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Ohio Impromptu is a "playlet"[1] by Samuel Beckett.
Written in English in 1980, it began as a favour to S.E. Gontarski, who requested a dramatic piece to be performed at an academic symposium in Columbus, Ohio, in honour of Beckett’s seventy-fifth birthday. Beckett was uncomfortable writing to order and struggled with the piece for nine months before it was ready. It was first performed on 9 May 1981 at the Stadium II Theater; Alan Schneider directed with David Warrilow as "Reader" and Rand Mitchell as "Listener".
"It is the first Beckett play to present a Doppelgänger on stage, another Beckett pair, but this time seen as mirror images; it belongs to Beckett’s ghost period, where phantoms that echo the haunting quality of memory and nostalgia in his work are seen or described on stage."[2]
- ^ Letter to Alan Schneider dated 3 December 1980. Quoted in Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 418
- ^ Calder, J., Review: Three Beckett Plays at the Harold Clurman Theatre, New York, 1983 Archived 7 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine, Journal of Beckett Studies, Nos 11 and 12, December 1989