Thoughts on Samuel Beckett

Beckett wrote many of his works in French and then translated them into English. Krapp’s Last Tape was one of the few plays that Beckett originally wrote in English, his native language.

Krapp’s Last Tape is partly a fictionalized account of a 1945 visit Beckett made to Dublin, where, in his mother’s old bedroom, he had an epiphany of what the rest of his writing career would look like. 

“Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is to the modern drama what James Joyce, his fellow Irishman and one-time employer, is to the modern novel: a father and patron saint whose shadow stretches inescapably into the 21st century.” --- Ben Brantley, The New York Times 

“Beckett had an unerring light on things…” --- Harold Pinter

“[Beckett] was a father of modern theatre, who dwelt somewhere up in the heavens, isolated from the hubbub down below.” --- Vaclav Havel

“When Beckett writes, he’s writing with the theater as opposed to writing for the theater.” --- Jennifer Tarver (director, Krapp’s Last Tape)

“That’s what life is. It’s the man, it’s the banana, it’s the peel, and it’s the fall.” --- Brian Dennehy