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''Rough for Radio I'' is a short radio play by
Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1961 and first published in ''
Minuit'' 5 in September 1973 as ''Esquisse radiophonique''. Its first English publication as ''Sketch for Radio Play'' was in ''Stereo Headphones'' 7 (spring 1976). It first appeared under its current title in ''Ends and Odds'' (Grove 1976, Faber 1977).
"Plans for a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
production, with
Humphrey Searle
Humphrey Searle (26 August 1915 – 12 May 1982) was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoen ...
providing the music, were made soon after the publication of the original French version but came to nothing and a later BBC proposal to produce the play without music was rejected by Beckett in the late 1970s. According to the Beckett estate the French version was produced by ORTF (
Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française
L'Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (ORTF; ) was the national agency charged, between 1964 and 1975, with providing public radio and television in France. All programming, and especially news broadcasts, were under strict control ...
) in 1962, although Beckett himself seems later to have forgotten about this production."
[Fox, C., ]
Square Dances an introduction to the music of Richard Rijnvos
in ''The Musical Times'' winter 1999 (volume 140, number 1869)
A complete run of all Beckett's radio plays was presented by
RTÉ Radio 1
RTÉ Radio 1 ( ga, RTÉ Raidió 1) is an Irish national radio station owned and operated by RTÉ and is the direct descendant of Dublin radio station 2RN, which began broadcasting on a regular basis on 1 January 1926.
The total budget for th ...
in 2006 to celebrate the centenary of the author's birth; ''Rough for Radio I'' was broadcast on April 12.
The work has also been produced on compact disc by the British pianist
John Tilbury
John Tilbury (born 1 February 1936) is a British pianist. He is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's music, and since 1980 has been a member of the free improvisation group AMM.
Early life and education
Tilbury s ...
who also speaks the part of "He". It was recorded at
Trinity College of Music and Electronic Music Studio,
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wo ...
,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, in 2004/5 along with a version of ''
Cascando
''Cascando'' is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in French in December 1961, subtitled ''Invention radiophonique pour musique et voix'', with music by the Franco-Romanian composer Marcel Mihalovici. It was first broadcast on France ...
'', the music composed and performed by John Tilbury with
electronic modulations by Sebastian Lexer.
Synopsis
An unnamed woman visits a gloomy man, who we learn is called
Macgillycuddy. She is under the impression that she is there on his invitation; he says not but nevertheless allows her entry. He is civil, formal, his conversation
phatic
In linguistics, a phatic expression (, ) is a communication which primarily serves to establish or maintain social relationships. In other words, phatic expressions have mostly socio-pragmatic rather than denotational functions. They can be obse ...
. He effects a faux-subservience with his continual use of "
Madam", but takes no steps to make her stay comfortable, refusing to provide even "a little heat" or "a little light"
[Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 107] but he doesn't go so far as to forbid her squatting on the thick cushion she sees.
"
experience a practiced talker at work in the female well-wisher, with her reliable memory and inventory of conversational 'gambits' at the ready. Despite her skill, she is stymied in her efforts to advance the conversation by the male
protagonist's uncooperative obdurac
He refuses to accommodate her desire to establish a probing 'frame', to elicit the information that her curiosity craves."
[Brown, V., ]
Yesterday’s Deformities: A Discussion of the Role of Memory and Discourse in the Plays of Samuel Beckett
'', (doctoral thesis) Even when she expresses concern for how troubled he seems to her the man refuses, as
Vladimir (Waiting for Godot), Vladimir would put it, to "return the ball." He is a model of polite restraint, but why?
She has come, she informs him, to listen but then asks if she can "see them".
He says not but he does permit her to operate the two knobs that control the music and the words she has come to hear. "
it live?" she wants to know. He doesn't answer other than to instruct her how to control the sounds: "
oumust twist … To the right." His subsequent answers indicate there are individuals behind the sounds, one producing words, the other music. Each is alone, isolated from the other and required to produce their respective sound continually without respite. The man says he can't however describe their conditions for her. Both sounds are faint and "not together". The woman wants them louder but the volume never varies while she is there.
