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
Waiting for Godot on as a ringmaster—but Beckett dissuaded him: "I don't in my ignorance agree with the round and feel "Godot" needs a very closed box." He even contemplated at one point having a "faint shadow of bars on stage floor" but, in the end, decided against this level of what he called "explicitation". In his 1975 Schiller Theater production, there are times when Didi and Gogo appear to bounce off something "like birds trapped in the strands of [an invisible] net", in James Knowlson's description. "Because the play is so stripped down, so elemental, it invites all kinds of social and