Eleutheria (play) Eleutheria (play) Eleutheria (sometimes rendered Eleuthéria: see image) is a play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1947. It was his first completed dramatic endeavor ( Samuel Johnson). Roger Blin considered staging it in the early 1950s, but opted for "Waiting for Godot", because its smaller cast size made it easier to stage. At this point, Beckett suppressed the manuscript. Beckett later recycled the name "Krap" (with two Ps) for his play "Krapp's Last Tape". In 1985, Beckett's longtime American publisher, Barney Rosset, was fired after a buyout of Grove Press. Beckett offered to help Rosset, and proposed translating
Krapp's Last Tape subtracting rather than in adding. Beckett has applied character to non-human elements in his plays before, e.g. the light in "Play", the music in "Words and Music". "Beckett instructed the actor Pierre Chabert in his 1975 Paris production of the play 'to become as much as possible one body with the machine ... The spool is his whole life.'" Krapp no longer owns the memories on the tapes. His mind is no longer capable of holding onto them. The recorder also serves as proxy. When John Hurt, as Krapp, is transfixed by the retelling of the events in the punt