beckett (1).docx

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THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

The following article by Jerome P. Crabb was originally published on this web site on September 3,2006.

The Theatre of the Absurd is a term coined by Hungarian-born critic Martin Esslin, who made itthe title of his 1962 book on the subject. The term refers to a particular type of play which firstbecame popular during the 1950s and 1960s and which presented on stage the philosophy articulatedby French philosopher Albert Camus in his 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he defines thehuman condition as basically meaningless. Camus argued that humanity had to resign itself torecognizing that a fully satisfying rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach; in thatsense, the world must ultimately be seen as absurd.

Esslin regarded the term Theatre of the Absurd merely as a "device" by which he meant to bringattention to certain fundamental traits discernible in the works of a range of playwrights. Theplaywrights loosely grouped under the label of the absurd attempt to convey their sense ofbewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an inexplicable universe. According to Esslin, thefive defining playwrights of the movement are Eugne Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, ArthurAdamov, and Harold Pinter, although these writers were not always comfortable with the label andsometimes preferred to use terms such as "Anti-Theater" or "New Theater". Other playwrightsassociated with this type of theatre include Tom Stoppard, Arthur Kopit, Friedrich Drrenmatt,Fernando Arrabal, Edward Albee, N.F. Simpson, Boris Vian, Peter Weiss, Vaclav Havel, and JeanTardieu.

Although the Theatre of the Absurd is often traced back to avant-garde experiments of the 1920s and1930s, its roots, in actuality, date back much further. Absurd elements first made their appearanceshortly after the rise of Greek drama, in the wild humor and buffoonery of Old Comedy and the playsof Aristophanes in particular. They were further developed in the late classical period by Lucian,

Petronius and Apuleius, in Menippean satire, a tradition of carnivalistic literature, depicting a worldupside down. The morality plays of the Middle Ages may be considered a precursor to the Theatre ofthe Absurd, depicting everyman-type characters dealing with allegorical and sometimes existentialproblems. This tradition would carry over into the Baroque allegorical drama of Elizabethan times,when dramatists such as John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, Jakob Biederman and Calderon woulddepict the world in mythological archetypes. During the nineteenth century, absurd elements may benoted in certain plays by Ibsen and, more obviously, Strindberg, but the acknowledged predecessorof what would come to be called the Theatre of the Absurd is Alfred Jarry's "monstrous puppet-play"Ubu Roi (1896) which presents a mythical, grotesque figure, set amidst a world of archetypal images.Ubu Roi is a caricature, a terrifying image of the animal nature of man and his cruelty. In the 1920sand 1930s, the surrealists expanded on Jarrys experiments, basing much of their artistic theory on

the teachings of Freud and his emphasis on the role of the subconscious mind which theyacknowledged as a great, positive healing force. Their intention was to do away with art as a mereimitation of surface reality, instead demanding that it should be more real than reality and deal withessences rather than appearances. The Theatre of the Absurd was also anticipated in the dreamnovels of James Joyce and Franz Kafka who created archetypes by delving into their ownsubconscious and exploring the universal, collective significance of their own private obsessions.Silent film and comedy, as well as the tradition of verbal nonsense in the early sound films of Laureland Hardy, W.C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers would also contribute to the development of theTheatre of the Absurd, as did the verbal "nonsense" of Franois Rabelais, Lewis Carroll, Edward


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Lear, and Christian Morgernstern. But it would take a catastrophic world event to actually bringabout the birth of the new movement.

World War II was the catalyst that finally brought the Theatre of the Absurd to life. The global natureof this conflict and the resulting trauma of living under threat of nuclear annihilation put into stark

perspective the essential precariousness of human life. Suddenly, one did not need to be an abstractthinker in order to be able to reflect upon absurdity: the experience of absurdity became part of theaverage person's daily existence. During this period, a prophet of the absurd appeared. AntoninArtaud (1896-1948) rejected realism in the theatre, calling for a return to myth and magic and to theexposure of the deepest conflicts within the human mind. He demanded a theatre that wouldproduce collective archetypes and create a modern mythology. It was no longer possible, he insisted,to keep using traditional art forms and standards that had ceased being convincing and lost theirvalidity. Although he would not live to see its development, The Theatre of the Absurd is precisely thenew theatre that Artaud was dreaming of. It openly rebelled against conventional theatre. It was, asIonesco called it anti-theatre. It was surreal, illogical, conflictless and plotless. The dialogue oftenseemed to be complete gibberish. And, not surprisingly, the publics first reaction to this new theatrewas incomprehension and rejection.

The most famous, and most controversial, absurdist play is probably Samuel Becketts Waiting forGodot. The characters of the play are strange caricatures who have difficulty communicating thesimplest of concepts to one another as they bide their time awaiting the arrival of Godot. Thelanguage they use is often ludicrous, and following the cyclical patter, the play seems to end inprecisely the same condition it began, with no real change having occurred. In fact, it is sometimesreferred to as the play where nothing happens.Its detractors count this a fatal flaw and often turnred in the face fomenting on its inadequacies. It is mere gibberish, they cry, eyes nearly bulging out oftheir head--a prank on the audience disguised as a play. The plays supporters, on the other hand,describe it is an accurate parable on the human condition in which the more things change, themore they are the same. Change, they argue, is only an illusion. In 1955, the famous character actor

Robert Morley predicted that the success of Waiting for Godot meant the end of theatre as we knowit. His generation may have gloomily accepted this prediction, but the younger generation embracedit. They were ready for something newsomething that would move beyond the old stereotypes andreflect their increasingly complex understanding of existence.

Whereas traditional theatre attempts to create a photographic representation of life as we see it, theTheatre of the Absurd aims to create a ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closelyrelated to the world of dreams. The focal point of these dreams is often man's fundamentalbewilderment and confusion, stemming from the fact that he has no answers to the basic existentialquestions: why we are alive, why we have to die, why there is injustice and suffering. Ionesco definedthe absurdist everyman as Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots lost;

all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless. The Theatre of the Absurd, in a sense, attempts toreestablish mans communion with the universe. Dr. Jan Culik writes, Absurd Theatre can be seenas an attempt to restore the importance of myth and ritual to our age, by making man aware of theultimate realities of his condition, by instilling in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder andprimeval anguish. The Absurd Theatre hopes to achieve this by shocking man out of an existence thathas become trite, mechanical and complacent. It is felt that there is mystical experience inconfronting the limits of human condition.


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One of the most important aspects of absurd drama is its distrust of language as a means ofcommunication. Language, it seems to say, has become nothing but a vehicle for conventionalized,stereotyped, meaningless exchanges. Dr. Culik explains, Words failed to express the essence ofhuman experience, not being able to penetrate beyond its surface. The Theatre of the Absurdconstituted first and foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a very unreliable and

insufficient tool of communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalised speech, clichs, slogans andtechnical jargon, which it distorts, parodies and breaks down. By ridiculing conventionalised andstereotyped speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the possibilityof going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more authentically.

Absurd drama subverts logic. It relishes the unexpected and the logically impossible. According toSigmund Freud, there is a feeling of freedom we can enjoy when we are able to abandon thestraitjacket of logic. As Dr. Culik points out, Rationalist thought, like language, only deals with thesuperficial aspects of things. Nonsense, on the other hand, opens up a glimpse of the infinite.

