'When Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot he really didn't know a lot about theatre' - Telegraph '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 play still appeals. Image 1 of 6 A scene from the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953. Photo: Credit: Roger Pic Copyright: Bibliotheque National de France? Image 1 of 6 A scene from the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953 Photo: Credit: Roger Pic Copyright: Bibliotheque National de France? Image 1 of 6 Programme for the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953. Photo: University of Reading, Special Collections Image 1 of 6 A scene from the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953. Photo: Credit: Roger Pic Copyright: Bibliotheque National de France? Image 1 of 6 Invitation to a reception to celebrate the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953.

Photo: Credit: University of Reading, Special Collections Image 1 of 6 A scene from the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953. Photo: Credit: Béla Bertrand Copyright: Bibliotheque National de France? 7:00AM GMT 05 Jan 2013 Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot premiered as En attendant Godot at a small theatre on the Left Bank in Paris the Théâtre 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 century and has been performed countless times the world over. Samuel Beckett expert Anna McMullan answers some questions about the seminal work: What are the standout productions of Waiting for Godot? Obviously there's Roger Blin's first production in Paris. A number of French critics who watched it said: "We've never seen anything like this, this is not theatre as we know it." Then of course the 24-year-old Peter Hall directed the English language premiere in 1955 just two years later at the Arts Theatre in London.

The theatre critic Kenneth Tynan said it changed the rules of theatre. Related Articles Samuel Beckett play gets West End debut 28 May 2012 British critics were initially more confused by it than the French, who had experienced a similar sort of existential drama. But then Tynan and a number of other significant critics began to write about the play. It's difficult to remember now, but nothing like it had been seen before. It began to change the 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 took extraordinary care over the costume and design. It's seen as a definitive version, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't reinterpret the play. The relationship between the two characters Pozzo and Lucky can be very disturbing. It's an oppressive and dependent relationship which has lead to the play being interpreted in a number of situations of conflict throughout the world, such as South Africa and Sarajevo – the latter by Susan Sontag 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? Yes, he made a lot of changes. When he first wrote it he really didn't know a lot about theatre. He had been to theatre as a young man, and some of his friends were involved in theatre but really he learnt the 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 the stage direction. He did rewrite parts of Godot and made many annotations when in rehearsals at the Schiller theatre – the originals of which still exist. A scene from the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953. So have the scripts had all those changes incorporated? Not all of them actually and there is an interesting debate about what actually is the definitive script. Faber and Faber have published a series of notebooks Beckett kept when he was directing a number of his plays.

In any case, substantially the play is the same – two tramps still waiting for Godot – but those notebooks have a revised text and anybody 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 the text. Invitation to a reception to celebrate the first production of En Attendant Godot, Paris, 1953. 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 Robin Williams. I saw the production from Johannesburg when it toured to London which starred Jon Kani and Winston Ntshona, which were really wonderful performances. Recently Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart took on the roles in the West End. Beckett is now almost like 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 experiencing the play.

You go and take your seat in the theatre and you absorb what's happening. The characters that are in front of you are waiting and while they are waiting we share the same time, the same space and 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. Interview by Daisy Bowie-Sell Anna McMullan is a professor of Theatre at the University of Reading. The University of Reading host the Beckett Archive, the largest collection of Beckett materials in the world. See Waiting for Godot - The writer – Samuel Becket | Arts Online The writer – Samuel Becket Waiting for Godot The writer – Samuel Becket Samuel Beckett Biography: Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett was born in Ireland in 1906. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, with majors in French and Italian. In 1928 he was appointed English lecturer at the famous École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he stayed until 1930.

He returned to Ireland briefly to obtain his Masters degree, then travelled widely throughout Europe between 1932 and 1937, before making Paris his permanent home. During World War II, Beckett became actively involved in the French resistance movement, until the arrest of several friends in 1942 obliged him to distance himself to escape Nazi detection. It was then that he moved to Vinchy and worked as a farm labourer. Back in Paris after the war, Beckett soon became part of a group of avant-garde artists, developing a close friendship with James Joyce. Back to top It was in 1952 that Beckett wrote the work that would bring him international acclaim, Waiting for Godot. However, it had an inauspicious beginning. The premiere in Paris in 1953 was in a tiny theatre and with a cast of university students. A student's guide to the plays of Samuel Beckett (pp. 38–9) describes the initial reaction to the play: The reactions of the Paris audience were mixed but the play immediately gained distinguished supporters.

