Krapp's Last Tape letter to Rosset's editorial assistant, Judith Schmidt, on 11 May 1959, Beckett referred to the "staging" of "Krapp's Last Tape" as its 'creation'," and he made numerous significant changes to the text over the years as he was involved in directing the play. The first German performance, on 28 September 1959, was directed by Walter Henn at Berlin's "Schillertheater", where 10 years later, on 5 October 1969, Samuel Beckett himself staged his text in a most successful performance (with Martin Held as Krapp). The first American performance, on 14 January 1960, was directed by Alan Schneider and starred Donald Davis.
Krapp's Last Tape gratification of those very bodily appetites that, earlier, he had resolved should be out of his life. Eating bananas and drinking have become a [daily routine]. Of the physical activities that he once considered excesses only sex has come to play a reduced part in his lonely existence" in the form of periodic visits from an old prostitute. Although this is a play about memory, the sixty-nine-year-old Krapp himself remembers very little. Virtually all the recollections come from the tape. As evidenced most clearly in the novel "Murphy", Beckett had a decent understanding of a variety of mental illnesses including