Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot - University of Hawaii

Samuel Beckett’s
Waiting for Godot
Many critics consider Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for
Godot, � rst performed in Paris in 1953, the most
important twentieth-century play in the Western
canon. Despite the undeniable historical and
aesthetic signi� cance of Waiting for Godot, however,
the question poses itself: to what extent may an
absurdist play—about two bums waiting on the side
of a country road for a person who never arrives—
still strike us as relevant today? � is question cannot
be answered univocally, but depends on the interpretive choices
made in the actual process of producing Beckett’s play on stage.
My goal as the director of this Kennedy � eatre production is
to create a thoroughly contemporary experience that evades the
usual clichés many have come to associate with Beckett’s style,
such as monotony and leadenness. From this vantage point, I will
now identify two major challenges to any stage production of
Waiting for Godot in 2010—challenges relating to the historical and
metaphysical background of the play.
� e setting (country road, tree), costume items (bowler hats, halfhunter
watch), and habits of the characters (the pipe-smoking
Pozzo), as well as the poverty and frugality of the two protagonists
(a diet of turnips, radishes and carrots for Vladimir and Estragon),
clearly suggest earlier historical periods such as the Irish Potato
Famine from around 1850, the wasteland of northern France
in the wake of the trench warfare of WWI, or America’s Great
Depression in the 1930s. � e names of the characters (Russian,
French, Italian and English) suggest a possible (illegal?) immigrant
status for at least one or two of them. Overall, it is not a far stretch
to link the play to the current economic recession, with tent
cities of the homeless and the working poor stretching along the
Wai‘anae Coast, and long-term unemployment being considered
the “new normal.” � ese associations can also be emphasized
through particular design choices (without straying from the stage
directions speci� ed in Beckett’s script), by using the shape of a
typical local tree for the production, for example, or by creating
aloha-style costumes and hats for the characters.
“Waiting for God(ot)” has mostly been interpreted from
a messianic or teleological Christian perspective (which
is frustrated in the play, since Godot never arrives)—
despite the fact that in the original French version
that interpretation is far less evident (with “dieu”
being the French word for “god”). � e metaphysics
and philosophy of Beckett’s play clearly mark
it as an example of mid-twentieth-century
modernism by insistently reiterating key
notions of Christianity, such as atonement
and redemption, while at the same time
implying their obsoleteness in the aftermath
of two World Wars, the Holocaust, and
Hiroshima. � e waiting in Beckett’s
play would shift meaning, however, if
approached from a Zen or ontological
perspective. In my staging of Waiting
for Godot, I will try to emphasize the
characters’ state of “being in the moment”
rather than their orientation towards a
future event that never occurs. � is
production will re� ect the “Age of Obama”
by rendering the question of Godot’s
arrival or non-arrival as � nally irrelevant.
Even were Godot to arrive, he would just
be an old man with a white beard. Nothing
would change, and after having realized this
Didi and Gogo would continue to perform
their customary routines.
Every director tackling Waiting for Godot faces
one additional challenge: to do justice to the
rigorous formal composition and rhythm of
the play while at the same time allowing the
performers to ignore these constraints in their
exploration and creation of the play’s characters.
Markus Wessendorf is Associate Professor of � eatre
at UHM, with a strong focus on theory and criticism
(theatre theory, performance studies, twentieth-century
critical discourses) as well as on modernist and postmodern
drama and performance (from Beckett to Heiner Müller to
� e Wooster Group). He is the author of a monograph on
Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric � eatre.
In Spring 2010, he organized an international
conference on “Brecht in/and Asia” at UHM.
1

Given Godot’s current popularity and its current reputation
for being the groundbreaking work of modern theatre, it’s
surprising how many people left the early performances
and how many actors refused the roles.
Th e play opened in Paris on January 5, 1953 and annoyed
much of its audience who were “baffl ed, bored, irritated.”
