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Beckett's Play, in extenso S.E. GONTARSKI To date none of the commonly available English texts for Samuel Beckett's Play, in fact, none of the printed texts in any edition in any language, is entirely accurate. None reflects the final text Beckett took such pains to establish ; none, that is to say, includes the revisions he made after first consulting on the world premiere in Gennan (1963), then overseeing more directly nearsimultaneous productions in French and English (both 1964), and finally directing the play himself at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt in October 1978. British and Americ~ publishers tried to accommodate Beckett's production changes in various editions of the published work, but Beckett's revisions were made in as well as on stages, over an extended period. As publishers revised texts to accommodate productions, Beckett fe-revised his work to accommodate insights drawn from new productions; that is, production generally outpaced publication. The production and textual history of Play testifies, as well, to the growing professional pressures on Samuel Beckett as an international artist (if not an international commodity) by the mid-t960s. That pressure would culminate in the so-called "catastrophe" of the Nobel Prize in 1969.' The early productions of Play, moreover, suggest a singular shift in Beckett's development as a theatre artist. At this period, Beckett began to embrace theatre not as the medium through which an authored script was given its preconceived expression but as a (or even the) means through which his theatre art was created. In many respects this aesthetic shift, much of it the result of theatrical necessity, represented a break from the hegemony of modernist textuality, from Modernism itself, in fact, and a move'closer to the indetcnninacy we more often associate with post-modernist textuality. Beckett was never quite willing to abandon the authority of authorship completely, however, since even as a director he simultaneously (if not primarily) functioned as an author. But his uncertainties about the text of Play began from this period to affect all of his dramatic work, and he began to re-author earlier Model'll Drama, 42 (Fall t999) 442 Beckett's Play. in extenso 443 work as he came to direct it. The problems surrounding Play in particular, then, mark a seminal period in Beckett's developing theatrical sensibility and as such are emblematic of his altered conception of theatre itself. The composition, publication, and perfomlance history or Play is, admittedly , complicated.' Play triggered an increase in Beckell's direct involvement in the theatre, since it demanded a level of technical sophistication and precision unknown in his earlier work, and it was the staging of Play that may finally have forced a reluctant Beckett to assume full directorial responsibility for his own works. Beckell had introduced technology to his theatre with Krapp's Last Tape in 1958, shortly after working on and then hearing a tape recording of his first radio play, All That Fall ( 1957), sent rrom Ihe BBe. And the exploding umbrella of Happy Days ( 1961) still gives producers and rire wardens headaches. But the single inquisitorial spotlight - part torturer, pari orchestra conductor, even pan theatre director - situated amid the footlights, which fl ashes from face to face instantly, wasnot part of any technical dircctor 's repertoire of contraptions in 1963. And so Beckeu kepi a hand in all major European perfonnances to ensure that tcchnological compromise three separate spotlights, for instance - did not compromise performances. Originally wrillen in English in 1962~ 1 963, Play would be rewrillen with each production Beckett himself was involved with, and variousstages of that rewriting process found their way into print and, sometimes unfortunately, reprint. Play would have its premiere in Gennan; Becken reviewed the German translation by Elmar Tophoven thoroughly (although when he came Lo direct the play himself in Gennan in 1978, he revised the published Gennan translation yet again), and he attended final rehearsals for Deryk Mendel 's Spiel at the Ulmer-Theater, Ulm-Donau, Germany, 14 June 1963, in the company of director Alan Schneider, who was preparing an American production. Beckett was, however, according to Michael Lonsdale, very dissatisfied with the Gennan production: "En Allemagne, les jarres etaient trop...

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