Quad is a television play by Samuel Beckett, written and first produced and broadcast in 1981. It first appeared in print in 1984 (Faber and Faber) where the work is described as "[a] piece for four players, light and percussion"Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 291 and has also been called a "ballet for four people."Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 472
It consists of four actors dressed in robes, hunched and silently walking around and diagonally across a square stage in fixed patterns, alternately entering and exiting. Each actor wears a distinct colored robe (white, red, blue, yellow), and is accompanied by a distinct percussion instrument (leitmotif). The actors walk in sync (except when entering or exiting), always on one of four rotationally symmetric paths (e.g., when one actor is at a corner, so are all others; when one actor crosses the stage, all do so together, etc.), and never touch – when walking around the stage, they move in the same direction, while when crossing the stage diagonally, where they would touch in the middle, they avoid the center area (walking around it, always clockwise or always anti-clockwise, depending on the production).The version published in 1992 in French by Les Éditions de Minuit instructs the characters to walk anti-clockwise when walking around the centre point (diagram page 15), but a 1981 television version, produced by Beckett (available on YouTube: Quad I+II (play for TV)) shows the characters walking anti-clockwise around the perimeter of the square and clockwise around the centre point. In the original production, the play was first performed once, and then, after a pause, an abbreviated version was performed a second time, this time in black and white and without musical accompaniment. These are distinguished as Quad I and Quad II, though Quad II does not appear in print.
Broadcast history The play was first broadcast by the Süddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany on 8 October 1981, as Quadrat I + II. Beckett himself directed ("assisted by Bruno Voges").Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 207 The four performers, all "members of the Stuttgart Preparatory Ballet School",Bryden, M., 'Dancing Genders' in The Savage Eye / L'Oeil Fauve : New Essays on Beckett's Television Plays (Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA:Rodopi, 1995) (SBT; 4), p 110 were, Helfried Foron, Juerg Hummel, Claudia Knupfer and Susanne Rehe. The same performance was rebroadcast on 16 December 1982, by BBC Two.
Background
As far back as 1963 Beckett had thought of creating a geometrical mime. He tried to write a piece for Jack MacGowran (generally referred to as J. M. Mime) but abandoned it "in the absence of all inner need."Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 505
"Beckett’s initial conception … was to have [a pair] of characters walking along Quadrants in all possible paths starting from O (a central origin) and returning to O. But in its final realization almost twenty years later, the mime begins and ends with the void, an empty quad, and travellers deflect their steps away from O."Brienza, S. D., 'Perilous Journeys on Beckett’s Stages' in Burkman, K. H., (Ed.) Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett (London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987), p 47
The discarded work was "intended as a mime for two players (son and father or mother) who are described as naked under their coats. The stage is plotted out in a square, the four corners of which (lettered A-D) are to be marked either by two boots and two hats or by four boots, recalling the boots and hat found onstage in Godot;"Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 12 the midpoints were lettered E-G, and the centre, O.
The idea goes back even further however, "indeed Quad may be regarded as the fulfillment onstage of the goal he had set himself in 1937 in the letter to Axel Kaun,The letter, generally known as the "German Letter," is reprinted in its original German in Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, (London: Calderbooks, 1983) pp 51-54 the achieving of an entirely new means of expression through the elimination of language."Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 10
Synopsis
Quad I
"Quad is based on a geometrical figure and on permutations of regular movements. First one, then two, then three, then four figures, dancers or mime artistes, dressed in coloured djellabasThis recalls the character 'Auditor' in Not I. (white, yellow, blue and red) appear one after another to scurry along the sides and across the diagonals of a square, shuffling in strict rhythm to a rapid percussion beat. Each figure then departs in the order in which he appeared, leaving another to recommence the sequence … Strikingly all of them avoid the centre which is clearly visible in the middle of the square."Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 673
+Movements and Stages Stage Series 1 Series 2 Series 3 Series 4Onewhite---yellow---blue---red---Twowhiteblue--yellowwhite--blueyellow--redblue--Threewhitebluered-yellowwhitered-blueyellowwhite-redblueyellow-FourwhiteblueredyellowyellowwhiteredblueblueyellowwhiteredredblueyellowwhiteFive-blueredyellow-whiteredblue-yellowwhitered-blueyellowwhiteSix--redyellow--redblue--whitered--yellowwhite
+CoursesCourse 1ACCBBAADDBBCCDDACourse 2BAADDBBCCDDAACCBCourse 3CDDAACCBBAADDBBCCourse 4DBBCCDDAACCBBAAD
The four series of six stages each produce a total of twenty-four stages suggesting, as in Lessness, the measurement of time.
