Since the first decisive intermediality occurred when orality became inscribed in writing, the arts have always known intermediality as an option. A novel can be turned into movie, a play, an opera, a ballet and a good deal more and thus be part of an intermedial processes. Yet, for the novel to be a novel, it does not need the intermedial transformation. However, in other cases intermediality is necessary for the aesthetic product to exist: a music score has to be performed; a film script has to be shot. The same film can then be shown again and again in an identical form for new audiences. Likewise, a study recording of a performance of a symphony can be reiterated as a CD or a DVD. Yet, the live, embodied performance itself in a study or a concert hall cannot. If performed again it is a new event. The same goes for theatre across the theatrical genres: intermediality is a basic condition for any dramatic genre to exist. And yet, there is a notable difference to a live concert: a classical score cannot be changed, only the performance of it. By contrast, a new performance of a drama may involve translation, abbreviations and use of new technology and still be Hamlet or Le nozze di Figaro for new audiences in new cultural contexts. Hence, intermediality in theatre defines both the basic condition for any staging of a drama and for its re-staging in a new context, often with a change of the textual basis and maybe of the very idea of what a staging is. Different from music, in theatre intermediality generates a reciprocal dynamics between text and staging that defines its cultural dynamics. My paper will exemplify this argument in relation to Mozart/da Ponte's Le nozze di Figaro and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Kris Verdonck is an artist who integrates theater, visual arts, and new media to create innovative reinterpretations of Beckett’s plays within the context of posthuman theory and cross-media art. This paper examines how Verdonck, through the fusion of technological devices, stage space, and performers, presents the crisis of subjectivity, body alienation, and language deconstruction in the posthuman era. By analyzing Actor 1, End, and Conversation Piece, the paper demonstrates how Verdonck uses devices and technology to mediate Beckett’s absurdist philosophy and explores the multiple dimensions of posthuman performance through human-machine interaction and sensory reconfiguration. This study offers significant insights into the intersection of theater and art in the posthuman context.

Contemporary art is currently experiencing a "performative" transformation, with the "presenting sign" serving as a critical dimension for understanding the construction of power within the realm of contemporary theater. Initially, after the modern stage was established, actors were either confined to textual symbols or adhered strictly to the director's vision, resulting in their appearance being consistently suppressed. Gordon Craig's "Super golem" manifesto subtly reveals the director's ambitions. However, the stage practices of Cirque du Soleil exhibit distinct characteristics. In puppet theater, puppets are transformed into objects of aesthetic experience, enabling actors to achieve an integration of "art and performance." Furthermore, the staff members who form the operational foundation of the theater are excluded from direct stage production due to the principle of theatrical illusion. This exclusion reinforces the creation of hallucinatory mechanisms.

In the process of human performers embodying puppets, a cross-media dialogue between human and nonhuman entities is actualized, pursuing the actor's self-evolution. Performers must first identify the "bodily action lines" within scenes—performance schemata composed of minute, precisely defined "somatic movements". The architect's wife's action of picking up a knife to avenge her husband is deconstructed into a sequence of protracted movements: searching, discovering, bending, contacting. Through temporal dilation effects, this choreography intensifies the synesthetic perception of puppet-object interaction. Contrary to inducing dissociation, the decelerated motions demand hyper-attention—an embodied anticipation toward the climactic grasp. Simultaneously, this amplifies the affective virulence of vengeful pathos. During this temporal distension, performers cyclically metabolize the character's psyche, generating an energetic continuum through movement precision. Does this methodology forge a *cybernetic performative apparatus? Is the purported "self-evolution" an emancipation of subjectivity or a Foucauldian intensification of *technologies of the self-through disciplinary somatics?