About the work
Wordless mime by Samuel Beckett, written in French in the late 1950s and first published in summer 1959 in the magazine "New Departures." According to consistent external sources, its stage premiere took place on 25 January 1960 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; a conflicting date of 1964 found in one other source could not be confirmed.
Plot
Two men, A and B, lie in sacks and are roused each morning by a goad. A moves through his morning routine of dressing, eating and praying slowly, as if in a dream, while B performs the same actions briskly and with purpose. At the end, the cycle begins again.
Cultural significance
The piece varies the premise of "Act Without Words I" into a doubled, contrastingly paced routine, read as a Sisyphean image of repetitive, meaningless labour.