Having heard as much as she needs she wants to know if Macgillycuddy likes what he hears. For once he opens up and confesses that "
has become a
need
A need is dissatisfaction at a point of time and in a given context. Needs are distinguished from wants. In the case of a need, a deficiency causes a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death. In other words, a need is something required for a ...
" but admits nothing more. She readies to go, leaving him to his "needs" (a rather sardonic remark which he fails to counter). Before she exits, she asks a strange question: "Is that a
Turkoman?" Predictably the man ignores the question and goes to show her out. She takes a wrong turn and nearly walks into where they keep the "''house'' garbage" implying that there are other locations that produce waste.
After she has left there is a long pause. The audience then hears the sound of two curtains being drawn evocative of those around a hospital bed.
The man picks up the telephone receiver and dials. We only hear his side of the following phone conversations. He asks the young lady who answers the phone – he refers to her as "
Miss" – to have the doctor call him back. He says that it's urgent and waits impatiently for the phone to ring.
It is hard to believe this is the same man who was so proper with his woman visitor only a few lines earlier. Could this be a different point in time completely? Or were the curtains available all the time but were only closed while he attended to his unwelcome visitor?
He gets a return call but it's only to inform him that they cannot locate the doctor. She rings off and he curses her: "
Slut
''Slut (archaic: slattern)'' is an English-language term for a person, usually a woman or girl, who is considered to have loose sexual morals or who is sexually promiscuous. It is usually used as an insult, sexual slur or offensive term of d ...
!"
[Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 111] His agitation builds. He's beginning to panic.
The phone rings a second time. This time it may be the doctor who asks a number of pertinent questions to which the answers are, "they’re ending", "this morning", "she’s left me", "they’re together" and "how could they meet?" The voice on the end of the phone tries to reassure him that "last … gasps" are all alike and then rings off telling him he'll receive a visit in an hour. Macgillycuddy slams the phone down and curses again. This time he uses the word "
Swine!" suggestive of the fact that he has been talking to a different person, most likely a male.
A few moments later the phone rings one final time. He's now told not to expect the doctor before noon the next day; he has two births (first gasps?) to attend to, one of which is
breech.
Music and Voice are then heard ", ending, breaking off together, resuming together more and more feebly"
and then there is nothing.
After a long pause the man whispers, "Tomorrow … noon …"
Interpretation
Critics tend to avoid or at best gloss over this short piece.
"Beckett's play is a sort of quartet, a
dialog
Dialog is an online information service owned by ProQuest, who acquired it from Thomson Reuters in mid-2008.
Dialog was one of the predecessors of the World Wide Web as a provider of information, though not in form. The earliest form of the Dial ...
ue between a man, 'he', and a woman, 'she', interspersed by 'Music' and 'Voice'. 'Music' and 'Voice' are, we are led to believe, going on all the time; 'he' has two buttons, which allow him to listen in to them. Within the Beckett
canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
''Rough for Radio I'' is usually thought of as a preliminary exploration of the possibilities of radio, which would be explored more fully in ''Cascando'' and ''
Words and Music''.”
Barry McGovern
Barry McGovern (born 1948) is an Irish stage, film and television actor. He was educated at Castleknock College, Dublin.
Background
McGovern is a former member of the RTÉ Players and the Abbey Theatre Company. He has worked in theatre, film, r ...
confirms that Beckett requested that "
e first ''Rough for Radio''
asnot for production, the author feeling that ''Cascando'' had overtaken it, so to speak."
In ''Rough for Radio I'', the voice and the music are switched on and off ''as if'' they are being broadcast simultaneously on two separate radio stations. The same idea is presented in ''Cascando'', but there the voice and the music do not seem to derive from an external source. Very much as the sound of the sea is in ''
Embers'', in ''Radio I'', as it is sometimes called, "
sic is not, as usual, merely functional (for instance, as
intermezzo
In music, an intermezzo (, , plural form: intermezzi), in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work. In music history, the term ha ...