Others found the play pretentious (Graver 10). But a
few early reviewers perceived the importance of the play,
and a German version opened at a major Berlin theatre
later in the same year. At the London opening in August
1955, Peter Bull (who played Pozzo) recalls, “Waves of
hostility came whirling over the footlights, and the mass
exodus, which was to form such a feature of the run of
the piece, started soon after the curtain had risen” (qtd. in
Graver 12-3). John Gielgud had dismissed the play as “a
load of old rubbish,” dissuading the actors Alec Guinness
and Ralph Richardson from taking on the leads. Th us
Richardson turned down what he now calls “the greatest
play of my lifetime” (qtd. in Graver 12). Once again, the
critics saved the production. Although a third of the
audience typically walked out after the fi rst act, Godot
simultaneously developed a cultic following.
On to America. In 1955, the vaudevillian actor Bert
Lahr (Th e Cowardly Lion in Th e Wizard of Oz) played
Estragon. Th e play opened in—of all places—Miami and
was billed as “the laugh sensation of two continents.”
According to the director Alan Schneider, the opening
T. Ryder Smith as Pozzo, J Kyle Manzay as Estragon, Wendell Pierce
as Vladimir, and Mark McLaughlin as Lucky perform in front of a
Lower Ninth Ward house. Paul Chan, Waiting for Godot in New
Orleans, 2007. Photo: Frank Aymami, courtesy Creative Time.
2
night audience was “ambulatory.” In fact, almost everyone
had left the theatre by the fi nal curtain—with the notable
exceptions of William Saroyan and Tennessee Williams
yelling “Bravo!” across the empty seats (Graver 16). Th e
play made it to Broadway in 1956. Th e critics were not
kind in New York, but the public made Godot a sensation.
Beckett was closely involved (either personally assisting
the directors or consulting them by mail) in the fi rst
French, Irish (1955), and American productions of
Waiting for Godot, and he later directed the play himself
at Schiller Th eater Berlin (1975). With the play’s
success, Beckett fi nally commented that Godot had been
misunderstood, that there was no allegory or symbolism,
no defi nition of anything.
Th e end is to give artistic expression to something hitherto
almost ignored – the irrational state of unknowingness
wherein we exist, this mental weightlessness which is
beyond reason (qtd. in Graver 18).
Beckett did appreciate what he heard from reports
and reviews about the 1957 performance of the play
at California’s San Quentin prison. Th e play resonated
with the prisoners, and thus began a long tradition of
performing Godot in oppressive venues. Most recently, in
November 2007, Waiting for Godot was staged for free in
fi ve site-specifi c locations in hurricane-ravaged districts of
New Orleans.
Given the long, ambivalent, provocative and puzzling
production history of this play, we can only wait for
Godot, or we can walk out. But consider waiting, on the
advice of Sunday Times critic Harold Hobson.
Go and see Waiting for Godot. At the worst you will
discover a curiosity, a four-leafed clover, a black tulip; at
the best, something that will securely lodge in a corner of
your mind for as long as you live. (qtd. in Graver 13)
Reference
Graver, Lawrence. Beckett: Waiting for Godot. 2nd Edition.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 2004.
Brenda Machosky is an Assistant Professor of English and
Humanities at University of Hawai`i West O`ahu. A member
of the Shakespeare Association of America, Machosky teaches
courses in Shakespeare, Early English Literature, World
Literature, writing, and drama. She recently published Th inking
Allegory Otherwise, an edited collection of essays, with Stanford
University Press. Her book Faces of Allegory is forthcoming with
Fordham University Press.

In the fi rst act of Waiting for Godot, Vladimir wryly says
to Estragon, “You should have been a poet.” Estragon
replies, “I was. (Gesture towards his rags.) Isn’t that
obvious?” (6). Th e Irish playwright Samuel Beckett pokes
fun at himself and at all of us through his characters,
while creating a dramatic arena in which to contemplate
deeply profound issues. Beckett’s humor draws on a range
of inspirations, from the comedic elements of silent fi lms,
to his own Irish upbringing, to the turbulent political
background of postwar Europe.
