As one of the most ingenious artists of the silent film era Buster Keaton stands out for his
legendary comedies. While drawing on vaudeville traditions he also knew how to exploit
techniques the new medium film offered to create ¿ visually surprising ¿ comic situations many
of which became an unforgettable part of film history. Transferring and adapting his theatrical
skills to the screen he invented a whole new repertoire of aesthetic devices. Numerous
elements of his approach to the art of mise-en-scène would turn up again albeit in modified
and more radical forms in dramatic theories and plays of playwrights such as Bertolt Brecht
Luigi Pirandello Eugène Ionesco Samuel Beckett and Antonin Artaud. This study looks at how
Buster Keaton anticipated an aesthetic multiplicity that would come to shape dramatic concepts
the art of representation and the language of performance in modern European theatre.