,
background music
Background music (British English: piped music) is a mode of musical performance in which the music is not intended to be a primary focus of potential listeners, but its content, character, and volume level are deliberately chosen to affect behav ...
or even worse, quite simply a creator of atmosphere), but
is allotted an intrinsic role."
[Rijnvos, R., 'Samuel Beckett Today, What is it like together? Genesis of the First Production of Beckett’s ''Radio I'' ' in Buning, M. and Oppenheim, L., (Eds.) ''Beckett in the 1990s, Selected papers from the Second International Symposium held in The Hague, 8 – 12 April 1992'' (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), p 103]
But it is not simply a matter of turning a radio on and off. Voice and Music are characters in their own right. They occupy identical physical locations and conditions away from the "elicitor
as Merle Tönnies refers to him, and are apparently unaware of each other's existence. Macgillycuddy acts as a master figure
ho"extorts words or sounds from his servants or victims, over whom he appears to have absolute control."
[Tönnies, M., 'Players, Playthings And Patterns: Three Stages of Heteronomy in Beckett’s Mature Drama' in Moorjani, A. and Veit, C., (Eds.) ''Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui, Samuel Beckett: Endlessness in the Year 2000'' (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001)]
Only he doesn't. Like the living statue in ''
Catastrophe
Catastrophe or catastrophic comes from the Greek κατά (''kata'') = down; στροφή (''strophē'') = turning ( el, καταστροφή). It may refer to:
A general or specific event
* Disaster, a devastating event
* The Asia Minor Catastro ...
'' Voice and Music are capable of rebellion, even if that rebellion is simply to die and thus upset the ''
status quo''. As the play moves on it becomes clear that they are slipping out of his control. In many ways it is "obvious that the master is as dependent on his servants as they are on him."
Rather than the doctor being needed to attend to the ailing Voice and Music, Barry McGovern has put forward the thought that it is the man himself who is seeking medical attention and draws a parallel with the
Bolton and Holloway story in ''Embers''.
It has also been suggested that the knobs access a kind of
sonar
Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances (ranging), communicate with or detect objects on o ...
, which could allow the visitor to monitor the two babies that are waiting to be born. There could be a personal connection too. He says everyone has left him. This might include a pregnant wife.
The fact that Voice and Music occupy two identical spaces could represent wombs but there is too little to work with here to be sure.
Works inspired by
''Radio I'' is a realisation of ''Rough for Radio I'', which the Dutch
composer Richard Rijnvos made for
Nederlandse Omroep Stichting
The Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (; NOS ; English: Dutch Broadcasting Foundation) is one of the broadcasting organisations making up the Netherlands Public Broadcasting system. It has a special statutory obligation to make news and sports progra ...
(NOS) in 1991.
Michael Gough
Francis Michael Gough ( ; 23 November 1916 – 17 March 2011) was a British character actor who made more than 150 film and television appearances. He is known for his roles in the Hammer Horror Films from 1958, with his first role as Sir Arthu ...
played 'He' and
Joan Plowright
Joan Ann Olivier, Baroness Olivier, (née Plowright; born 28 October 1929), professionally known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English retired actress whose career has spanned over seven decades. She has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony ...
, 'She'. The composer
John Cage was the voice with music by the Ives Ensemble.
In Raymond Gervais's 2006 work ''Je suis venue pour écouter'' (''I Have Come to Listen''), extracts from ''Esquisse radiophonique'' as well as from his own translation of ''
Rough for Radio II
''Rough for Radio II'' is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in French in 1961 as ''Pochade radiophonique'' and published in '' Minuit'' 16, November 1975. Beckett translated the work into English shortly before its broadcast on BBC R ...
'' appear on the cover of CD cases grouped together on the wall. Displayed in total darkness, the installation can only be discovered partially, with the use of a
flashlight.
References
External links
blip.tv audio fileRTÉ audio fileWebsite of Richard Rijnvos
*Live production by A Somber Threat Theatre Ensembl
{{Beckett
1961 plays
Theatre of the Absurd
Plays by Samuel Beckett