The Simulacrum is true." ~Ecclesiastes 

Read The Precession of Simulacra online at Stanford University's website, click here.


Introduction to "Absurd Drama" by Martin Esslin
 
"'The Theatre of the Absurd' is a term coined by the critic Martin Esslin for the work of a number of playwrights, mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s. The term is
derived from an essay by the French philosopher Albert Camus. In his 'Myth of Sisyphus', written in 1942, he first defined the human situation as basically meaningless and absurd. The 'absurd' plays by Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter and others all share the view that man is inhabiting a universe with which he is out of key. Its meaning is indecipherable and his place within it is without purpose. He is bewildered, troubled and obscurely threatened." (Dr. Jan Culik, University of Glasgow)

Read Esslin's Introduction to "Absurd Drama" online at Samuel-Beckett.net.


Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts, by Kevin F. McCarthy, Elizabeth Heneghan Ondaatje, Laura Zakaras, Arthur Brooks. 

For more information on the study and a free PDF download of the study go to: www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG218/.