Join OutCast in celebrating the 70th anniversary of this timeless masterpiece. These directors use Beckett’s revised text to explore how the play, originally set in the French countryside following the existential devastation of Europe in WWII, has so much to say to an audience today.
The story all began on January 5, 1953, when a simple play, written in French by the Irish expat Samuel Beckett, opened in a tiny theatre in Paris. And it was this production that lit the fuse. From this inauspicious beginning WAITING FOR GODOT soon exploded and spread its brilliant bewilderment like wildfire around the world, first in Germany, then in England and finally, across the pond to the USA. Since that time GODOT has had many significant productions and has become one of the most important and enigmatic plays of the last 70 years, and a cornerstone of twentieth century drama.
Two seemingly homeless men, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting by a tree for someone or something called Godot. In an undefined landscape, where “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes,” these characters inhabit a drama spun from their own consciousness featuring the comic wordplay of poetry, clowning, dreamscapes and nonsense, that has been interpreted as mankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning.