Janusz Pyda OP: I'd like to begin our discussion of Ohio Impromptu as we began our conversation about Rough for Theatre: with a question about the title. An impromptu is a short musical piece of any form; a sort of brief improvisation. What is the connection between the play and its title, and why Ohio?

Antoni Libera: Yes, the word impromptu is associated with music; Schubert and Chopin wrote the most famous ones. But the term was already in use by playwrights. Molière was the first to use it, in his miniature play Impromptu de Versailles when his players were performing there. In the twentieth century one example is Giraudoux, who wrote Impromptu de Paris. Another is Ionesco, with his Impromptu de l'Alma and Impromptu de Beaubourg. Most of these little pieces were ironic little commentaries on theatre and drama, and the place names attached to them indicated the place where they were first performed.

This is also the case here. Beckett wrote this little play at the request of Stanley Gontarski, a professor at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, and the main organizer of a literary symposium about Beckett on the occasion of his 75th birthday in 1981; he wanted Beckett to write something specially for the occasion. But there is one difference between Beckett's Impromptu and its predecessors: it is not about theatre.

J. P.: Well, what is it about? What is the problem Beckett is analysing here?

A. L.: We'll get to that step by step, as always. Before labelling and classifying we will first describe what happens on stage and what the characters talk about.

J. P.: In this case it seems a relatively simple task. Two strikingly similar figures – they might be twins – sit at a rectangular table placed parallel to the stage. They are old men with long white hair, dressed in long black coats. One of them sits facing the audience, at the long side of the table; the other sits on the right, at the short end, his left profile to the audience. They sit in identical postures, bent low over the table, head propped on right hand, left hand on the table. On the table, more or less in the middle, is a wide-brimmed black hat; before the man on the right is a book, open at its last pages.