Jean Anouilh saw the opening of Godot as being as important as the first production of a Pirandello play in Paris forty years earlier. Jacques Audiberti wrote in Arts of 16 January 1953 that Godot seemed, 'a perfect work which deserves triumph,' and Armand Salacrou claimed in the same magazine on 27 February that they had all been waiting 'for this play of our time.' … At its first London production, the play was treated with bafflement and derision by the daily paper, but two important reviews in the Sunday Times and The Observer … started the flow of enthusiasm, speculation, and controversy that has surrounded Godot ever since. After the publication of the text by Faber in 1956, a review by GS Fraser in the Times Literary Supplement provoked a correspondence lasting several weeks about the meaning of the play. Although best known for his plays, Beckett worked in a variety of literary forms, including novel, short story, poetry, and film, radio and television scripts. That most of Beckett's important works, including Waiting for Godot, were originally written in French is surely a testament to his outstanding literary ability.

Beckett won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 57, and died in his beloved Paris on 22 December 1989, aged 83. Principal plays Waiting for Godot (in French 1952, in English 1954) Endgame (in French 1957, in English 1958) All That Fall (1957) Krapp's Last Tape (in English 1959) Happy Days (in English 1961) Back to top About the play Waiting for Godot is often described as a play in which nothing happens, twice. No doubt any audience will have some sympathy for this assessment. The first and the second half of the play are remarkably similar and there is little if any dramatic movement. How is it, then, that this is considered one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century? The first question that undoubtedly springs to mind is 'Who or what is Godot?' There are a number of equally valid answers to this question but, whoever or whatever Godot may be, the play is a fable about existence.

However, as Gunther Anders points out (in Esslin (Ed.) ), Waiting for Godot is no ordinary fable. Essentially one could argue that Waiting for Godot is like a fable that lacks a moral or a lesson. Godot never arrives and, as such, there are no sudden revelations about the meaning of life, about the existence of God, or even about death. The lesson of Waiting for Godot is that there are no answers, that there is no moral. A good way to try and understand what a play may be about is to look at each of the elements in the play, such as the setting, action, dialogue, relationships, and themes. Each of these elements often helps to elucidate the important themes of the work. Back to top Setting Both acts of the play take place in the same setting – a nondescript country road with a single tree. Also both acts happen at the same time – the evening. Even though the second act happens the next day, there are no changes in the setting, which helps reinforce a sense of stagnation. Just as there is no change in the setting, there is no dramatic movement in the play.

There are a number of similarities between the action in the first and second acts: We learn that Estragon had just received a beating. There is discussion about Estragon's feet and his boots. There is discussion about Estragon's urination. The characters consider suicide by hanging. The two main characters meet Lucky, Pozzo, and a boy. Both end in inaction, after the words, "Yes, let's go." We can say that Waiting for Godot does not have the linear structure that is typical of most drama, but instead has a circular structure. Any movement that does occur brings the characters back to the same place. For example, we assume that, at the end of the first act, Vladimir leaves but returns the next day and, as in the first act, Lucky and Pozzo arrive again in the second. For all their movement, the characters are effectively stationary. Dialogue Much like the action of the play, the dialogue is circular – it is inconclusive and repetitive. Whatever the characters talk about, no firm conclusions are ever reached. They often consider the possibility of leaving but end up deciding that waiting is their only sensible or real option. J Blakey explains: The conversations … reach no logical conclusions.

Perhaps the best illustration of the nature of the dialogue in the play is provided by Lucky. In the first act, Lucky, at the command of his master, gives a long and justly well-known speech. It is in the form of a quasi-theological address that, at its core, has an apparently serious statement to make. Eliminating the nonsensical repetitions and comic irrelevancies, Lucky begins to make something like the following declaration: Given the existence … of a personal God … outside time … who loves us dearly … and suffers … with those who … are plunged in torment … it is established beyond all doubt … that man … From the point of view of coherence and logic, the speech ends there. The conclusion is never given; the logical result of the assumptions (if any) never stated. The ultimate meaning is lost in a maze of irrelevance and incoherence … Lucky's speech, which began with a solid core of meaning and degenerates into mere noises and finally silence, can be said to be typical of much of the dialogue in Waiting for Godot. One might argue that the lack of meaning, of sensible dialogue, is a theme of the play, perhaps the theme of the play.