According to the script each character was to be unique in a number of ways. Apart from the colour of the outfit, they were to be "[a]s alike in build as possible. Short and slight for preference … Adolescents a possibility. Sex indifferent."Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 293 That said, each player's footsteps were to be distinctive, each was to be accompanied by their own musical instrument and illuminated by a light, the same colour as their outfit. For technical reasons, in the original broadcast, white light was used. To help the performers cope with the rhythmic chaos "[t]hey wore headphones under their hoods, so they could hear the percussion beats."Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 674
There is an element of chance in this piece in that Beckett does not indicate how the footsteps should differ nor which instruments should be used other than they should be percussive ("say drum, gong, triangle, wood block"). He also doesn't specify a required sequence for the colors.
The play is shown as recorded, with no cuts, just one fixed long take. Beckett had originally calculated its length at 25 minutes but, in reality, the whole set was completed in nine-and-a-half minutes.
Quad II During the end of the taping, Beckett saw the color production of Quad rebroadcast on a black and white monitor, and decided instantly to create a second part of the play, to be called Quad II. While watching technicians test the image quality for reception by monochrome receivers, Beckett was struck by the look of the tape slowed down and in black and white. He suddenly exclaimed: 'My God, it's a hundred thousand years later!'Esslin, M., 'Towards the Zero of Language' in (Eds.) Acheson, J. and Arthur, K., Beckett’s Later Fiction and Drama, (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), p 44 Seeing the hectic bustle of the performance he had already recorded transformed into the slow, dim shuffle, made Beckett imagine a future time where his walkers continue their performance.Connor, S., Slow Going, first presented at the Critical Beckett conference organized by the School of French Studies of the University of Birmingham, 26 September 1998
"The fast percussion beats were … removed and the only sounds that were heard were the slower, shuffling steps of the weary figures and, almost inaudibly, the tick of a metronome." The performers now wore identical robes and moved at half the pace. The new section, called Quad II, lasts four minutes as it only allows for one series of movements, compared to the four in Quad I.
"The second version was a masterstroke, a second act to dramatize the entropy of the motion. And, since the figures always turn left, not only at the centre but at all the corners also, the pattern is that of the damned in the Inferno. Quad is indeed a sinister piece."Gontarski, S. E., ‘Quad I & II: Beckett’s sinister mime(s) ’ in Journal of Beckett Studies, No 9, Spring 1983, pp 137,138
The director Alan Schneider wrote to Beckett (13 November 1981) after viewing the television program several times: "much moved, especially by the slower section. Want to work on that as a stage piece with some of my students here – no audience – would you mind?"No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p 415 Beckett replied (20 November 1981): "Can’t see Quad on stage. But by all means have a go."No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p 416 Later (6 February 1982) he made a qualifying remark: "Quad can’t work on stage. But no doubt interesting for students, gymnastically."No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p 422 These are fascinating remarks considering the fact that Beckett takes no real advantage of the many televisual techniques available, no close-ups, freeze frames, pans, cuts, zooms, slow-motion shots or split screens – simply a fixed camera "far South of the circle, overlooking it"Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 204 that might represent any member of a theatre-going audience.
[As with Film] Beckett's printed text was never revised to acknowledge this revision of the work's fundamental structure. No printed version of the play bears the title of the production, and so no version that includes Beckett's revisions with Quad II exists in print. Beckett's own videotaped German production, remains the only 'text' that recognizes Quad as a two part work."Gontarski, S.E., ‘Revising Himself: Performance as Text in Samuel Beckett's Theatre ’ in Journal of Modern Literature, Volume 22, Number 1
Interpretation
"Modern works of art often call for prolonged continuous close attention if one is to appreciate them. The same is true of a gator basking in the sun on a mud bank in a swamp. Anything viewed makes demands."Ziff, P., 'Anything Viewed' in Feagin, S., and Maynard, P., (Eds.) Aesthetics (London: Oxford University Press, 1997), p 28
The building blocks of Quad can be found in a number of Beckett's other works: