BECKETT, Samuel. Ohio Impromptu and Catastrophe [unpublished, bound offprint of typescripts].

Two 'Dramaticules', Presented to the Director of their Debut Performances

BECKETT, Samuel. Ohio Impromptu and Catastrophe [unpublished, bound offprint of typescripts]. [S.a. (not before 1982).]

Bound A4 facsimile of typescript; limp faux-leather wrappers secured with two marginal brass fasteners, upper cover lettered ‘“Ohio Impromptu”| “Catastrophe” | by Samuel Beckett’ in gilt, 1 f. blue paper bound in after Ohio Impromptu; ff. [1], 4; [1], 5, printed to rectos only; minor wear to edges and corners; some offsetting to blank versos from the ‘sticky’ raised ink-surface characteristic of early xerography, else internally clean throughout; Beckett’s presentation inscription ‘for | Alan, Jean [Schneider] | with love | from Sam’ to first leaf.

Facsimile typescripts of two of Beckett’s late plays in a presentation binding, warmly inscribed by the author to Alan Schneider – director of the first productions of both works – and his wife Jean.

Ohio Impromptu was written late in 1980 for a 1981 symposium in Columbus, Ohio, to mark the author’s seventy-fifth birthday, produced at the request of Beckett scholar and Associate Professor of English at Ohio State University Stanley Gontarski. The premiere (9 May 1981), a single performance at the Stadium II Theatre, Ohio State, was directed by Schneider, with David Warrilow as the Reader and Rand Mitchell as the Listener. Onstage, both sit at a table, the former reading from a book recounting a story of solitude, loss, and vain consolation. Beckett later disclosed that the ‘dear face’ evoked by the Reader was that of his wife Suzanne: ‘I’ve imagined her dead so many times. I’ve even imagined myself trudging out to her grave’ (conversation with James Knowlson). The play, however, ‘through its visual and verbal imagery […] manages to transcend any purely personal inspiration’ (Knowlson).

Writing to Beckett after the premiere, Schneider reported that ‘the play went very well. Audience response was excellent […]. The visual image was very strong. The two men completely alike in the coats and wigs (which I was, luckily, able to have made without charge by the best wig-maker in New York.) There are some laughs, not entirely expected by me, related to L[istener]’s knocking, wanting R[eader] to go back in his reading’ (16 May 1981). Catastrophe, bound here with Ohio Impromptu, was written in French in 1982 and translated by Beckett in the same year. Dedicated to Czech dramatist Václav Havel, it was first performed in French at the Avignon Festival on 21 July 1982, ‘as part of a tribute by various writers to Václav Havel’ (Beckett to Schneider, 22 May 1982). Among the starkest of Beckett’s late miniatures, it presents a silent, passive Protagonist manipulated by a Director and his Assistant, who adjust his posture, clothing, and bearing with clinical precision for an unseen audience. At once a study in political oppression as well as of authorship, performance, and the ethics of representation, the play is ‘a fitting tribute to the leader of the Velvet Revolution, at a ‘turning point’ (the literal meaning of ‘catastrophe’) in his own and his country’s fortunes’ (Ackerley and Gontarski).

Schneider expressed his enthusiasm for the play, noting the suitability of David Warrilow for the Protagonist and proposing a double bill with Ohio Impromptu as ‘an interesting contrast of vocal and physical image’ (11 July 1982). Beckett agreed (Paris, 23 July 1982): ‘Like your suggestion of doing it with David in conjunction with Impromptu’), their correspondence leading to a New York run of Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, and What Where at the Harold Clurman Theatre (15 June 1983–15 April 1984; 394 performances). It is likely that this presentation copy of the typescripts of Ohio Impromptu and Catastrophe was printed in association with the occasion.

Provenance: From the library of Alan and Eugenie (‘Jean’) Schneider; Jean Schneider died in the summer of 2025 at the age of one hundred and one.

See Schneider, Entrances: An American Directors Journey (1986); Harmon ed., No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett & Alan Schneider (1998); Ackerley and Gontarski, The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett (2006); Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (1996).

SKU: 2124812