What, then, has become of this wonderful new theatrethis movement that produced some of themost exciting and original dramatic works of the twentieth century? Conventional wisdom, perhaps,suggests that the Theatre of the Absurd was a product of a very specific point in time and, becausethat time has passed, it has gone the way of the dinosaur. In a revised edition of his seminal work,Martin Esslin disagrees: Every artistic movement or style has at one time or another been theprevailing fashion. It if was no more than that, it disappeared without a trace. If it had a genuinecontent, if it contributed to an enlargement of human perception, if it created new modes of humanexpression, if it opened up new areas of experience, however, it was bound to be absorbed into themain stream of development. And this is what happened with the Theatre of the Absurd which, apartfrom having been in fashion, undoubtedly was a genuine contribution to the permanent vocabularyof dramatic expression. [it] is being absorbed into the mainstream of the tradition from which ithad never been entirely absent The playwrights of the post-Absurdist era have at their disposal,then, a uniquely enriched vocabulary of dramatic technique. They can use these devices freely,

separately and in infinite variety of combinations with those bequeathed to them by other dramaticconventions of the past. In a New York Times piece entitled Which Theatre is the Absurd One?,Edward Albee agrees with Esslins final analysis, writing, For just as it is true that our response tocolor and form was forever altered once the impressionist painters put their minds to canvas, it isjust as true that the playwrights of The Theatre of the Absurd have forever altered our response to thetheatre.

Essay on Waiting for Godot (by Michael Sinclair)

The purpose of human life is an unanswerable question. It seems impossible to find an answerbecause we don't know where to begin looking or whom to ask. Existence, to us, seems to be

something imposed upon us by an unknown force. There is no apparent meaning to it, and yet wesuffer as a result of it. The world seems utterly chaotic. We therefore try to impose meaning on itthrough pattern and fabricated purposes to distract ourselves from the fact that our situation ishopelessly unfathomable. "Waiting for Godot" is a play that captures this feeling and view of theworld, and characterizes it with archetypes that symbolize humanity and its behaviour when facedwith this knowledge. According to the play, a human being's life is totally dependant on chance, and,by extension, time is meaningless; therefore, a human's life is also meaningless, and the realization ofthis drives humans to rely on nebulous, outside forces, which may be real or not, for order anddirection.


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The basic premise of the play is that chance is the underlying factor behind existence. Thereforehuman life is determined by chance. This is established very early on, when Vladimir mentions theparable of the two thieves from the Bible. "One of the thieves was saved. It's a reasonable percentage"(Beckett, 8). The idea of "percentage" is important because this represents how the fate of humanity

is determined; it is random, and there is a percentage chance that a person will be saved or damned.Vladimir continues by citing the disconcordance of the Gospels on the story of the two thieves. "Andyet...how is it - this is not boring you I hope - how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks ofa thief being saved. The four of them were there - or thereabouts - and only one speaks of a thiefbeing saved" (Beckett, 9). Beckett makes an important point with this example of how chance iswoven into even the most sacred of texts that is supposed to hold ultimate truth for humanity. Allfour disciples of Chirst are supposed to have been present during his crucifixion and witnessed thetwo thieves, crucified with Jesus, being saved or damned depending on their treatment of him inthese final hours. Of the four, only two report anything peculiar happening with the thieves. Of thetwo that report it, only one says that a thief was saved while the other says that both were damned.Thus, the percentages go from 100%, to 50%, to a 25% chance for salvation. This whole matter ofpercentages symbolizes how chance is the determining factor of existence, and Beckett used the Bibleto prove this because that is the text that humanity has looked to for meaning for millenia. Even theBible reduces human life to a matter of chance. On any given day there is a certain percent chancethat one will be saved as opposed to damned, and that person is powerless to affect the decision. "Thefate of the thieves, one of whom was saved and the other damned according to the one of the fouraccounts that everybody believes, becomes as the play progresses a symbol of the condition of man inan unpredictable and arbitrary universe" (Webb, 32).

God, if he exists, contributes to the chaos by his silence. The very fact that God allows such anarbitrary system to continue makes him an accomplice. The French philosopher Pascal noted thearbitrariness of life and that the universe worked on the basis of percentages. He advocated usingsuch arbitrariness to one's advantage, including believing in God because, if he doesn't exist, nobody

would care in the end, but if he does, one was on the safe side all along, so one can't lose. It is thesame reasoning that Vladimir uses in his remark quoted above, "It's a reasonable percentage." But itis God's silence throughout all this that causes the real hopelessness, and this is what makes "Waitingfor Godot" a tragedy amidst all the comical actions of its characters: the silent plea to God formeaning, for answers, which symbolizes the plea of all humanity, and God's silence in response. "Therecourse to bookkeeping by the philosopher [Pascal] no less than the clownish tramp shows howhelpless we are with respect to God's silence" (Astro, 121). Either God does not exist, or he does notcare. Whichever is the case, chance and arbitrariness determine human life in the absence of divineinvolvement.

The world of "Waiting for Godot" is one without any meaningful pattern, which symbolizes chaos as

the dominating force in the world. There is no orderly sequence of events. A tree which was barrenone day is covered with leaves the next. The two tramps return to the same place every day to wait forGodot. No one can remember exactly what happened the day before. Night falls instantly, and Godotnever comes. The entire setting of the play is meant to demonstrate that time is based on chance, andtherefore human life is based on chance.

Time is meaningless as a direct result of chance being the underlying factor of existence. Hence thereis a cyclic, albeit indefinite, pattern to events in "Waiting for Godot." Vladimir and Estragon return tothe same place each day to wait for Godot and experience the same general events with variations


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each time. It is not known for how long in the past they have been doing this, or for how long theywill continue to do it, but since time is meaningless in this play, it is assumed that past, present, andfuture mean nothing. Time, essentially is a mess. "One of the seemingly most stable of the patternsthat give shape to experience, and one of the most disturbing to see crumble, is that of time" (Webb,34-35). The ramifications of this on human existence are symbolized by the difference between Pozzo

and Lucky in Act I and in Act II. Because time is based on chance and is therefore meaningless,human life is treated arbitrarily and in an almost ruthless manner, and is also meaningless. In Act IPozzo is travelling to the market to sell Lucky, his slave. Pozzo is healthy as can be, and there seemsto be nothing wrong. Lucky used to be such a pleasant slave to have around, but he has become quiteannoying, and so Pozzo is going to get rid of him. This is their situation the first time they meetVladimir and Estragon. The next day, everything has changed. Pozzo is now blind, and Lucky ismute. Pozzo has absolutely no recollection of the previous meeting, and even claims that Lucky hasalways been mute even though just the day before he gave a long philosophical discourse whencommanded to "think." When asked by Vladimir when he became blind, Pozzo responds "I woke upone fine day as blind as Fortune" (Beckett, 55). Vladimir, incredulous, continues asking him fordetails. Pozzo responds to this (violently), "Don't question me! The blind have no notion of time. Thethings of time are hidden from them too" (Beckett, 55). Pozzo's situation symbolizes the effects oftime on humans. The inherent meaninglessness of a world based on chance degenerates human lifeinto something that is worthless and can be toyed with by Fortune. Beckett uses this change in thesituation of Pozzo and Lucky to show that human life is meaningless because time is meaningless."Although a 'stream of time' doesn't exist any longer, the 'time material' is not petrified yet,...insteadof a moving stream, time here has become something like a stagnant mush" (Andres, 143).

Humans try to remain oblivious of their condition. Throughout the play, Vladimir and Estragonremain stupidly cheerful, and seek distraction in pointless activities. In doing so, they act rathercomical, which gives the play its humorous element. "The positive attitude of the two tramps thusamounts to a double negation: their inability to recognize the senselessness of their position"(Andres, 143-144). Vladimir and Estragon try to distract themselves from the endless wait by arguing

over mundane topics, sleeping, chatting with Pozzo and Lucky (again over mundane topics), andeven contemplating suicide. All of this is an attempt to remain oblivious of the fact that they arewaiting for a vague figure, partly of their own invention, that will never come. They do not want torealize that their lives are meaningless. This behavior symbolizes humanity's petty distractions.Humans have nothing else to do but try to distract themselves from their situation. "...while, in thecase of Vladimir and Estragon, it is just the incessant attempt to make time pass which is socharacteristic, and which reflects the specific misery and absurdity of their life" (Andres, 147-148).Vladimir and Estragon's attempts at distraction are attempts to make time pass, to draw them closerto the time when Godot will arrive and solve all their problems. This is pure wishful thinking, but thisis all that they have to look forward to, even if the action is meaningless. The only alternative to thisis death, which the two contemplate but lack the courage and initiative to carry through. In the end,

the only recourse left to humans is to persist in meaningless action or perish. "Pozzo, after his visionof the emptiness and futility of human life, revives his Lucky and cries, 'On!' though they havenowhere to go and nothing to carry but sand" (Webb, 41).

To impose pattern and meaning on their world, humans will rely on nebulous outside forces for reliefand distraction from their predicament. This is the only thing that can keep them going. Thus, in theplay, Godot is symbolic of such an outside force, which seems to be silent and uncaring. Even so, heis still a pattern, and he infuses the two desperate tramps with a purpose to their absurd lives. Byimposing pattern on chaos, Vladimir and Estragon achieve some degree of meaning. In this case, the


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pattern is waiting. Vladimir, in his philosophical soliloquy while contemplating whether or not tohelp Pozzo in Act II, declares, "What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed inthis, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. Weare waiting for Godot to come-" (Beckett, 51). An illusion of salvation is needed to cope with ameaningless life. Godot is that illusion. Therefore we see that because of all the aforementioned

factors, that life is based on chance, that time is meaningless, that human life is meaningless,humans are driven to invent or rely on such "Godots," otherwise they would perish. In essence,"'Waiting for Godot' is the story of two vagabonds who impose on their slovenly wilderness anillusory, but desperately defended, pattern: waiting" (Webb, 26).

It is never clear whether Godot is real or not, which is why he is referred to as an example of a"nebulous force". In both acts, Vladimir and Estragon mistake or suspect Pozzo of being Godot. Theyhave never actually seen Godot, and would not be able to tell him apart from a street passerby. Theironly contact with him is his messenger boy that comes at the end of each day to inform them thatGodot will again not be coming, but will surely come tomorrow. The boy never remembers one dayfrom the next, another indication of the absence of a meaningful time sequence. At the end of thesecond act, Vladimir, the more philosophical of the two, gets a glimpse of the truth: that they willforever be waiting for Godot, that he is merely a distraction from their useless lives, and that he caneven predict, ironically, when the boy comes again, everything that the boy will say. It is at this pointthat a great depression overcomes Vladimir at the realisation of the truth. It is the climax of the playand its most tragic part. But Vladimir realizes that he is trapped, that he must persist in the illusion,that he has no choice. This is the definition of "going on" for humanity. There is no point. But it is theonly option. "All of these characters go on, but in the old ruts, and only by retreating into patterns ofthought that have already been thoroughly discredited. In the universe of this play, 'on' leadsnowhere" (Webb, 41).

"Waiting for Godot" is all about how the world is based on chance. A world based on chance can haveno orderly time sequence, and thus time has no meaning. The extension, then, is that human life has

no meaning. Realizing this, humans will create distractions and diversions, in the form of patternsand reliance on nebulous forces, to provide the purpose and meaning that is inherently lacking intheir lives. "Waiting for Godot" is the classical, archetypical presentation of this facet of humanexistence.

The Circular Structure of Waiting for Godot

"But what does it all mean?" is the most frequent statement heard after one has seen or finishedreading a play from the Theater of the Absurd movement. Beckett's plays were among the earliestand, therefore, created a great deal of confusion among the early critics.

No definite conclusion or resolution can ever be offered to Waiting for Godot because the play isessentially circular and repetitive in nature. Once again, turn to the Dramatic Divisions section inthese Notes and observe that the structure of each act is exactly alike. A traditional play, in contrast,has an introduction of' the characters and the exposition; then, there is a statement of the problem ofthe play in relationship to its settings and characters. (In Waiting for Godot, we never know wherethe play takes place, except that it is set on "a country road.") Furthermore, in a traditional play, thecharacters are developed, and gradually we come to see the dramatist's world view; the play thenrises to a climax, and there is a conclusion. This type of development is called a linear development.In the plays of the Theater of the Absurd, the structure is often exactly the opposite. We have,


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instead, a circular structure, and most aspects of this drama support this circular structure in oneway or another.

The setting is the same, and the time is the same in both acts. Each act begins early in the morning,just as the tramps are awakening, and both acts close with the moon having risen. The action takes

place in exactly the same landscape a lonely, isolated road with one single tree. (In the second act,there are some leaves on the tree, but from the viewpoint of the audience, the setting is exactly thesame.) We are never told where this road is located; all we know is that the action of the play unfoldson this lonely road. Thus, from Act I to Act II, there is no difference in either the setting or in thetime and, thus, instead of a progression of time within an identifiable setting, we have a repetition inthe second act of the same things that we saw and heard in the first act.

More important than the repetition of setting and time, however, is the repetition of the actions. Torepeat, in addition to the basic structure of actions indicated earlier that is:

Vladimir and Estragon Alone

Arrival of Pozzo and Lucky


Arrival of Boy Messenger


there are many lesser actions that are repeated in both acts. At the beginning of each act, forexample, several identical concerns should be noted. Among these is the emphasis on Estragon'sboots. Also, too, Vladimir, when first noticing Estragon, uses virtually the same words: "So there you

are again" in Act I and "There you are again" in Act II. At the beginning of both acts, the firstdiscussion concerns a beating that Estragon received just prior to their meeting. At the beginning ofboth acts, Vladimir and Estragon emphasize repeatedly that they are there to wait for Godot. In theendings of both acts, Vladimir and Estragon discuss the possibility of hanging themselves, and inboth endings they decide to bring some good strong rope with them the next day so that they canindeed hang themselves. In addition, both acts end with the same words, voiced differently:

ACT 1:

ESTRAGON: Well, shall we go?

VLADIMIR: Yes, let's go.

ACT II:

VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we go?

ESTRAGON: Yes, let's go.

And the stage directions following these lines are exactly the same in each case: "They do not move."


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With the arrival of Pozzo and Lucky in each act, we notice that even though their physical appearancehas theoretically changed, outwardly they seem the same; they are still tied together on an endlessjourney to an unknown place to rendezvous with a nameless person.

Likewise, the Boy Messenger, while theoretically different, brings the exact same message: Mr. Godotwill not come today, but he will surely come tomorrow.

Vladimir's difficulties with urination and his suffering are discussed in each act as a contrast to thesuffering of Estragon because of' his boots. In addition, the subject of eating, involving carrots,radishes, and turnips, becomes a central image in each act, and the tramps' involvement with hats,their multiple insults, and their reconciling embraces these and many more lesser matters arefound repeatedly in both acts.

Finally, and most important, there are the larger concepts: first, the suffering of the tramps; second,their attempts, however futile, to pass time; third, their attempts to part, and, ultimately, theirincessant waiting for Godot all these make the two acts clearly repetitive, circular in structure, andthe fact that these repetitions are so obvious in the play is Beckett's manner of breaking away fromthe traditional play and of asserting the uniqueness of his own circular structure.

Existentialism in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for GodotJules Irving as Lucky, 1957

Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot is a play that presents conflict between living by religious andspiritual beliefs, and living by an existential philosophy, which asserts that it is up to the individual todiscover the meaning of life through personal experience in the earthly world. Support for thisassertion regarding the nature of the play is based on first hand interpretation of the dialogue andaction within the play itself as well as interpretation of quotes and ideas from Samuel Beckett and his

critics.

Gnther Ander clearly points out the notion that the protagonists in Becketts plays, includingVladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, reflect humanity in general. He states that the fabulaepersonae whom Beckett selects as representative of todays mankind can only be clochards, creaturesexcluded from the scheme of the world who have nothing to do any longer, because they do not haveanything to do with it (142). While the argument here holds with the notion of Vladimir andEstragon representing humanity, it is necessary to note that Gnthers statement conflicts with thisdiscussion in that Vladimir and Estragon have everything to do with the world, merely lacking properperception of it.

Being more specific, it can be shown that Vladimir represents the portion of humanity who trusts inreligion and spiritual beliefs to guide them, and that Estragon represents the more ideal existentialistportion of humanity who chooses to stop waiting and construct the meaning of life based onexperience in the tangible and physical world around them. The following is an example of dialoguewhich supports this concept:

Vladimir: Lets wait and see what he says.

Estragon: Who?


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Vladimir: Godot.

Estragon: Good idea.

Vladimir: Lets wait till we know exactly how we stand.

Estragon: On the other hand it might be better to strike the iron before it freezes

(13).

Here we see that Vladimir is depending on Godot to tell him what he needs to know regarding hisexistence, while Estragon asserts that they do not have the time to wait and that they should takeaction on their own before it is too late. The metaphor of the cooling iron suggests that humanitydoes not have enough time to wait for their spiritual ponderings to offer them enlightenment, thatthe chance will pass, and their efforts will not take effect once it does. Therefore, it can be concludedfrom this that Estragons suggestion that he and Vladimir make their own way now, before it is toolate, is the more ideal course of action advocated by the play. It is Estragon who follows the notion ofno longer waiting on religion for answers and going to the philosophy of existentialism.

There is another instance in the dialogue between Estragon and Vladimir that plays on the idea ofVladimir as faithfully religious and Estragon as progressively humanistic:

Estragon: Charming spot. (He turns, advances to front, halts, facing auditorium.) Inspiringprospects. (He turns to Vladimir.) Lets go:

Vladimir: We cant.

Estragon: Why not?

Vladimir: Were waiting for Godot.

Estragon: (despairingly). Ah! (8)

Once again, the existential philosophy of human experience in the physical world is what Estragonseeks in his desire to leave for inspiring prospects, and the common human tendency to wait onreligion to offer answers is inherent in Vladimirs suggestion that they should stay and wait so thatthey can be enlightened by Godot.

Those who interpret the play often expend too much effort attempting to infer the identity of Godot.Even Beckett himself states that he has no idea who Godot is, and that he would have made it clear inthe play if he did (Ben-Zvi 141-142). Beckett makes the misdirection of people who seek to find outwho Godot is in his statement that the great success of Waiting For Godothas arisen from amisunderstanding: critics and public alike were busy in allegorical or symbolic terms a play whichstrove at all costs to avoid definition (Ben-Zvi 142). Becketts intention to not have the identity ofGodot pondered reflects the underlying notion in his play that people should stop pondering thedivine realm and focus on the human condition in physical existential terms. In this case, the entireplay reflects the situation humans find themselves in. Godot does not have an identity, according to


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Beckett, and it is therefore erroneous to try to find out who he is. Considering the way in which thisplay reflects the human condition, one can also say that this means it is erroneous to ponder thespiritual realm which is beyond our ability to comprehend.

H. Porter Abbott also makes note of the idea that it should not be the focus of interpretation of the

play to find out who Godot is. He notes that the audience should be most concerned with the fact thatthe identity and nature of Godot is never revealed, rather than trying to figure out his identity. Abbottstates that concealment, or conversely blindness, is one of the things the play is very much about(10). His use of the word blindness may be taken into consideration as it can be related to thenotion of blind faith. When the boy comes at the end of both acts and informs Vladimir that Godot isgoing to come, Vladimir never questions him about how truthful he is being about his knowledge ofGodot. Vladimir only asks the boy superficial things about him, his brother, and his home life. Thefollowing section of dialogue in the second act is an example of this:

Vladimir: What does he do, Mr. Godot? (Silence.) Do you hear me?

Boy: Yes Sir.

Vladimir: Well?

Boy: He does nothing, Sir.

Silence.

Vladimir: How is your brother?

Boy: Hes sick, Sir. (106)

Here we have Vladimir questioning the boy about Godot, but he never goes so far as to question thereliability of the information the boy gives him, he just abruptly changes the subject when it wouldmake more sense to push on the subject when he was given the suspicious answer that Godot doesnothing. It seems from this that Beckett is making a statement about the case of blind faith inreligion. Christians, for example, are taught to never question the will of God, and take what they aretold about him for granted. Taking this notion as parallel with the case of Vladimir and the boy, itseems to be suggested here that blind faith in religion is equally as pointless as Vladimirs blind faiththat Godot will come based on what the boy tells him.Estragon and Vladimir

Near the beginning of the first act, Estragon attempts to tell Vladimir what he had dreamed after

waking from a nap. Vladimir forcefully insists that he keep it to himself, and then Estragon, gesturingtowards the universe, asks, This one is good enough for you? (10). The following silence sets thisquote apart from the rest of the line, it makes reference to the idea of looking to the supernatural, theuniverse, as one way of pondering the meaning of life. Estragon would rather discuss his dream withVladimir, and maybe through interpretation, become more enlightened about the human condition.It seems as though Beckett makes use of this to say that one should place more emphasis on personalexperience as a means of discovering profound truths rather than looking into a realm beyondhuman comprehension and certainty. In other words, instead of looking into a universe he could


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never understand, Vladimir should listen to Estragons dream, focussing on human experience,which is the only thing humans can really comprehend.

The relationship between Pozzo and Lucky in the first act is an example of the notion that humanitymust look away from religion as a source of the meaning of life. The dynamic between Pozzo and

Lucky in the first act reflects the relationship some people have with their religion. When Estragonasks why Lucky does not relieve himself of the burden he carries once he and Pozzo have stopped torest, Pozzo replies that it is because Lucky is trying to impress him so that he will not be sold at thefair. This reflects how a religious person would bear certain discomforts, such as rising early frombed every Sunday to attend church, in order to please higher beings, eternal bliss in the afterlife.

In the second act, it is revealed that at least one of the bags carried by Lucky is filled with sand. A bagof sand most often merely serves the purpose of providing extra weight, such as sandbags often usedto stave of flood waters, or to weigh down a hot air balloon. Given this, it can be concluded that theunnecessary nature of the bag filled with sand that Lucky faithfully bears in order to impress hismaster is symbolic of the unnecessary burden many religious people carry in their various rituals ofworship. One can conclude from this that the situation with Pozzo and Lucky is an attempt byBeckett to express the notion that religious practices serve no actual practical purpose, that it is anunnecessary weight keeping them from noticing the enlightenment the physical world has to offer.

It appears as though Beckett misspoke when questioned about Lucky. In response to being asked ifLucky was named so because he does not have to wait for Godot like Vladimir and Estragon do, butthat he has his own Godot in Pozzo, Beckett stated, I suppose he is Lucky to have no moreexpectations (Ben-Zvi 144). It is arguable, however, that Lucky actually does have expectations, andthat he is equally, if not more, insecure than the two tramps who remain forever waiting for Godot.Lucky faces the uncertainty of whether he will end up remaining with Pozzo, or with a new master, inmuch the same way that most religious people are always waiting to find out what they have waitingfor them in the afterlife.

David Hesla states in The Shape of Chaos that [Vladimir] and [Estragon] are largely spared theburden of the past, for their memories are so defective that little of earlier time remains to them(133). The protagonists of the play certainly lack burden from the past as a result of not retaining it,but it is not the purpose of this discussion to suggest that it is more because they do not really have apast to remember, rather than the fact that they can not remember. Vladimir and Estragon spendtheir present finding ways to simply kill the time and focus their attention on the future, neglectingtheir present. Without paying attention to the present, one will not have sufficient memory of it whenit becomes the past. From a spiritual perspective, this seems to say that people who spend their livesworking to ensure bliss in the afterlife and to understand the meaning of life should instead focus onwhat they have before them so that they can make the most of life and not end up wasting it by

building themselves up to spiritual expectations which are far less certain than the pleasuresimmediately obtainable in the physical world.

It can be concluded that the interpretation of instances from the dialogue, character dynamic, andsecond party interpretation of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket offers much compelling evidencein support of the notion that the play makes reference to existentialist philosophy as a more suitablemeans of the pursuit for the meaning of life than is following religion or making spiritual inferences.


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Waiting for Godot as Bookers Seven Basic Plots Analysis: Tragedy PlotChristopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plotstructures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy,Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderellasslipper.

Plot Type :

Vladimir and Estragon are tragic figures throughout the play, with seemingly no control over theirlife situation. The difference between Bookers Tragedy plotline and the plotline of Waiting for Godotis that no one dies and nothing really new happens. Things do go wrong, but thats not exclusive tothe start and end of the play; things have been going wrong for as long as we can imagine, and weexpect that they will continue to do so long after we leave the theater. So basically, we have the laststage of the Booker Plot ("Destruction or Death Wish Stage") throughout the entire work. This makessense, since the concept of change or movement, in this case from one stage to another, would beinconsistent with the stagnant world of Waiting for Godot.

Miscellaneous Critics on Waiting for Godot

Nothingness

Accordingly, any interpretation that purports to know who Godotis (or is not), whether he existswhether he will ever come, whether he has ever come, or even whether he may have come withoutbeing recognized (or possibly in disguise) is, if not demonstrably wrong, at least not demonstrablyright (Hutchings 27).

Although works of the theater of the absurd, particularly Becketts, are often comical, theirunderlying premises are wholly serious: the epistemological principle of uncertainty and the inability

in the modern age to find a coherent system of meaning, order, or purpose by which to understandour existence and by which to live (Hutchings 28).

Godots characters do not despair in the face of their situation, and this perseverance remainsconstant throughout a body of work that, in the words of the citation awarding Beckett the NobelPrize for Literature in 1969 had transmuted the destitution of modern man into his exaltation (qtd.in Bair 606) (Hutchings 30).

Many relate the play to existentialism:God is dead, life is absurd, existence precedes essence,ennui is endemic to the human conditionIn many ways, such a reading is an evasion of the playscomplexity, a way of putting to rest the uncertainty of ones response to it (Collins 33).

The reader, like modern man, must not give into the arrogant presumption of certitude or thedebilitating despair of skepticism, but instead must live in uncertainty, poised, by the conditions ofour humanity and of the world in which we live, between certitude and skepticism, betweenpresumption and despair (Collins 36).

Tragicomedy is life enhancing because it tries to remind the audience of the real need to faceexistence knowing the worst, which ultimately is liberation, with courage and humility of not takingoneself or ones own pain too seriously, and to bear all lifes mysteries and uncertainties; and thus to


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make the most of what we have rather than to hanker after illusory certainties and rewards (Esslin,Theater 47).

Act II. The next day. But is it really the next day? Or after? Or before? (Esslin,Presence 109).

Many details point out the absence of (meaninglessness of) traditional time, which is just one ofmany ways that the play resists interpretation and meaning:

People misunderstand it on all sides, just as everyone does his own sorrow. Explanations flow infrom all quarters, each more pointless than the last (Esslin, Presence 110).

Some of the many attempts to impose meaning on the play include

Godot is God; 2.) Godot is the earthly ideal of a better social order; 3.) Godot is death;4.) Godot issilence; 5.) Godot is the inaccessible self (Esslin, Presence 110).

The play is, in fact, less than nothingsuggests REGRESSION: But here less than nothing happens.It is as if we were watching a sort of regression beyond nothing. As always in Beckett, that little weare given to begin with, and which we thought so meager at the time, soon decays under our veryeyesdisintegrates like Pozzo, who comes back bereft of sight, dragged by a Lucky, bereft of speech;like the carrot, which as if by mockery has dwindled by the second act to a radish (Esslin Presence111).

A character in a play usually does no more than play a part, as all those about us do who are tryingto shirk their own existence. But in Becketts play, the two tramps are on a stage with no part toplay. They must invent. They are free. (Esslin Presence 113).

The play does not tell a story; it examines a static situation

Nearly one quarter of the plays text is presented in the form of questions.

The play starts in medias res; begins in the midst of circular and pointless repetition.

Bert O. States applies to Becketts work the words Roland Bartes uses to describe Kafkas works:

The work authorizes thousands of equally plausible keyswhich is to say, it validates none (States82).

There are no more significant solvable problems left unsolved; success in art is paid for byinsignificance, not to say outright plagiarism of earlier solutions. The artist-as-failure, if he is to existat all, is thus condemned to tread a narrow line between inauthentic success and truly irremediablefailure to produce anything at all The artist must fail to expressand he must fail to express hisfailure to express (States 96).

Language


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The characters talk to each other but fail to communicate. Language (notably in the form of cliches)is a form of reassurance but not real connection occurs; instead, language is noise to fill the voidcreated by the absence of meaningful human contact (Esslin, Theater 45).

Hence the presence of cliches in the discourse of the characters point toward the fact that in reallife most verbal exchanges are equally devoid of real communication (Esslin, Theater 45).

Repeated phrases, lines, and words and the fact that the second act repeats the first act are used tosignify the senseless repetition and relentless flow of time inherent to human existence (Esslin,Theater 46).

Their talk is not so much anti-intellectual as it is counterintellectual; in the course of the play theymock or demolish all of our myths of meaning, using language against itself so as to prevent it fromdisguising their radical vulnerability. (Gilman 75).

Biblical Allusions

Also ask me about mythic parallels (Sisyphus and Tantalus); Chaplin, music hall, comic theater

Readers must guard against overanalyzing, and thereby overemphasizing, the Biblical allusions;Becketts audience knew the Bible much better than do modern audiencesconnections andassociations were immediate and automatic for Becketts first audiences (Morrison 56).

