Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is by far one of the most iconic plays of the twentieth century. Originally published in French in 1948, and subsequently translated into English by Beckett himself – who is Irish – in 1949, it debuted on the stage of Théâtre de Babylone, in Paris, in 1953, under the directing of Roger Blin. Although it seems like it should belong to the absurdist theater, due to long passages that do not make sense, it has captured the attention of the critics and the hearts of the audience for decades. Vivian Mercier brilliantly condenses Waiting for Godot by saying that: “[it] has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.” In many ways, Beckett revolutionized the practice of theater making and laid the foundations for a theatrical experience that is almost universal, in the sense that it would have an impact on its audience, wherever it is played, whenever it is played.
The best way in which to summarize the play itself is through its title. It is a play in which the two main characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo) are waiting for an unknown character whose name is Godot, on a country road with a visible tree in the center. They act much like an old married couple, constantly bickering about trivial things and threatening that they will leave each other, yet never actually going through with it. They are joined at some point by another couple of characters – Pozzo and Lucky – who depict the relations of power between a master and his slave, however their repeated entrances and exits do not affect the development of the plot in any significant way. It is a play in which nothing happens, as Mercier puts it, and its main concern is the representation of linear time on stage. Beckett took this responsibility seriously and made major changes to the way in which a play is carried out from the writing process to its staging in a theater, with an audience. His process of writing a play is similar to that of writing a novel, giving specific stage directions that must be respected to the letter. In this way, it can be said that Beckett supersedes the role of the director, much like Bertolt Brecht did. By removing serious plot lines that can detract the attention of the audience from the central element of the play – the passing of time – Beckett focuses on carefully constructing an experience that will keep the spectators engaged from start to finish. Therefore, he becomes interested in the devaluation of language, promoted by the Dada movement and Tristan Tzara, as well as the processes of memory when time becomes stretched into a continuous present, and the musicality of the play itself (how moments of speaking and moments of silence should be put together to the highest efficiency). Thus, it becomes evident how a parallel can be drawn between Beckett and Tehching Hsieh’s work, as they are both struggling with the task of depicting real time in performance. However, while Hsieh internalizes time by transforming his own body into a stage, Beckett does the opposite – he externalizes time through language. His work may seem tedious when read, but it all comes together through performance.
In this way, it becomes useful to look at David Bradby’s commentary on various productions of Waiting for Godot, as well as Paul Chan’s production notes of Waiting for Godot in New Orleans. This brings the discussion back to Ngugi wa Thiong’o and his essay on “Enactments of Power”, as well as his Globalectics, in which he argues that there is a dialogical relationship between a work of art and the space in which it is created and/or displayed. But how is it that no matter where Beckett’s play is staged, be it Paris, Sarajevo, Belgrade, San Quentin or New Orleans, it will always speak to the audience? The answer which I propose is that Beckett has been careful enough in his creative process not to contextualize the play too much, leaving it mostly like a shell that people can populate with their own interpretations. Also, it speaks about core attributes of the human being such as despair, waiting, hope, the need for another, which really are not bound to a physical location. In that way, it becomes universal. Therefore, its meaning adapts to the signifying space in which it is performed. Waiting for Godot becomes waiting for freedom for the prisoners of San Quentin, and waiting for FEMA and any kind of aid for the people who were affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Thus, Paul Chan’s production reads as a counter-narrative to what the state is enacting – it is the story of people demanding their rights, people who are not actors on an empty stage, but who have an idea of what New Orleans should look like. Although it could easily be misread as a revolution, it is not, just as William Pope L.’s Great White Way is not. It is simply a re-envisioning of the framework of the performance, of Richard Schechner’s theater and performance.
Beckett blurs the lines between the elements of a theatrical performance, which have been established over time, by diffusing language, space, and character in order to place the emphasis on what he is really concerned with – time. Through this revolutionary process, he universalizes Waiting for Godot, making it applicable to anyone in this vast world. Everyone has a Godot that s/he is waiting for, which is brought to light through the performance of the play. Therefore, where should the play be staged? Is there an ideal location for it? I would say the answer is everywhere.
Citation:
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. New York: Grove Press, 1994. Print.
Bradby, David. Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Chan, Paul. Production notes for Waiting for Godot in New Orleans and Baghdad students reading.
Alexandru Thinks Theater 