Keeping the audience interested, even laughing, when there are only two of you onstage for many long minutes? A challenge. That torqueing, circular dialogue? A challenge. With Godot, every part’s the challenging center of attention there are no maids or butlers here.

Among our own changing circumstances, it abides. Where Shakespeare’s words are endlessly adapted-cut up, re-worded, placed in new settings such as the controversial production of Julius Caesar at the Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park this summer- Godot does not change to suit us. And although theaters have ignored his dictates, what he wanted is what we most often see: four male actors, the dead tree set, the uncut dialogue, the gloom. Because of Beckett’s demands, productions of Godot rarely change. just some guy named Godot?).Īnd it’s always these same elements, pared to the bone. While the men and their momentary visitors, Pozzo and Lucky, are distinct, nearly everything else is open for interpretation, from the set (post-Apocalyptic or wintertime?) to the costumes (former businessmen gone to ruin or vaudeville performers?) to Godot himself (God or. From our position in the audience, we watch two men, Vladimir and Estragon, and listen to their dismal, circulatory debate about whether Godot will show up and what they should do if he doesn’t. It manages to combine a specific tone and characters with an elusive setting and arc. The play is strong on its own merits, cultural zeitgeist aside. That’s the kind of longevity and cultural impact that most playwrights would kill for. Already this year, Stephen Colbert appropriated it to skewer the health care debate, and Elon Musk named his nearly-impossible-to-build-but-finally-working tunnel driller after it. And the play’s cultural reach is even greater than these production numbers indicate. Samuel French, Inc., which licenses it, reports that Godot will be professionally produced at least ten times around the world in the next three months, nearly 65 years after it first premiered. Why do theaters keep presenting Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot? Somehow, this long, apparently dystopian play has become as perennial as The Music Man.

Waiting for godot existentialism