Characters named Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky
may seem remote to the modern experience in the world
of iPhone and Facebook. But the bond Vladimir and
Estragon share, based on grudging aff ection and resentful
mutual need, is familiar to many of us. In Waiting for
Godot one can see the poignant slapstick comedy of Buster
Keaton and Laurel and Hardy, as well as shades of the
modern situation comedy, such as Th e Honeymooners, I
Love Lucy, Seinfeld, or even Two and A Half Men. Beckett
created characters humorously “stuck together,” frustrated,
enduring, exploding, and fundamentally going nowhere
with their lives.
Beckett is said to have possessed a keen sense of humor
and kindness, but he has also been described as private,
taciturn and gloomy. “Beckett perceived that those dark
and tumultuous aspects of his own personality which
he had always ‘struggled to keep under’ were in reality
his most precious possession” (Graver 7). Although
raised in the prosperous Protestant enclave of Foxrock,
Dublin, Beckett still possessed that tragic, quintessentially
survivalist Irish humor more often associated with the
disenfranchised Catholics. In conversation with the critic
Lawrence Harvey, Beckett was said to have suggested,
“perhaps it is an Irish trait to be skeptical both of the
natural world as given and of the perceiving subject as
well” (Graver 8).
Beckett has been compared to James Joyce in his use of
humor: “Like Joyce, Beckett observes his fellow creatures,
and fi nds comic material in their confusions” (Don Nilsen
164). Both displayed the Irish love of irreverent, upending
word play, such as Joyce’s phrase, “Th at’s enough
of fi nicking with Finnigan and fi ddling with his faddles.”
Beckett’s wordplay can be seen in the French etymology
of the word “Godot.” According to Graver, Godillot can
mean “‘hobnailed boot’ or shapeless old shoe’; and godasses
are ‘military boots’ [. . .] Goder means to pucker” (45).
Jonathan Egged as Vladimir and Chi Ho Law as Estragon in the 2003
Earle Ernst Lab Theatre production of Waiting for Godot, directed in
Kyogen style by Tim Gonzalez-Wiler.
Th e reference to military boots connotes the devastating
eff ects of the second World War. Th e war had ruptured
trust in life; its shattering reverberation echoed in
philosophy, literature, and art. Beckett’s increasingly dark
post-war canvas remained punctured with the light of
humor, with physical comedy and with an objective look
at human ridiculousness and pomposity. Vladimir says
to Estragon, who has been fussing with his ill-fi tting
boot: “Th ere’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots
the faults of his feet” (4). Th is one line well characterizes
the pithy, dark humor distilled in Beckett, which he
assiduously used to ultimately reveal the human condition.
References
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press,
Inc., 1952, 1982.
Graver, Lawrence. Beckett, Waiting for Godot. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989.
McMillan, Dougland et al. Beckett in the Th eatre. London, New
York: Riverrun Press, 1988.
Nilsen, Aileen et al. Encyclopedia of 20 th Century American
Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Nilsen, Don. Humor in Irish Literature: A Reference Guide.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Born and raised in Dublin, Siobhán Ní Dhonacha is a MFA
candidate at UHM. Siobhán is a novelist, play and screen
writer, as well as a director and producer. She is currently
working on her MFA thesis play L❤VE 2 , which will be
staged at the Earle Ernst Lab Th eatre in March 2011.
3

4
To all mankind they were addressed, those cries still
ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of
time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not.
— Vladimir, Waiting for Godot
Asked whether the fact that he lived in France instead of his
native Ireland and published in England signaled that he
was no longer “an Irishman,” the playwright Samuel Beckett
famously answered, “Au contraire.” Th e contrarian answer
displays his classically sardonic humor, but it signifi cantly
neither denies his Irish identity nor simply upholds it.
