Filming "Play"

Anthony Minghella recalls filming Play. He descrbes that his thinking, aspirations, and even his handwritng was defined by Beckett. Play was actually the first play he ever directed in the theatre. Minghella writes, " In a novel, the reader can fully experience the author's intention of reading, but with a play or screenplay, a core element of the dramatist's art comes from the manipulation of time and space." He ends the article by saying," Everybody who loves Beckett will say the same thing: no matter how miserable or dark or cruel it appears, his work is also profoundly unifting. It's honest, naked, leavened with mischief. And full of pitty."

Sources:
Minghella, Anthony. "Play it Again, Sam". New Statesman; 3/20/2006, Vol. 135 Issue 4784, p40-42, 3p, 1 color, 1 bw

Publication Info and Observations of Beckett's "Play"

Samuel Beckett's Play was written in English in late 1962-63. First Published in German, as Spiel, in Theatre Heute (July 1963). First published in English by Faber abd Faber, London, in 1964. First performance was of Spiel, translated by Erika and Elmar Tophoven, at the Ulmer Theatre, Ulm-Donau, on 14 June 1963. First performed in Britian by the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic Theatre, London, on 7 April 1964.

Something to note about Play would be the scoring of his text. For example the characters speak alone, in unison, and at times simulatiously. Another thing is that there is very minimal puncuation through out the dialog and the use of hyphens shows how fast-pasted this play is. Finally, something else that makes this play unique is that the entire play is repeated!

Sources:

http://www.drama21c.net/text/play.htm

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett (1906–89) was an Irish playwright and novelist. Beckett is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th-century, Beckett wrote in both French and English. He emigrated to Paris in the 1920s and became an assistant to James Joyce. His first novel was Murphy (1938). Beckett's reputation is based largely on three full-length plays - Waiting for Godot (1952), Endgame (1957), and Happy Days (1961) - which explore notions of suffering, paralysis and endurance. His work is often linked to the Theatre of the Absurd with its repetitive, inventive language and obsession with futility and meaninglessness. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in literature.

Beckett had a difficult relationship with his mother, his struggle to establish himself as a writer against her determination that he should enter the family business (quantity surveying). Bouts of heavy drinking, various ailments and illnesses, probably psychosomatic in origin, solitary travels between Germany, France, and Ireland, and ‘two bad years’ ( 1933 –5 ) in London, during which Beckett made several abortive ventures into literary journalism and underwent psychoanalysis.

Sources:

"Beckett, Samuel" World Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Central Washington University. 28 May 2009

Alan Jenkins

"Beckett, Samuel (Barclay)" The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ian Hamilton. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Central Washington University. 28 May 2009