Biblical allusions usually create humor by rapid shifts from divine to secular. The irreverenceimplied by this quick shift from divine to secular shocks and surprises an informed audience,eliciting a response of uneasy humor and so this sequence continues throughout (Morrison 57).

the juxtapositions and the rapidity of their presentation, not the subject, provide the

humor (Morrison 57).

The Biblical allusions accomplish 2 things: 1.) introduce the plays central theme: life is full of hellishsuffering; 2.) establishes a tone of cynical humor which is heard throughout the playmuch of thecynical humor is based on seeing the Christian good news of salvation (the crucifixion) as badnews (Only one thief was saved). The joke is on those who believe the good news (Morrison 58).

Hope deferred maketh the something sick, Vladimir says (8a), groping for Poverbs 13.12: Hopedeferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. Waiting for what does

not come indeed makes the heart (and feet and other body appendages) sick, and yet by a witheredtree, he and Estragon continue to wait (Morrison 58).

Didi and Gogo wait for a nonexistent hope and thus miss the real thing (the possibility of such areal thing being suggested by the leaves appearing on the tree in act 2) (Morrison 58).

Becketts placement of the [50-50 chance of salvation motif through the two thieves] story early inthe play indicates his authorial concern with establishing immediately the theme of blighted hope,


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the tone of grieving despair. The comic mode of delivery underscores the tragicomedy nature of theplay (Morrison 59).

Other crucifixion references noted by Morrison (59)

Estragons crucifixion posture in the yoga exercise

Do you think God sees me?

The wind is in the reeds (John the Baptist preparingthe way for Christ, Matt. 11.7-10)

Repetition of skull in Luckys monologue. Golgotha (the place of skulls, Matt. 27.33) is the locationwhere Christ and 2 thieves died

At end of Act I, the boy says he minds the goats but his brother minds the sheep. Godot beats only hisbrotherthis situation is an ironic reversal of Matt.25.31-46in which the sheep go to the right andare saved, while the goats go to the left and are damned (Morrison 61).

The psychological equivalents of salvation and damnation are hope and despair (Morrison 63).

Characters

In Act I, Didi usually speaks as mind, and Gogo speaks as body. Gogo eats, sleeps, and faces beatingwhile onstage, whereas Didi ponders spiritual salvation. Didi is the more eloquent of the two, withGogo sitting, leaning, limping, falling, i.e., seeking nearness to the ground. Gogo relies onpantomime, while Didi leans toward rhetoric. Gogo wants Lucky to dance; Didi wants him to think.Gogo stinks from his feet, Didi from his mouth. By act 2, the distinctions are blurred. Both Gogo andDidi engage in mental and physical exercises to pass interminable time, and Didi seems to be more

agile in each domain. At the end of Act I, it is the active Gogo who asks, Well, shall we go? and themeditative Didi who assents, Yes, lets go. Act 2 closes with the same lines, but the speakers arereversed (Cohn 171).

Vladimir and Estragon are complimentary characters, as are Lucky and Pozzo.

Lucky taught Pozzo all the higher values of life (beauty, grace, truth); Lucky is mind and spiritPozzo is body and material; Intellect is subordinate to the appetites of the body, but they are tiedtogether (Esslin, Search 28).

Are Estragon and Vladimir superior to Pozzo and Lucky because the former have companionship,

compassion, and because the former have faith and hope?--or are the two couples equally absurd andfoolish? (Esslin, Search 30).

Lucky and Pozzo both benefit from the S & M, slave and master relationship because the relationshipgives them identity and purpose.


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In Godot we trustAs major new productions of Samuel Beckett's masterpiece Waiting for Godot open in Britain and onBroadway, David Smith argues that the playwright's genius lay in creating a work that, more thanhalf a century on, still speaks to audiences, particularly in troubled times. Below, we speak to thoseinvolved in some landmark productions

Waiting for Godot in New OrleansKyle Manzay, left, and Wendell Pierce perform Waiting for Godot in New Orleans

Two homeless old men wait in a bare road with a single tree. They are in no particular time or place -nowhere and everywhere. Over two days they argue, get bored, clown around, repeat themselves,contemplate suicide, and wait. They're waiting for the one who will never come. They're waiting forGodot.

Vivian Mercier wrote in the Irish Times in 1956 that Samuel Beckett had "written a play in whichnothing happens, twice". Fifty-six years after its first performance, a watershed in world drama at theThtre de Babylone in Paris, nothing is still happening, twice - twice over. A new UK production ofWaiting for Godot, with Sir Ian McKellen as Estragon and Patrick Stewart as Vladimir, began anational tour last week at the Malvern Festival Theatre and comes to the West End at the end ofApril. And an American revival, with Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin as the time-torn tramps, opens nextmonth on Broadway.

Does theatre have a purpose when the world's financial system is in downturn, or rather recession, orrather depression? There may be a play to come that will dissect the avarice, incompetence andstructural causes of the malaise. But often the most eloquent response is the most indirect. Man onWire, the Oscar-winning documentary about Philippe Petit's high-wire walk between New York'sTwin Towers in 1974, has been described as the most powerful 9/11 film yet made, precisely becauseit does not mention 9/11.

Waiting for Godot seems to have a unique resonance during times of social and political crisis. As amodernist existential meditation it can at first appear bleak: "They give birth astride of a grave," saysPozzo. "The light gleams an instant, then it's night once more." But it is also funny and poetic, andreveals humanity's talents for stoicism, companionship and keeping going.

Now it resonates again. Another towering human structure, capitalism, is trembling at thefoundations. Where there was certainty, there is now doubt and angst. Consumerism is on theretreat, and the acquisition of material objects is a dead end. It is a moment for introspection andstripping down to bare essentials. There is no drama more stripped down and essential than Godot,whose mysteries Beckett refused to elucidate beyond "the laughter and the tears".

"It speaks to us in extremis," says Sean Mathias, director of the new UK production. "It's perfecttiming to do it here because many individuals are affected by what's happening in the world witheconomics. The ground is shifting - for some dramatically, for others subtly - underneath our feet.When you have to rearrange your outside life - people worrying about their lack of money and allthose kinds of things - it can't not have an effect on your inside life.

"This play speaks about what it is to be human at the most animal and spiritual level, so subtly thatit's like a big beautiful poem or piece of music. It doesn't lecture you, it's not polemic, it's not coarse.


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It's written so subtly that its lessons are almost biblical. It teaches you in a very gentle, intelligentway and I think it's very relevant today."

Landmark productions of the play in the past half century have touched a nerve, or been designed asa catalyst for change, in troubled societies all over the world. An all-black Godot in South Africa

implied a wait for the end of apartheid. Productions in California's San Quentin prison and in NewOrleans after Hurricane Katrina captured a restless present and yearning for renewal.

Susan Sontag's production in a Sarajevo under siege in 1993 was dubbed "Waiting for Clinton". Shesaid simply: "Beckett's play, written over 40 years ago, seems written for, and about, Sarajevo." Therewere objections that its world view was too pessimistic for people already in despair. She replied thatnot everyone, even in a war zone, craves popcorn escapism. "In Sarajevo, as anywhere else, there aremore than a few people who feel strengthened and consoled by having their sense of reality affirmedand transfigured by art."

It might have been about Sarajevo, but it is about all the other places, too. Like Shakespeare, Godot isa receptacle into which audiences can pour their preoccupations. Even a great work such as ArthurMiller's The Crucible operates on two discernible levels: the literal story of the Salem witch trials, andthe metaphorical narrative of McCarthyism. But Beckett is taut and unyielding, his art abstract, hisconclusion opaque. An explanation would be an intrusion. Who, or what, is Godot? Whatever youwant it to be.