Lucky's failure to reconcile a personal God with man's suffering and torment is our spiritual crisis and, though it is by no means a new one, it is the crisis of our existence. Relationships Consider the 'Happy' exchange ( Script extract 1 ) between Estragon and Vladimir. The relationship between Vladimir and Estragon has no real effect on their lives. We cannot tell whether either of them benefits from it in any way and it certainly brings about no real dramatic movement. At most, one might argue that they keep each other company but, as neither derive pleasure nor pain from the relationship, it seems to be a pointless, meaningless one. Initially it would appear that the relationship between Lucky and Pozzo is quite different. Grotesque as it may appear to the audience, there is a clear structure to their relationship and Pozzo, at least, benefits from it. However, by the second act their relationship is completely ambiguous and any trace of roles has all but vanished. Ultimately their relationship brings them as little benefit as that of Vladimir and Estragon. Back to top Themes Waiting for Godot is an enormously complex work. There can be no simple elucidation or explication of the text.

One could argue that this is the case with many important works because, if a simple explanation of the work's meaning were possible, it would probably undermine the importance if not the very need for the work itself. In the case of Waiting for Godot, there is a veritable library of critical texts written about it. There is no single idea one can point to in the play – it explores many important themes (such as religion, life, existence, God) simultaneously because there is a complex interaction between these ideas that cannot be unravelled simply. As an example of this, and as an extract that might be considered generally representative of the play, consider Vladimir and Estragon's discussion of the Crucifixion ( Script extract 2 ). There are a number of ideas packed into this scene. What strikes one first and foremost is the role that chance plays in the lives of the thieves and, therefore, all people. Only two condemned men were executed with Jesus and so only those two were given the opportunity to receive absolution. One of those thieves abused Jesus and as a result was damned – the other came to Jesus' defence and was saved.

That words uttered during a time of extreme pain and suffering could have such a significant impact on the lives of two ordinary men is nothing short of ridiculous – in fact, it is nothing short of absurd. However this is no isolated instance peculiar to the scriptures. Rather it serves as an observation that chance – simple circumstance – can have an enormous and irreversible effect on our lives. Furthermore, the disagreement in the scriptures about what actually happened serves to undermine our certainty in what is real. As each second is lost we can only rely on memory to inform us of what happened and memory is fallible. Our grip on what is real is tentative at best. Clearly a number of complex and related themes are all touched on in this simple exchange between the main protagonists. Blakey argues: The play is a parable of … man's existence… He passes time. He hopes for something new, though hope is dispirited and lifeless. He simply waits. What it is he awaits, he is not sure. But he feels compelled to wait. References Beckett, Samuel (1956, 1985 reprint). Waiting for Godot. London and Boston: Faber and Faber.

Note: The page numbers for script extracts in this resource refer to this edition. Blakey, J. (1976). Waiting for Godot – Notes. Toronto: Coles Publishing Ltd. Esslin, M. (Ed.), (1965). Samuel Beckett – a collection of critical essays. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Publishers. Note: Includes essay by Gunther Anders. Fletcher, J. and Spurling, J. (1972). Beckett: a study of his plays. London: Eyre Methuen Publishers. Fletcher, B., Fletcher, J., Smith, B. and Bachem, W. (1978). A student's guide to the plays of Samuel Beckett. London and Boston: Faber and Faber. Printing this page Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett | Thomas Joyner, Ph.D. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett Indians, Theatre Downtown Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett NOTE: Please feel free to contact me in regard to these documents or my services as a consultant/dramaturg/ muse on productions of these or other works.