For years, Beckett was read as a writer with no real
national affi liation, one whose plays, including Waiting
for Godot, withhold direct markers that would orient us to
time and place. Consequently, critics have taken his refusal
to name his settings as indicative of the universally absurd
condition of humanity, the inadequacy of language, and
the waning of a belief in progress born of a civilization
torn asunder by World War II. In other words, they locate
Beckett in one version of mid-twentieth-century history.
But what do we learn about the play if we take seriously
his Irish background? Recently scholars have observed
similarities between the literature coming from postcolonial
countries and Ireland and note the ways that
Waiting for Godot coincides with decolonization movements
globally. Indeed in 1948–49 when Beckett was writing the
play, the Republic of Ireland Act offi cially ended executive
authority by Great Britain over the twenty-six counties of
the Republic. Additionally, 1953, the year of the fi rst full
production, also marks Cambodia’s independence from
France.
For Joseph Roach, the Irish potato famine haunts the play.
Approximately one million Irish died from hunger-related
illness during the famine, while another million emigrated.
English landlords continued to export cash crops from
the island while the Irish waited for relief that rarely
came. Roach sees the spectral presence of the famine in
the play’s parched and desolate landscape, its stunted tree
and images of bones and a scant turnip, but also in the
dislocation that Estragon and Vladimir experience. His
reading echoes that of Vivian Mercier, who sees in Pozzo’s
dress and speech a Victorian-era absentee landlord and in
Lucky’s clothing the Irish peasant of Punch cartoons.
By contrast, the Irish critic Declan Kiberd attempts
to reconcile readings of the play that focus on its Irish
references with those that understand it as the outgrowth
of modernist sensibilities. Beckett saw in post-war
J Kyle Manzay as Estragon, T. Ryder Smith as Pozzo, and Wendell
Pierce as Vladimir perform in the 2007 Classical Theatre of Harlem
Production in New Orleans. Director: Christopher McElroen. Paul
Chan, Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, 2007. Photo: Paul Chan,
courtesy Creative Time.
France, Kiberd argues, “vital lessons for Irish people” (550).
In Vladimir’s speech that is the epigraph of this essay, for
example, Kiberd fi nds an admonition against Ireland’s
neutrality during the war (542). But so too this critic notes
Beckett elsewhere spoke of the particularly Irish “conception
of humanity in ruins” and found in the Irish “an inkling of the
terms in which our condition is to be thought again” (550).
What is at stake in an insistence on the Irish context for
Beckett’s work, I believe, is not national pride or a place in
an Irish canon but the sense that while absurdity might be a
universal condition, it is not universally experienced in the same
way. Even if the play is “no where,” its audiences, like Beckett
himself, are located somewhere, and the play refl ects and
refracts the specifi city of our locations and experiences as was
the case in 2007 when Godot was produced with a Hurricane
Katrina-ravaged New Orleans as the setting, a world where
waiting enacted violence. We might, then, ask ourselves from
the darkness of our seats in Kennedy Th eatre as we watch this
production, “Where are we?” and “What are we waiting for?”
References
Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland. Boston: Havard UP, 2003.
Mercier, Vivian. Beckett/Beckett. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.
Roach, Joseph. “”All the Dead Voices:’ the Landscape of Famine in
Waiting For Godot.” Land/scape/Th eatre. Eds. Elinor Fuchs and Una
Chaudhuri. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2002: 84-93.
Laura E. Lyons is Associate Professor and Graduate Director of
English at UHM where she teaches courses in cultural and postcolonial
studies. Her scholarly work ranges from cultural politics
of the Troubles in Northern Ireland to the pineapple in Hawai‘i.
With Cynthia Franklin, she is the co-editor of a special issue of
Biography, “Personal Eff ects: Th e Testimonial Uses of Life Writing.”
With Purnima Bose, she has co-edited the volume, Cultural
Criticism and the Global Corporation.

