Ohio Impromptu
Encyclopedia
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
.
Written in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
in 1980, it began as a favour to S.E. Gontarski, who requested a dramatic piece to be performed at an academic symposium in Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
in honour of Beckett’s seventy-fifth birthday. Beckett was uncomfortable writing to order and struggled with the piece for nine months before it was ready. It was first performed on 9 May 1981 at the Stadium II Theater; Alan Schneider
Alan Schneider
Alan Schneider was an American theatre director and mentor responsible for more than 100 theatre productions. In 1984 he was honored with a Drama Desk Special Award for serving a wide range of playwrights...
directed with David Warrilow as “Reader” and Rand Mitchell as “Listener”.
“It is the first Beckett play to present a Doppelgänger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
on stage, another Beckett pair, but this time seen as mirror image
Mirror image
A mirror image is a reflected duplication of an object that appears identical but reversed. As an optical effect it results from reflection off of substances such as a mirror or water. It is also a concept in geometry and can be used as a conceptualization process for 3-D structures...
s; it belongs to Beckett’s ghost
Ghost
In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...
period, where phantoms that echo the haunting quality of memory and nostalgia
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...
in his work are seen or described on stage.”
Characters and Action
Two old men are sitting at right anglesAngle
In geometry, an angle is the figure formed by two rays sharing a common endpoint, called the vertex of the angle.Angles are usually presumed to be in a Euclidean plane with the circle taken for standard with regard to direction. In fact, an angle is frequently viewed as a measure of an circular arc...
to each other beside a rectangular
Rectangle
In Euclidean plane geometry, a rectangle is any quadrilateral with four right angles. The term "oblong" is occasionally used to refer to a non-square rectangle...
table. They are “[a]s alike in appearance as possible” both wearing long black coats and possessing long white hair. The table is white as are the chairs. The character known as “Listener” is facing the audience but his head is bowed and his face hidden. The other character, “Reader’s” posture is similar the only difference being that he has a book in front of him open at the last pages. A single “[b]lack wide-brimmed hat” is sitting on the table. The characters “could have been borrowed from Rembrandt” though no specific painting has been suggested as an inspiration. “Rubin’s
Edgar Rubin
Edgar John Rubin was a Danish psychologist/phenomenologist, remembered for his work on figure-ground perception as seen in such optical illusions like the Rubin vase. He once worked as a research associate for Georg Elias Müller.-External links:*...
figure-ground experiments” have also been suggested.
As soon as Reader starts to read Listener knocks on the table with his left hand at which point Reader pauses, repeats the last full sentence and then waits for a further knock on the table before recommencing. This continues throughout the entire reading and is reminiscent of “Krapp’s
Krapp's Last Tape
Krapp's Last Tape is a one-act play, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"...
earlier relishing in selected passages from his tapes.” “At one point the Listener stops the Reader from turning back to an earlier page to which the text refers, and at another the Reader pauses at a seemingly ungrammatical structure in the text, says, ‘Yes’ -- his one ‘impromptu’http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/impromptu remark -- and re-reads it. Other than that one word he only vocalises exactly what is printed on the page.
Listener makes Reader repeat the last sentence of his tale and then the book is closed. “Nothing is left to tell" and yet Listener insists on knocking one last time but there is nothing more to read. The two look at each other without blinking until the light fades.
The Story
The narrativeNarrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
, written in the past tense
Past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
, tells a story of someone, possibly Listener himself, who in a “last attempt to obtain relief” following the loss of a loved one, moves away to the Isle of Swans, a place where they never had been together. In doing this he completely disregards their warning, when they appeared to him in a dream: “Stay where we were so long alone together, my shade will comfort you.”
He soon realises that he has made “a terrible mistake. Familiar surroundings could have soothed and ‘sedated’ him through their long association with his loved one, but unfamiliar surroundings accentuate his total sense of deprivation. In his bereaved
Grief
Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...
state, everything conspires to remind him of what he has lost.” For whatever reason he is unable to go back, to undo what he had done. He is plagued by night terror
Night terror
A night terror, also known as a sleep terror, incubus attack, or pavor nocturnus, is a parasomnia disorder that predominantly affects children, causing feelings of terror or dread, typically occur in the first few hours of sleep during stage 3 or 4 NREM sleep...
s, something he had suffered from in the past, so far back in fact it was “as if [they had] never been.” As a result he finds he can’t sleep.
One night however (which could just as easily have been ‘Once upon a time
Once upon a time
"Once upon a time" is a stock phrase that has been used in some form since at least 1380 in storytelling in the English language, and seems to have become a widely accepted convention for opening oral narratives by around 1600. These stories often then end with ".....
’) as he is sitting with his head in his hands and trembling all over a man appears from nowhere. He explains that he has been sent by the man’s loved one to bring him comfort at which point he pulls “a worn volume from the pocket of his long black coat and [reads from it] till dawn” after which he vanishes without another word. We learn that it is a “sad tale” but no more. This continues night after night, the man appears “unheralded” and “without preamble” begins to read and disappears at dawn “without a word.”