You will find my contact information under the “About” tag on the site’s toolbar. *************** Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can’t tell them to you? –Estragon, Act I Samuel Beckett lived most of his life in France. Many of his most significant works, including Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot), were originally written in French–but Beckett was born in a suburb of Dublin in 1906 and attended Trinity University, Dublin. He settled in Paris until the mid-Thirties–plenty of time to get caught up in World War II as a fighter in the French Resistance. The years after the war were incredibly productive for Beckett. His best known works, Godot and the novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable were all written and published by 1953, the year in which Godot premiered in Paris. By the early Sixties, Beckett had ceased to write longer works, focusing much of the rest of his career on over forty shorter dramatic and prose pieces. When he died in Paris on December 22, 1989, he was one of the most celebrated writers of the century.

The Tears of a Clown (When There’s No One Around) or…. How Comedy Becomes Tragedy When There’s “Nothing to be done.” Vladimir: Moron! He wilts, vanquished, and turns away. — Waiting for Godot, Act II Waiting for Godot is a classic of the absurd,* an expression of post-War existentialism and one of the most important pieces of literature written in the 20th century It’s a complex play that fascinates critics and has generated reams of learned articles, books and reviews in the half century of its existence. More words have been written about this one play than Beckett published in his lifetime. There’s even a video game . Brian Dietzen and John Jurcheck as Estragon and Vladimir Anything carrying that much cultural weight encourages actors to take their roles far too seriously and leads lesser directors and designers to point up the Important Ideas in the play (all that existentialism and absurdism stuff) with Big, Portentious, Pretentious Theatrical Choices. These, as CU Acting Professor and Godot director Sean Kelley knows, are sure-fire ways to put audiences to sleep.

Nevertheless, Sean took on the project because he knows something most of the critics, academics and terrified students who have had to write about the play over the years either don’t know or have completely forgotten: Waiting for Godot is funny. VERY funny. “It’s about clowning into the tears,” Sean told me the other day. Sure, there’s serious stuff going on. These guys are hanging out, looking for the most famous no-show artist in literary history and it’s really important, for reasons they don’t entirely understand, that he (Godot) show up. They look for ways to pass the time, so they do what anyone in such an unusual situation would do: they fight, they play games, they whine and complain, they debate serious subjects about which they know very little, they try and top each other–all activities that lend themselves to hilarious comic business. “I spent all summer looking at the great movie clowns,” Sean continued, “Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy — and I’m putting as much of that as possible into the play. We’re about two weeks into rehearsal and we’re laughing a lot. I’m thinking we’ll get to the tears when we laugh hard enough.” Samuel Beckett would probably agree.

He knew what kind of play he’d written. In 1964 he insisted that the focus needed to stay on the simple truth of the characters: “I don’t like to talk intellectually about a play which has to be played simply in order to be an intellectual play. I would like to talk about how you go to sleep or how you eat the carrots. The words are there. If they have meaning, the meaning will come out.” The director of the first American production of Godot, Alan Schneider, initially entertained the idea of starring popular comedians from radio, television and films (like Bob Hope and Jack Benny) as Vladimir and Estragon. He ended up with Bert Lahr and Tom Ewell,+ who starred in an ill-fated American premiere in Miami in 1956. Lahr, one of the most respected stage clowns of the day, was fascinated by the play despite the failure of its initial staging. He reprised his role as Estragon in the first New York production the next year.

Of that production legendary director and critic Harold Clurman wrote: “It [Godot] is a poetic harlequinade — tragi-comic as the traditional commedia dell’arte usually was: full of horse-play, high spirits, cruelty and a great wistfulness. Though the content is intellectual to a degree, the surface…is very much like a minstrel show or vaudeville turn.” The idea of Estragon and Vladimir as clowns–not the traditional, elaborately costumed, white-faced and red-nosed circus clowns, but the hobo-clown image inspired by Emmett Kelly and the previously-mentioned Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy, has persisted in many productions since–as has the casting of comic actors in the lead roles. Even Robin Williams and Steve Martin took up the Godot challenge for a revival at New York’s Lincoln Center in the late 1980s. ______________________________ * absurd: out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical.

+ Bert Lahr was a vaudeville performer turned comic actor of the thirties and forties, best known for playing the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Tom Ewell was a popular character actor on stage and in film, best remembered for co-starring with Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch (1955). A Modern Dummies Guide to: Existentialist Theory and Godot… by Bryon Matsuno, production dramaturg If you’ve ever wondered where we come from, What we are, If there’s any kind of universal power, any kind of God … If you ever ask yourself, What does my life mean? What is the meaning of this? What will lead the way? You’ve been waiting for Godot, and you’re not alone. In fact, these are age-old questions, mysteries if you will, the puzzles that puzzle humanity. Many, many malleable minds have worked toward bending and shaping human thought around this obstacle of our existence, and beyond towards productivity, regardless of purpose. Which brings us to our world, a modern world of purposeless pursuits of purpose. We have created need, created wants, and created desires to pursue.

We have given ourselves material goals, material meaning. Where you live, What you drive, How you dress–these are the experiences, which make up our being, our essence today. We are living existential lives. But what is existentialism? According to Webster’s dictionary, it is . . . 1. The doctrine that man forms his essence in the course of the life he chooses to lead. 2. Also called philosophical existentialism is a movement based on this doctrine, emphasizing man’s responsibility for making his own nature as well as the importance of personal freedom, personal decision, and personal commitment. What of it? What does it matter who I become? Who I am? Who I was? We all just die. This is the dilemma. The existentialists might respond saying, all we can really know we learn during our lives. What lies beyond I know not. That is another puzzle for another torrent. For now this life, this torrent, is all I have . . . I must do with it. So we press on blindly into the unknown, yearning to know what we know not how to know. We hurl ourselves towards tomorrow, hoping that in some way it may all makes sense . . .

Wondering if it will be today that Godot will finally come, make it clear. Whatever/whoever Godot may or may not be? “This is becoming really insignificant . . .” and that is exactly the point Beckett is making with this play. No matter what we do, what we are doing, we all do the same thing… we all wait. We have a million different ways of doing it. But one truth remains, we are all simply killing time, watching the seconds tick by oblivious to the rhyme and reason behind it all . . . . Waiting for the inevitable . . . sleeping not yet to be woken from the slumber that is life . . . We all go on asking ourselves, as Vladimir does in Act II: “Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now ? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? He’ll know nothing.

He’ll tell me about the blows he received and I’ll give him a carrot. (Pause.) Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener. (He looks again it Estragon.) At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can’t go on! (Pause.) What have I said?” (Godot 104-5) We go on then waiting . . . Knowing not what we say or do, regardless of our irrelevance, we press on, indefatigably, longingly…towards …??? I don’t know what it is we’re pressing towards anymore than Beckett did. If we’re just doing nothing as he seems to suggest, “it’s the doing of it that counts.” The process of watching, of thinking, of learning. The action is what counts not the outcome, but what does this mean?

American playwright and director David Mamet offers one explanation: “The play is a quest for a solution. As in our dreams we seek answers to those questions which the conscious mind is incompetent to deal with. So with the drama, if the question posed is one which can be answered rationally . . . we feel diverted but not fulfilled. Only if the question posed is one whose complexity and depth renders it unsusceptible to rational examination does the dramatic treatment seem to us appropriate, and the dramatic solution become enlightening . . . we cast ourselves . . . in dreams of wish fulfillment. These dreams . . . seem to offer solutions to our concerns based on the idea that the concerns themselves do not exist, that they are only temporary aberrations of an essentially benign universe, or . . . of the universe which is positively responsive at that point at which our individual worthinesses . . . are brought to its attentions. We leave the theatre after such plays as smug as after a satisfying daydream, Our prejudices have been assuaged, and we have been reassured that nothing is wrong, but we are, finally no happier.” “Freud said, ‘the only way to forget is to remember.’” Welcome to the World of Godot.

Good Luck! More About . . . Theatre of the Absurd–a term coined by drama critic, historian and theorist Martin Esslin to describe the anti-realistic post-War drama of such playwrights as Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Though each fiercely independent and distinct in his approach, the work of these and other playwrights, including Americans like Arthur Kopit and Edward Albee, share a certain outlook on life. Esslin contends that the essence of absurdist philosophy was outlined by French writer and philosopher Albert Camus, who proposed that we see a paradigm for human life in the myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods “to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the rock would roll back of its own weight.” Sisyphus, “the absurd hero,” is condemned to strain with all his might to accomplish his task, over and over–futile and utterly meaningless labor. The best he can hope for is that rare experience of a consciousness of the absurdity of his plight. At such moments of intellectual clarity, Sisyphus “is superior to his fate.

