BECKETT and the BBC THIRD PROGRAMME Julie Campbell

BECKETT AND THE BBC THIRD PROGRAMME

Julie Campbell

This article aims to demonstrate how Samuel Beckett’s work for radio was produced within a very particular context: as part of the cultural experiment in radio broadcasting undertaken by the Third Programme, and how there were concerted efforts on the part of the BBC Drama Department to encourage Beckett to write for them, resulting in work he wrote specifically for the 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 the 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 constitué une partie intégrante d’une expérience culturelle lancée par le Troisième Programme de la BBC, la rédac- tion du Drama Department déployant tous ses efforts pour encourager Beckett à écrire pour cette station. Aussi a-t-il contribué avec prédilection à leur pro- duction entre 1956 et 1962. En même temps on procède à une analyse des ré- actions du public que le travail de Beckett a suscitées, pour les situer par rap- port au média de la radiodiffusion de masse et à celui de la radiodiffusion pour un public restreint.

Beckett was contacted by the BBC in 1956 to discover if he would be interested in writing a play for them. Their interest followed the 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 the radio medium took place during the very short time span of six years, yet the plays have been produced and broadcast widely, with repeats by the BBC, and productions in many countries around the world. As recently as 2006 all these radio plays were produced by the Gare St. Lazare Players on Irish radio (RTE Radio One). There are only five plays (six if Rough for Radio I is included), and yet they have an important, if neglected, 110 Julie Campbell place in his oeuvre and a considerable significance in relation to his future work for the stage, television and his prose fiction. Beckett’s work is eminently suited to the radio medium. Mary Bryden quotes Beckett’s words to André Bernold: “I have always written for a voice” (32). This focus on the voice, and its all-important cor- ROODU\íVLOHQFHíFDQEHWUDFHGWRKLVYHU\ILUVWSXEOLVKHGVWRU\³$s- sumption” (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 the function of seeing” (25). The significance of the voice and the act of listening is clear in work preceding his radio pieces, such as Watt (1953). In the writing that followed his first and subsequent radio work the focus on the voice and the listening activity increased. The tape recorder provided by the 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 the broadcast readings from the Trilogy íOHDGLQJGLUHFWO\WRKrapp’s Last Tape (1958). This play, alongside others, such as the teleplay Eh Joe (1967), and the stage plays Footfalls (1976), That Time (1976) Rockaby (1981) and Ohio Impromp- tu (1981), places the act of listening as the central focus. The audience watches a figure that listens, and, significantly, listens alongside the figure. In the prose fiction the listening activity is often foregrounded, and in the entry “Voice” in The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett his use of the voice in Company (1980) is discussed in radiophonic terms: “the enigmatic disembodied sound that swells out of the dark- ness like a radio transmission, for all its paradoxes and ambiguities, for all its irresolutions, is SB’s most profound and complex literary crea- tion” (Ackerley and Gontarski, 614). Beckett and radio: it seems a per- fect alliance of writer and medium. His work was particularly suited to the Third Programme, and it is extremely unlikely that he would have been invited to write for the BBC if that Programme had not existed. At its inception the enterprise was considered revolutionary in relation to existing BBC programming. It began broadcasting in 1946, at a time when there was a surprisingly keen interest in culture apparent amongst the listening public. It ceased broadcasting in 1970, but during the twenty-four years of its existence its mission was twofold: on the one hand to preserve the cultural herit- age by presenting significant work from the past, and on the other to promote new, experimental work. It deliberately set out to provide lis- teners with difficult, serious art work, and broadcast music, prose fiction, poetry, plays, and also discussions relating to the fields of art, phi-