Eventually the “loved one” determines that this has gone on long enough. So, after completing his reading one last time, the man remains and explains that this will be his final appearance; he has been told that his comforting is no longer needed and he is no longer empowered to return even if he wanted to. For a time the two, who through the many nights of readings had grown “to be as one”, sit on in silence buried in “profounds of mind … as though turned to stone.”
David Warrilow recalls Beckett’s advice to him when he undertook the role: “Now, the most useful intention that Beckett gave me early on in the Ohio Impromptu experience was to treat it like a bedtime story
Bedtime story
A bedtime story is a traditional form of storytelling, where a story is told to a child at bedtime to prepare them for sleep.Bedtime stories have many advantages, for parents/adults and children alike. The fixed routine of a bedtime story before sleeping has a relaxing effect, and the soothing...
and let it be soothing.”
Biographical Insights
Beckett would often take a biographical event in his own life and strip away all the biographical details, leaving the barest minimum of language and theme .“Beckett served for a time as Joyce’s
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
amanuensis
Amanuensis
Amanuensis is a Latin word adopted in various languages, including English, for certain persons performing a function by hand, either writing down the words of another or performing manual labour...
… the two men used to walk together on the Isle of Swans during the thirties and … Joyce used to wear a Latin Quarter hat.” Beckett confirmed these details with reference to the piece during a dinner conversation with James Knowlson. “Of course,” he said. Knowlson then mentioned that he had heard people refer to the “dear face” “as if it too were the face of Joyce”. Knowlson believed it was actually a woman and Beckett concurred: “It’s Suzanne
Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil
Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil was the tennis-partner, lover, and later wife of Samuel Beckett.In the 1930s, Beckett, an avid tennis fan his whole life, chose Déchevaux-Dumesnil as his lover over the heiress Peggy Guggenheim...
… I’ve imagined her dead so many times. I’ve even imagined myself trudging out to her grave.” “When he wrote Ohio Impromptu [his wife] was eighty years old [and although for some time they lived quite separate lives they] had nonetheless remained a couple for over forty years” and “the thought of Suzanne dying was intolerable to him.”
The character in the story is plagued by night terrors and insomnia
Insomnia
Insomnia is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties. While the term is sometimes used in sleep literature to describe a disorder demonstrated by polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep, insomnia is often defined as a positive response to either of two questions:...
, as was Beckett. All his life he was troubled by nightmare
Nightmare
A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...
s. “His insomnia was probably inherited, from his mother who suffered from the same … complaint. In the 1930s Beckett also began to experience panic attack
Panic attack
Panic attacks are periods of intense fear or apprehension that are of sudden onset and of relatively brief duration. Panic attacks usually begin abruptly, reach a peak within 10 minutes, and subside over the next several hours...
s. “Chief among these was a feeling of suffocation
Asphyxia
Asphyxia or asphyxiation is a condition of severely deficient supply of oxygen to the body that arises from being unable to breathe normally. An example of asphyxia is choking. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which primarily affects the tissues and organs...
, which often came on him in his room as night was falling.
The title of the play deserves some comment: Ohio Impromptu is a “straightforwardly descriptive [title], marking occasion and genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
– impromptus
Impromptu
An impromptu is a free-form musical composition with the character of an ex tempore improvisation as if prompted by the spirit of the moment, usually for a solo instrument, such as piano...
à la Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
and Giraudoux
Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...
(which were metatheatrical or self-reflexive exercises) – or more like the intricate little solo pieces Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
and Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
called impromptus. “In promising an impromptu – a performance without preparation – the title of the play subverts its own promise when followed by a text which allows no extemporaneous composition, no improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
on the part of the actors.
“‘Ohio’ is [also] the answer of an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
children's riddle
Riddle
A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and...
which goes "what is high in the middle and round at the ends" or "what is high in the middle and nothing at the ends". The answer to both versions is ‘Ohio’. This gives the central theme of Beckett's play: ‘two voids or "nothings’- birth and death - and between the high of life.”
Interpretation
Critics differ in their interpretations of who or what Reader is. Whether an apparition, Listener’s alter egoAlter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
or an alternate aspect of his mind the nightly ‘reading’ is clearly an essential part of Listener’s healing process. Beckett theatre specialist, Anna McMullan claims that “[i]n both Rockaby
Rockaby
Rockaby is a short one-woman play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1980, at the request of Daniel Labeille, who produced it on behalf of Programs in the Arts, State University of New York, for a festival and symposium in commemoration of Beckett's 75th birthday...
and Ohio Impromptu the speaking of the text becomes a rite of passage
Rite of passage
A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person's progress from one status to another. It is a universal phenomenon which can show anthropologists what social hierarchies, values and beliefs are important in specific cultures....
which enacts a transformation – from loss to comfort, from life to death and from speech to silence.” In Rockaby the woman has stayed on in the family home after her mother’s death; Listener has elected to run away.