He is stronger than his rock.” In fact, we and Sisyphus may rise even to tragic stature when we are fully conscious of our absurd condition. (See “A Modern Dummies Guide to Existentialist Theory in Godot”) for more on this subject. commedia dell’arte–an improvisational theatre form originating in Italy around 1545 and popular throughout Europe into the 18th century. Professional actors, most of whom wore stylized masks, portrayed stock characters and performed from rough plot outlines called scenarios. Significant comic figures were the zanni or comic servants (Harlequin, Columbine and Pulcinella among them), Pantalone (the miserly father), Il Capitano or Miles Gloriosus (a braggart soldier) and Il Dottore (the pedantic professor). harlequinade–that part of a play or pantomime enacted principally by the harlequin and the clown. The harlequin was one of the principle comic figures of the commedia dell’arte (see above). Emmett Kelly, dining at home plate Emmett Kelly (1898-1979)–the prototypical tramp clown and a brilliant mime.

His clown character, known as “Weary Willy” was the image of an unshaven, dirty tramp–a silent, unsmiling figure who, according to Kelly, keeps trying because of the one “spark of hope still glimmering in his soul.” His most famous routine involved the sweeping of a circle of light from a spotlight. In the 1940s, he was the star attraction of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Early film comedians: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy — Chaplin as the Little Tramp Chaplin (1889 – 1977) was the most popular comic actor of his generation and beyond. His “Little Tramp” character is iconic, recognized world-wide, though the last films featuring him were made in the 1920s. Chaplin was also brilliant director, composer, writer, producer, and editor. His films include the Gold Rush, the Tramp, The Kid, Modern Times and City Lights. Keaton and co-star on the set of Go West (1925). Keaton is the one on the right.

Keaton, known as “the Great Stone Face” for his improbable acrobatic stunts and his stoic demeanor under even the most chaotic of comic circumstances, was trained in vaudeville and made the move to silent films in 1917. He had a long career as a slapstick comedian and director, lasting into the 1960s. Although many people think of Buster Keaton only as a comedian, film historians, critics, and directors regard him as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. His best known films, The General (1926) and Sherlock Jr. (1924) have a place in the National Film Registry. Actors and comedians as diverse as Gene Kelly, Dick Van Dyke, and Jackie Chan say that he influenced their work. Clowns in all the major circuses study Keaton’s films. Laurel and Hardy Stan Laurel (1890-1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892-1957) began their partnership at the Hal Roach studio in 1926 and remained active together for the next quarter century. Within a year of their first joint appearance, they were being touted as the new comedy team.

After collaborating on many silent films, they took the transition to the talking film in stride. As their success spread throughout the world, they began making feature films as well and won an Oscar for their short subject entitled The Music Box (1932). minstrel show–an American medley of sentimental ballads, comic dialogue, and dance interludes, ostensibly founded on Negro life in the South. Its origin is attributed to T.D.Rice, who (as legend has it) copied the mannerisms of an elderly black man in Baltimore in 1828, adopted blackface and banjo to produce the wildly popular “Jim Crow.” At first a solo act, minstrelsy grew into a major entertainment form in pre-Civil War America. After that war, competition from other forms of entertainment compelled the minstrel show to expand into a form involving large choruses and multiple feature acts. Now considered a breeding ground for racial stereotyping, the form survived on stage and in films well into the last century. vaudeville–a form of popular theater which emerged in the United States in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

It “grew out of beer halls”–entertainment to accompany drinking–“and did not develop as a separate form until the 1870s and 1880s. In the West, it answered a desperate need for light entertainment amongst audiences of miners, lumbermen, cowboys, and gunfights; and in the eastern cities it soon became big business, popular with respectable families and single men alike. Like British music hall, it began dying with the advent of the talking film in the 1920s.” Vaudeville consisted of a large number of variety acts–comedians, serious and comic singers, jugglers, dancers, magicians, acrobats and the like, usally with orchestral accompaniment and all occurring, one after another on a set “bill” which was frequently performed twice a day. Many of the most famous performers of early radio and film came out of vaudeville, including W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, and George Burns and Gracie Allen. This Preview was written by Tom Joyner, Heather A. Smith and Bryon Matsuno, edited by Tom Joyner.

