That Time

Background >

Beckett wrote the short one act drama That Time during June 1974–August 1975, and translated it in French as 'Cette Fois'. It was specially written for actor Patrick Magee, who delivered its first performance, on the occasion of Beckett's seventieth birthday celebration, at London's Royal Court Theatre on 20 May, 1976. American director Alan Schneider – who first met Beckett in 1955 and directed the United States premiere of ''Waiting for Godot'' – directed the first US production at Washington DC's Kreeger Theatre in December, 1976.

The text was first published in 1976, by Grove Press, New York, and by Faber and Faber in England. The Parisian Éditions de Minuit published the work in 1978.

The present production for the Beckett on Film project was recorded at Ardmore Studios in December 2000.

Charles Garrad, director of this production of That Time, comments 'The piece has no punctuation at all and is therefore open to interpretation. The voices are supposed to be a continuous flow of language. The voice therefore continues while the camera positions change. Niall Buggy, the actor, performed all the voices beforehand. He recorded them in blocks, with different intonations, and we edited them together. Then he performed to playback, reacting to the voices as they came back at him. Though his face is fundamentally static, he was responding emotionally … It was very important to maintain the notion of a continuous performance. If we had faked it, cut it together like a pop video, it wouldn't have been such a convincing performance…The choice of camera movements and the changes in picture size are subjective responses to the text. Audiences have said that they were able to see the thoughts in [the Listener's] mind as they watched, and I hope this is the reaction that we have managed to provoke with the film.'