Sir Tom Stoppard, who first saw it in Bristol in the late 1950s, says: "The play is a universal metaphorprecisely because it wasn't designed as being a metaphor for anything in particular. The true subjectmatter of Waiting for Godot is that it's about two tramps waiting for somebody. It's not the case thatthe true subject matter is in the metaphor. Plays which are designed to be a metaphor for particularcorrelatives have, I imagine, a very short lifespan. And then of course, there's the writing and thehumour.

"On one level Godot is like a long poem. Certainly it doesn't need to gain strength from its time andplace; it has its own strength. It's one of the few plays that really stand the test of time because there'sjust nothing spare in it. When plays and books go off like fruit, the soft bits go first. Godot doesn'treally have any of those."

If it is like anything, Godot is a piece of music, reaching beyond the literal. Ronald Pickup, whoworked with Beckett in the 1970s ("it was like meeting Mandela or Gandhi"), recalls: "One of thegreat discoveries I had working with him was his huge sense of rhythm. When we follow the sheermusic - because, along with everything else, he's a great poet - the play flows and eddies and twistsand turns and stops and sweeps quite beautifully."

Pickup, who plays Lucky in the new British production, adds: "It is simply so tuned to people in anysituation, whether in Sarajevo, or here in London in the recession, or in Zimbabwe with everythingthat's going on there. There is so much to instantly relate to without even having to make an effort. Itleaps off the stage and is hugely emotional and compassionate and funny. You forget it's a metaphorand just engage with it."

Beckett stayed true to his writing. A recurring theme emerges from those who worked him: he had nowish to "explain" the metaphor, to clear up the mystery of Godot's identity. Sir Peter Hall, who


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directed the British premiere at the Arts Theatre in 1955, and has come back to the play four timessince, recalls: "He didn't operate like that. It was practicalities: he would say, Estragon and Vladimirare like a married couple who've been together too long, they grow old day by day. If you said to Sam,'What does that line mean?' he'd take the book and say, 'What does it say?' That's quite a good thingfor a dramatist to do.

"It's fairly obvious Godot can be anything you want. The great thing Beckett did was to say there issuch a thing as metaphorical theatre. Godot's a metaphor for religions, philosophy, belief, every kindof thing you can think of, but it never arrives. We do die, however - this we know. But Sam didn't talkabout death, he didn't give lectures about what his play meant."

Director Anthony Page, currently rehearsing the new Broadway Godot, worked with Beckett when hedirected Britain's first uncensored version of the play in 1964. "Beckett didn't want to theorise," heremembers. "He said he'd written the play without knowing what was going to come next. He justwrote it, hearing these voices. He simply wanted to communicate the tone of the voice, what washappening between the characters. He said that the laughter and the tears were all that mattered."

Neither of the new productions will attempt to spin a directorial interpretation around the crashes ofthe City or Wall Street. For the text is the perfect statement of futility and redemption, of lying in thegutter but looking at the stars, and audiences who seek the pattern of their own fears will find it forthemselves. A hundred years from now, the recession, it must be hoped, will be in the history books,but Vladimir and Estragon will still be on a stage somewhere - still waiting for Godot.

Waiting for Godot is on tour until 25 April then at Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1, from 30April. Details at waitingforgodottheplay.comSarajevo, 1993

Haris Pasovic

Produced Susan Sontag's staging in the besieged Sarajevo in 1993. Now director, East West TheatreCompany in Bosnia.

"Susan Sontag came to Sarajevo in 1993; her son David was reporting on the war, and she offered tohelp in whatever way she could. Her decision to stage Waiting for Godot helped make history: theproduction brought so much media attention to Sarajevo. Ultimately it was the journalists who savedSarajevo and the production of Waiting for Godot played a role in that. At one point the WashingtonPost referred to the play as "Waiting for Clinton" and we were very happy with this connection.

"Susan initially wanted to stage Beckett's Happy Days, but when I explained that what we were doingin Sarajevo was waiting, she decided on Waiting for Godot. At that time, people really thought it was

just a matter of time before somebody would rescue the city. It was outrageous that, at the end of the20th century, on live TV, the world could see daily bombardments of the city, and do nothing. Everysingle day we thought that our Godot would come and every night we understood that he wouldn't.

"The production featured three different couples playing Vladimir and Estragon, one all-female, oneall-male and one mixed. I liked this staging because it suggested that the couple's plight wasuniversal. People risked their lives coming five to 10km on foot to the theatre because there was nopublic transport. We performed by candlelight because there was no electricity. Trying to findcandles was a major problem, as was the malnourishment of all of our actors. Susan stole rolls for


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them from her hotel breakfast. Yes, it was a struggle to put on the show, but it brought our messageto the world."Imogen CarterNew Orleans, 2007

Wendell PierceStarred as Vladimir in the Classical Theatre of Harlem's outdoor production in New Orleans, 2007.

"My family lost everything to Hurricane Katrina, so when Christopher McElroen, the director of theClassical Theatre of Harlem, asked if I was interested in performing in his production of Waiting forGodot - set in post-Katrina New Orleans - I immediately accepted. Chris had seen a photograph oftwo guys floating on a door during the floods which immediately reminded him of Gogo and Didi[Estragon and Vladimir] and inspired him to direct Waiting for Godot

"Initially, we performed on a New York stage flooded by 15,000 gallons of water. Later, incollaboration with the artist Paul Chan and Creative Time, we mounted the production outdoors inNew Orleans's ninth ward, surrounded by square miles of homes that had been destroyed. The showwas not only commemorative but also cathartic; it allowed us to grieve and to rebuild.

"People identified Godot as FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] in its lack ofresponse to the crisis. But we knew that Godot also symbolised our very existence which haddisappeared; our neighbourhood was no longer there, and we feared it would not return. AfterKatrina, many survivors were asking 'Should I give up?' and Waiting for Godot offered the answer,'We must go on.'

"I remember another pertinent line from the play: 'At this moment, at this place and time, allmankind is us; let us do something while we have the chance.' The audience's reaction was stunnedsilence - it was like a prayer recited on hallowed ground. A classic such as Waiting for Godot speaks

across generations directly to each audience member.

"We've lost an understanding of the role that the arts can play in our communities, but years fromnow, when kids ask 'What did you do when we lost the city of New Orleans?', I'll feel proud to say Iperformed a play that gave hope to thousands of people and honoured those we had lost." ICFrance, 1991

Bruno BoussagolDirected a rare all-female production for Brut de Bton Theatre Company at the Avignon festival in1991

"I put Waiting for Godot on the same level as the Greek plays: it asks questions of theatre that areextremely difficult to resolve. I chose only to use women in my 1991 production for Avignon because Iwas convinced that female actresses introduce a range of acting possibilities that is broader than formen. When putting on Waiting for Godot, you are very limited in your possibilities, because Beckettspecified how it should be played. So using just female actresses was an enormous step. Perhaps,because the actor is a woman, there is an anomaly that is consistent with Beckett, a writer who iscompletely unexpected and unpredictable. The Beckett estate said I didn't have the right to do it, sothen it became a question of principle. For me, no writer can impose his view on a production. So I


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launched a case to put the production on in Avignon and it was the first time in the history of theFrench theatre that a director has had his production upheld by the law.

