Beckett Directs: Endgame and Krapp's Last Tape

Summary

“For me theater is first of all a relaxation from work on fiction. We are dealing with a definite space and with people in this space. That's relaxing.”

“Directing too?”

Beckett laughs: “No, not very. It's exhausting.”

Beckett's involvement with theater has increased with the years. The main product of that affair is twenty-one extant plays, excluding the several abandoned fragments. The byproduct of that affair is intense attention to performance of those scripts, beginning with the lost Kid. Written in French in 1931, while Beckett was a graduate student at Trinity College, Dublin, the play is a parody of Corneille's Le Cid, mocking the unity of time. Twenty-four-year-old Beckett played Don Diègue, the aged father of the Kid, in period costume but a bowler hat. The play had only two performances and did not inspire Beckett to continue with theater. Five years later, asked by a friend to help her with a play, Beckett “began to hang around on the fringes of various dramatic groups in Dublin.” Other than the aborted Human Wishes, however, he was still not inspired to continue with theater. Ten years later, in 1947, Eleuthéria bears witness to his familiarity with problem plays, simultaneous sets, Pirandellian quips.