Works Consulted in Compiling this Preview… The Critical Response to Samuel Beckett by Cathleen Culotta Andonian, editor. 1998. Understanding Samuel Beckett by Alan Astro. 1992. Beckett in Performance by Jonathan Kalb. 1989. Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin. 1969. “A National Dream Life” from Writing in Restaurants by David Mamet. Background: Waiting for Godot | Theater 271 Waiting For Godot Background: Waiting for Godot The Time Period of the Play Waiting for Godot was written at a time period that has ambiguous ties to the cultural context of the play itself. Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot sometime between 1948 and 1949 in France, using a foreign language to portray his ideas. The play was first performed on January 5th, 1953 at Theatre de Babylone in Paris. In the aftermath of World War II, cultural ideas such as Surrealism affected, and were affected by, the arts. The changes brought a critique of the ideological foundations of western civilization, and traditional values faded (Cousineau 2).

Surrealism, which began in the early twenties, was able to resurface after the war and make an appearance in works such as Waiting for Godot. Surrealist poets were interested in “moments of intense perception that free the self from its bondage to ordinary consciousness” (2). In Beckett’s play, this cultural context can be found in moments such as Lucky’s speech, when a stream of consciousness takes the characters away from their monotonous lives for a moment. Unordinary consciousness can also be seen in Vladimir’s memory of events that stir no recollection for Estragon. In post World War II France, the birthplace of Waiting for Godot, there was also a crisis of moral order. Moral standards had flip-flopped more than once with the occupation and exit of the Nazis in France. The eventual elimination of the Nazi influence led to some vague, undefined, and unique philosophies of morality. The two sides in World War II had extremely different ideas about what was right and wrong for the human race. Such widespread rejection of the traditional organization of morality reflected the philosophy of post-structuralism, which focuses on the instability of the human sciences.

At this time, “Certain ideas of order themselves came to be seen as the cause of problems of injustice rather than a solution to problems of injustice”(Uhlmann 99). Beckett’s portrayal of humans in Waiting for Godot invites many different interpretations, and the complexity of the characters may prevent the audience from giving them an order, just as the human complexity prevents us from fully inspecting ourselves in post-structural philosophy. Existentialism also played a role in post World War II art. The Liberation of Paris in 1944 reinstated the nation’s independence, and allowed France to become a new country despite its old existence. The changes allowed the French to act as observers in a world in turmoil. This set the stage for the philosophy holding that existence precedes essence, and that human nature is shaped by the individual in that specific historical context. Waiting for Godot is classified as Absurdist theatre. The term “Theatre of the Absurd” was applied to plays that show “a hostile, meaningless universe looming large over individuals who are either unsure of or unconcerned about what to make of themselves, their situation, and the other people and things they encounter” (Gale 214).

By understanding Waiting for Godot in its Absurdist context, its intentional confusion emerges. The humans in the play seem unable to find inherent meaning in the universe, and our production should not try to impose order where none was intended. Although the philosophical movements of France in the 1940’s seem to surface in Waiting for Godot, Beckett demands a freedom from such conventions. Beckett’s choice of the French language and the play’s French premiere do not have the purpose that many would assume: “for Beckett, to live in the French capital and defend the art produced there was not it itself a choice in favor of France… but a demand for international autonomy”(Weller 170). Beckett’s relation to his cultural context is ambiguous because his art shows resistance to nationalism, yet also to existentialism and absurdism. Beckett himself explained that an “artist who stakes his being is from nowhere” (Weller 170). Perry Thompson, 2014 The World of the Play On the surface, the world of Waiting for Godot resembles our world. There is a country road, by a tree which sprouts leaves sometimes. There is sunset and then day. Men wear boots.