"The play was boycotted by the press, but the audience was full and no one walked out orcomplained; there was lots of applause. I believe that I was truer to Beckett than lots of other

directors. I wanted to try to recapture the atmosphere of when Waiting for Godot was first put on.There was a real shock, an intellectual shock to the public."Ally CarnwathSan Quentin, 1962 & 63

Rick ClucheyPlayed Vladimir in two productions in San Quentin Prison in 1962 and 1963. One of the pioneers oftheatre in prisons, after parole he worked with Beckett. Now runs Theatre in Prisons

In 1957, the San Francisco Actors Workshop put on Waiting for Godot in San Quentin Prison. It washighly anticipated - the Actors Workshop was probably the greatest American theatre at the time. Iwas an inmate, but I didn't see it: my sentence was life without parole for a violent armed robbery,and they wouldn't unlock my cell after dark. My cell partner came back from seeing it; he kept me upall night, everyone was high on the experience. I remember him saying "everyone was puzzled untilone guy came in with a rope around his neck and another guy whipping him and guess what hisname was? Lucky!" That spoke to everyone in the audience.

In 1962, we set up the San Quentin Drama Workshop and staged Waiting for Godot in a boxing ring.Having the most wicked of sentences, I needed something to relieve the despair.

In prison, you're in limbo, trapped in the greyness of your own uniform of flesh. Waiting for Godotresonates with the incarcerated because it depicts a vacant landscape and characters imprisonedwithin themselves, but with great humour. Beckett approved of our work at San Quentin and we later

became great friends. He told me that, when he fled from the Gestapo with his wife in 1941, theyspent many nights in abandoned prisons, and I'm sure that influenced his work in some way: emptyprisons are full of ghosts. ICSouth Africa, 1976

Benjy FrancisDirected and starred as Pozzo in an all-black production at the Market Theatre, Cape Town, 1976.Now director of Afrika Cultural Centre, Johannesburg.

"Before I staged Waiting for Godot, Beckett had refused to let anyone perform his play in SouthAfrica because he was so opposed to apartheid. When I began work on the show, I became the

Market Theatre's first resident black director; until then, blacks couldn't work in the theatre andmixed-race audiences were forbidden.

"I deliberately had an all-black cast, but I didn't intend to create the "Waiting for the end of apartheidGodot": I wanted to depict my own struggle under apartheid. The desolation and boredom in Waitingfor Godot was reminiscent of what we were going through in the Seventies. Political movements werebanned and there was a conspiracy of silence that echoed in Beckett's work.


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"It was very difficult for me to walk on stage as Pozzo with a whip and my slave, Lucky, tethered tome by ropes. That image was very provocative in South Africa, as it graphically depicted the master-servant relationship engendered by apartheid. In fact, I wasn't even supposed to play Pozzo, but theoriginal actor couldn't leave home following the Soweto riots of June 1976, which saw hundredskilled and postponed the opening of my show by several weeks.

"Ultimately, Waiting for Godot is a very positive play, which talks about the resilience of humanbeings. The tree was central to my staging; when it started to sprout leaves in act two, that sent apowerful message to oppressed people - it suggested new life and resolution, an image of hopeagainst all the desolation. Every night, the show received standing ovations. Its impact wasmonumental: Waiting for Godot provided a powerful metaphor of our struggle which allowed me toget past the censor and speak to my people."

'When Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot he really didn't know a lot about theatre'As Waiting for Godot turns 60, Beckett expert Anna McMullan explains why the playstill appeals.

Image 1 of 6A scene from the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953. Photo: Credit: Roger PicCopyright: Bibliotheque National de France?7:00AM GMT 05 Jan 2013

31 CommentsSamuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot premiered asEn attendant Godot at a small theatre on the LeftBank in Paris the Thtre de Babylone, sixty years ago, on January 5 1953.It has since become one of the most important and best known plays of the 20th and 21st centuryand has been performed countless times the world over. Samuel Beckett expert Anna McMullananswers some questions about the seminal work:

What are the standout productions of Waiting for Godot?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/9780077/When-Beckett-wrote-Waiting-for-Godot-he-really-didnt-know-a-lot-about-theatre.html#disqus_threadhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/9780077/When-Beckett-wrote-Waiting-for-Godot-he-really-didnt-know-a-lot-about-theatre.html#disqus_threadhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/9780077/When-Beckett-wrote-Waiting-for-Godot-he-really-didnt-know-a-lot-about-theatre.html#disqus_thread


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Obviously there's Roger Blin's first production in Paris. A number of French critics who watched itsaid: "We've never seen anything like this, this is not theatre as we know it."Related Articles

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The moment we've been waiting for31 Mar 2009 Waiting for Godot, West Yorkshire Playhouse, review

09 Feb 2012 Samuel Beckett play gets West End debut

28 May 2012Then of course the 24-year-old Peter Hall directed the English language premiere in 1955 just twoyears later at the Arts Theatre in London. The theatre critic Kenneth Tynan said it changed the rulesof theatre.British critics were initially more confused by it than the French, who had experienced a similar sortof existential drama. But then Tynan and a number of other significant critics began to write aboutthe play. It's difficult to remember now, but nothing like it had been seen before. It began to changethe way people thought about theatre.Beckett's own production was important too. He directed it at the Schiller Theatre in Berlin in 1975.The production toured internationally and was described as a very balletic production. Beckett tookextraordinary care over the costume and design. It's seen as a definitive version, but that doesn'tmean we shouldn't reinterpret the play.The relationship between the two characters Pozzo and Lucky can be very disturbing. It's anoppressive and dependent relationship which has lead to the play being interpreted in a number ofsituations of conflict throughout the world, such as South Africa and Sarajevo the latter by SusanSontag under the siege.

Programme for the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953.Did Beckett make many changes to the play after it was first performed?
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Yes, he made a lot of changes. When he first wrote it he really didn't know a lot about theatre. He hadbeen to theatre as a young man, and some of his friends were involved in theatre but really he learntthe craft of theatre when he attended the rehearsals of his plays during the 1950s.In the Sixties he began to direct his plays and that's when you begin to see Beckett really writing thestage direction. He did rewrite parts of Godot and made many annotations when in rehearsals at the

Schiller theatre the originals ofwhich still exist.A scene from the first production of En Attendant

Godot, Paris, 1953.So have the scripts had allthose changes incorporated?Not all of them actually and there isan interesting debate about whatactually is the definitive script.Faber and Faber have published aseries of notebooks Beckett keptwhen he was directing a number ofhis plays. In any case, substantiallythe play is the same two trampsstill waiting for Godot but thosenotebooks have a revised text andanybody directing the play can look

at the published text and can consult those notebooks too.But he was a very precise writer and director, and he really didn't like people to simply change thetext.

What are the standout Waiting for Godot performances?There have been so many. The characters of Vladimir and Estragon have really appealed to a number

of acting partnerships, including Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, Steve Martin and RobinWilliams. I saw the production from Johannesburg when it toured to London which starred Jon Kaniand Winston Ntshona, which were really wonderful performances.Recently Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart took on the roles in the West End. Beckett is now almostlike Shakespeare: those roles are actors want to cut their teeth in.

The play has confounded many: what do you think it is trying to do?We could talk forever about its meaning but I actually think, like Beckett, it is about is experiencingthe play. You go and take your seat in the theatre and you absorb what's happening. The charactersthat are in front of you are waiting and while they are waiting we share the same time, the same spaceand we watch the human beings as they interact on stage. We watch these moments of tenderness,

moments of cruelty and I think it really confronts us with the basic facts of human existence.

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