BECKETT AND THE BBC THIRD PROGRAMME

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate how Samuel Beckett's work for radio was produced within a very particular context: as part of cultural experiment in radio broadcasting undertaken by Third Programme, and how there were concerted efforts on part of BBC Drama Department to encourage Beckett to write for them, resulting in work he wrote specifically for radio medium between 1956 and 1962. It also explores responses to Beckett's radio work recorded by Audience Research Reports, discussing them in relation to processes of listening as regards mass and minority broadcasting.Cet article se propose de montrer que le travail de Beckett pour la radio s'est fait dans un contexte bien particulier. Il a constitue une partie integrante d'une experience culturelle lancee par le Troisieme Programme de la BBC, la redaction du Drama Department deployant tous ses efforts pour encourager Beckett a ecrire pour cette station. Aussi a-t-il contribue avec predilection a leur production entre 1956 et 1962. En meme temps on procede a une analyse des reactions du public que le travail de Beckett a suscitees, pour les situer par rapport au media de la radiodiffusion de masse et a celui de la radiodiffusion pour un public restreint.Beckett was contacted by BBC in 1956 to discover if he would be interested in writing a play for them. Their interest followed success of En attendant Godot (1952). The result was All That Fall (written in 1956; first broadcast in 1957),1 which was followed by Embers (written and first broadcast in 1959), Words and Music (written in 1961; first broadcast in 1962), Cascando (written in 1962; first broadcast in 1963 [ORTF]; 1964 [BBC]) and Rough for Radio (written in early 1960s;2 first broadcast in 1976). Thus Beckett's writing for radio medium took place during very short time span of six years, yet plays have been produced and broadcast widely, with repeats by BBC, and productions in many countries around world. As recently as 2006 all these radio plays were produced by Gare St. Lazare Players on Irish radio (RTE Radio One). There are only five plays (six if Rough for Radio is included), and yet they have an important, if neglected, place in his oeuvre and a considerable significance in relation to his future work for stage, television and his prose fiction.Beckett's work is eminently suited to radio medium. Mary Bryden quotes Beckett's words to Andre Bemold: I have always written for a (32). This focus on voice, and its all-important corollary - silence - can be traced to his very first published story, Assumption (1929). Bryden comments on how the twin functions of listening and speaking are in Beckett's writing often given more weight as attestors of presence than is function of seeing (25). The significance of voice and act of listening is clear in work preceding his radio pieces, such as Watt (1953). In writing that followed his first and subsequent radio work focus on voice and listening activity increased. The tape recorder provided by BBC for Beckett to listen to All That Fall was his first introduction to this machine, and he heard Patrick McGee's 'cracked voice' in broadcast readings from Trilogy - leading directly to Krapp's Last Tape (1958). This play, alongside others, such as teleplay Eh Joe (1967), and stage plays Footfalls (1976), That Time (1976) Rockaby (1981) and Ohio Impromptu (1981), places act of listening as central focus. The audience watches a figure that listens, and, significantly, listens alongside figure. In prose fiction listening activity is often foregrounded, and in entry Voice in The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett his use of voice in Company (1980) is discussed in radiophonie terms: the enigmatic disembodied sound that swells out of darkness like a radio transmission, for all its paradoxes and ambiguities, for all its irresolutions, is SB's most profound and complex literary creation (Ackerley and Gontarski, 614). …