And they use the same days of the week we use. However, the play’s world diverges from our common experience. Gogo sleeps in a ditch, and is routinely beaten by some group–which one he is not sure. The social structure of the world is equally uncertain. Didi and Gogo do not have power–they have “got rid of [their rights]” (Beckett I. 305), and are supplicants to Godot, who on the other hand has some power, and (at least in the minds of Didi and Gogo) possesses a home, family, friends, agents, correspondents, books, a bank account, and a horse (Beckett I.280-286). Both Gogo’s fear that they are “tied” to Godot (Beckett I.341) and the master-slave relationship of Pozzo and Lucky demonstrate that this world has a harsh and exacting hierarchy. Pozzo is even planning on selling Lucky at the fair (Beckett I. 637). However, the exact nature of the social order is not explicit, nor is the reality of Godot. There is more to the world than brutality.

Even the idea of a fair conjures familiar cultural images. Dancing and singing both exist, to pass time and for entertainment. The Bible is present in this world, also. Didi is obviously knowledgable about the Gospels, and Gogo recalls the pretty “maps of the Holy Land” (Beckett I.80). The overall impression of the culture is one of low vagabond entertainment spread through with remnants of our world’s classics. The time and location of this world operate differently from our time and location. Didi and Gogo cannot decide if they were in the same place the day before, or if it was a different place, as if either their memories or the landscape change at whim. Both acts end with the line “yes, let’s go” (Beckett I. 1243, Beckett II.1075), and yet they do not move. Whether this is from their own indecision or from the rules of their world is not clear. Yet the play’s cycles imply a cyclical world, where however far in time or space one travels, one returns. Sounds of the World The following songs may help enter the strange world of the play.

–“Jeux d’Enfants” conjures the endless iterations of time, their oddity, and increasing ominousness despite their clownish charm: Megan Behnke, 2014 Sources: Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Simon, Peter, ed. Norton Anthology of Drama Volume One. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. Print. Cirque du Soleil. “Zydeko.” Quidam, 1996. MP3. Cirque du Soleil. “Jeux d’Enfants.” Alegria, 1994. MP3. Cousineau, Thomas. Waiting for Godot: Form in Movement. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1990. Print. Drake, Nick. “Time of No Reply.” Tim of No Reply. 1986. MP3. Friedrich, Caspar David. “Two men at the sea.” Pictures: Posters by Caspar David Friedrich at Posterlounge.co.uk. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. < Gale, Thomson.

“Theater of the Absurd.” Drama Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 28. Detroit: 2008. 214-320. Literature Criticism Online. 7 April 2014. Web. < “Godot, Intro, 2006.” Godot, Intro, 2006. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. < Larsen, E. Tage. Tree2. 2012. Sketches, Harlem Meer. E. Tage Larsen. Web. 19 Mar. 2014. Uhlmann, Anthony. Beckett and Poststructuralism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print. Ward, M. “End of Amnesia.” End of Amnesia, 2001. MP3. Weller, Shane. Samuel Beckett in Context. Ed. Anthony Uhlmann. New York: Cambridge UP, 2013. Print.

Waiting for Godot Letteratura inglese Waiting for Godot Appunti di Letteratura inglese della prof.ssa Vallaro su Waiting for Godot: Context, Samuel Beckett, Act I: Introduction & Pozzo and Lucky's Entrance, Act I: Pozzo and Lucky Scene, Act I: Pozzo and Lucky's Exit to Conclusion, Act II: Introduction & Pozzo and Lucky's Entrance, Act II: Pozzo and Lucky Scene, Act II: Pozzo and Lucky's Exit to Conclusion. CdL: Corso di laurea in lettere (BRESCIA - MILANO) SSD: Scienze antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche L-LIN/10 LETTERATURA INGLESE I contenuti di questa pagina costituiscono rielaborazioni personali del Publisher valeria0186 di informazioni apprese con la frequenza delle lezioni di Letteratura inglese e studio autonomo di eventuali libri di riferimento in preparazione dell'esame finale o della tesi.

Non devono intendersi come materiale ufficiale dell'università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore - Milano Unicatt o del prof Vallaro Cristina.

Question: Who wrote the play ‘Waiting For Godot’, which premiered in 1953?
Answer: Samuel BECKETT