“As with Company, the author again returns to a theme he has portrayed many times, that loneliness and nostalgia are too personal, after a certain age, to be shared with any being other than oneself.” “The image of the river (the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
) with its two arms flowing into one another after they have divided to flow around the island … is a clue to the meaning of the play. For at its emotional centre lies sadness, loss and solitude, contrasted with a memory of togetherness.” So why does Listener move to the Isle of Swans rather than away? The location may have had a certain meaning for Beckett-the-person but Beckett-the-writer chose it more for its geographical features, the two rivers merging into one and also the fact that a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
stands on the isle representing the literal New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
that Ohio is part of and the metaphorical new world that Listener moves to.
The arrangement of figures actually “resembles the figures used in the psychological experiments early [in the 20th] century to establish the principle of closure
Gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies...
.” The divided self is a common means of approach to Beckettian texts and has been applied to Krapp’s Last Tape, Footfalls
Footfalls
Footfalls is a play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English, between 2 March and December 1975 and was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre as part of the Samuel Beckett Festival, on May 20, 1976 directed by Beckett himself. Billie Whitelaw, for whom the piece had been written, played...
, That Time
That Time
For the song "That Time" by Regina Spektor see Begin to HopeThat Time is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett, written in English between 8 June 1974 and August 1975...
and even Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
.
Beckett may have had his own wife in mind when he wrote the play but he goes to some pains never to specify the name or gender of the loved one. This gives the text extra depth. The man could be grieving for a father or, more likely bearing in mind Beckett’s other works, his mother. Also there is nothing to prevent the loved one being a male partner and homoerotic
Homoeroticism
Homoeroticism refers to the erotic attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female , most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements...
readings of Beckett’s work are not uncommon.
As regards Reader, Gontarski himself has argued that what we are seeing is effectively a dramatisation of “the elemental creative process … suggested in That Time, where the protagonist of narrative A would hide as a youth, ‘making up talk breaking up two or more talking to himself being together that way’.”
Others suggest that Reader is the “shade
Shade (mythology)
In literature and poetry, a shade can be taken to mean the spirit or ghost of a dead person, residing in the underworld....
”, some kind of spectral emissary, despatched by Listener’s dead lover to help him through the grieving process. In an early draft of the play Beckett had focussed “on a ghost returning from the Underworld
Underworld
The Underworld is a region which is thought to be under the surface of the earth in some religions and in mythologies. It could be a place where the souls of the recently departed go, and in some traditions it is identified with Hell or the realm of death...
to speak at …a conference
Academic conference
An academic conference or symposium is a conference for researchers to present and discuss their work. Together with academic or scientific journals, conferences provide an important channel for exchange of information between researchers.-Overview:Conferences are usually composed of various...
”; the only vestige of that remaining is the pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
on “White nights” - Whitenights
Whiteknights Park
Whiteknights Park, or the Whiteknights Campus of the University of Reading, is the principal campus of that university. The park covers the area of the manor of Earley Whiteknights, also known as Earley St Nicholas and Earley Regis.Whiteknights Park is some two miles south of the centre of the town...
, Reading
Reading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....
is where a great many of his manuscripts are now stored and the address of the Beckett International Foundation.
“The narrative echoes (but does not replicate or anticipate) the stag(ed) image.” “In the text we are told that the figures remain: ‘Buried in who knows what profounds of mind’. On stage, however, they raise their heads to meet each other’s eyes in meaningful contemplation.” It is therefore equally plausible that the two men on stage are not the same as the two men in the story. “Like an author, Listener occasionally calls for the repeat of a phrase, but Reader has his own agency, repeating a phrase unbidden at least once.” One factor that suggests this might not in fact be the case is the fact that there is only one hat between the two of them.
After the story has been read and the book closed Listener knocks once more, the signal to begin again from where Reader had left off. “What do words say when there is nothing left to tell” though? Beckett was obsessed by a desire to create what he called a "literature of the unword", and this, perhaps, represents one of the best examples of this effort.
Beckett on Film
In the Beckett on FilmBeckett on Film
Beckett on Film was a project aimed at making film versions of all nineteen of Samuel Beckett's stage plays, with the exception of the early and unperformed Eleutheria. This endeavour was successfully completed, with the first films being shown in 2001.The project was conceived by Michael Colgan,...
project, modern cinematic techniques
Cinematic techniques
- Basic Definitions of Terms :Aerial Shot:A shot taken from a crane, plane, or helicopter. Not necessarily a moving shot.Backlighting:The main source of light is behind the subject, silhouetting it, and directed toward the camera....
allowed Reader and Listener to both be played by the same actor, literally fulfilling Beckett's instruction that the two characters should be "as alike in appearance as possible" and following the interpretation that they are really elements in the one personality. In the text the pair only look directly at each other at the very end but in this production they communicate visually
Eye contact
Eye contact is a meeting of the eyes between two individuals.In human beings, eye contact is a form of nonverbal communication and is thought to have a large influence on social behavior. Coined in the early to mid-1960s, the term has come in the West to often define the act as a meaningful and...
throughout.
Anna McMullan, complains that this interpretation of Ohio Impromptu is “led once again by a psychologized approach to performance [since] Jeremy Irons
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy John Irons is an English actor. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969, and has since appeared in many London theatre productions including The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the...
plays both parts and the ‘ghost’ fades away at dawn”.