Rockabye and Other Short Pieces (Beckett, Samuel)

Rockaby and Other Short Pieces brings together four recent works by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting for Godot. We find in Beckett's masterful, exquisite prose, the familiar themes from his earlier works here expressed in the anguished murmurings of the solitary human consciousness. Published for the first time, Rockaby is a dramatic monologue of a woman sitting in a rocking chair. Directed by Alan Schneider, Rockaby was performed at the State University of New York at Buffalo's Beckett Festival in 1981. Also published for the first time, Ohio Impromptu explores the poignant inter-dependency of its two characters, Reader and Listener, who, in reading and listening to the story of their relationship, buoy each other up, temporarily, against "terror of the night."

Ohio Impromptu premiered at the Ohio State University at Columbus's 1981 Beckett Festival. All Strange Away is a haunting prose work centering around a figure confined in a small rotunda, buried in his/her "profounds of mind." Written especially for the actor David Warrilow, A Piece of Monologue features a white-haired man in a nightgown who, in the terrible solitude of the night, agonizes over remembrances of loved ones.