Life’s not fair. Despite the centuries that separate
Shakespeare’s Hamlet from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot,
this message takes many forms on the stage as in life.
We desire meaning and order in life; sometimes we
pretend that life is fair, even though we know it’s not.
Like Estragon and Vladimir, some construct a reality
that suspends the question of life’s fairness. Or others,
like Hamlet, try their best to be fair, even in an unfair
world. And yet, life remains unfair, unjust, inexplicable.
Drama reminds us of this paradox. Plays that portray a
meaningless world force us to focus on ourselves, on how
human beings react to, engage with, and survive—even
thrive—in such a world.
Hamlet very directly takes on the issue of the human search
for meaning. Th roughout the play, Hamlet searches for
certainty, and he will not act until he is sure he can be fair.
Rather admirably, he wants to fi nd meaning for himself.
Not even the words of his father’s ghost are suffi cient. Th is
quest for the absolute, or at least some form of assurance
that the ghost’s account of events is correct, prevents Hamlet
from acting decisively for much of the play (Jenkins).
Even after he is sure of Claudius’ guilt, he himself wonders
at his inability to act: “I do not know/ Why yet I live to
say this thing’s to do,/Sith I have cause, and will, and
Left to right: Adam Weiner as Vladimir, Roger Long as Lucky, Robert
Harrison as Pozzo, and Gian Giacomo Colli as Estragon in the 1989
UHM Lab Theatre production. Photo: James Giles.
strength, and means/To do’t” (4.4.43-6). A spectator might
simultaneously applaud Hamlet’s circumspection while
being annoyed by his hesitancy. For much of the play,
Hamlet does not move, and when he fi nally does, he dies.
Even by the end of the play, it is not clear what Hamlet
could have or should have done diff erently.
Such plays show us that the world does not have to be
meaningful to be interesting, or even, perhaps, that the
quest for meaning can itself be meaningless. Th is is one
way to understand Waiting for Godot. Many scholars and
critics superimpose meaning on this play with allegorical
interpretations that connect the play to a system outside
of it—to politics, religion, philosophy, or social conditions.
Beckett insisted, however, that such allegorical gestures
were not his intent. And his characters continually express
a resistance to meaning. Th e play is so unsettling—so
“meaningless” —precisely because the human desire for
meaning is suspended. Didi and Gogo simply exist, just
waiting for Godot (or not). Godot does not stand for God
(at least not according to Beckett) (Knowlson 124) but
it does perhaps stand for whatever meaning we desire.
Waiting for Godot provokes us to think not about meaning
but about how much the desire for it determines who we
are and what we do.
Long ago Aristotle realized that the things that distress
us in life give us pleasure when mounted on the stage.
Even unsettling representations are pleasurable because
we learn from them. We recognize the human condition
and simultaneously feel safely removed from it. Hamlet
is a character with a rich and resonant psychology;
he has inspired many a youth to dress all in black and
ponder existential dilemmas. But faced with the pile of
bodies at the end of Hamlet, we may only gape without
comprehension. Closer to our own time, Waiting for Godot
off ers a more perverse pleasure. Th e despondency of the
human condition comes even more to the fore. And yet,
Godot can also be a more uplifting play. Th e play ends
on a comic action, with Gogo’s pants falling down. And
although everything tells these two that they should give
up, “they do not move.”
References
Knowlson, James and Elizabeth, eds. Beckett Remembering,
Remembering Beckett: A Centenary Celebration. New
York: Arcade, 2006.
Jenkins, Harold. “Introduction.” Th e Arden Shakespeare: Hamlet.
London and New York: Methuen, 1982. 136-40.
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• Saturday November 13 2010 “Looking into Waiting for Godot”
by Yining Lin
Free to the public
• Saturday December 4 2010 “For the Love of Godot: Th e
Story Behind the Play” by Lindsay Timmington-McGahan
Free to the public
Times: 6:30 pm Location: Earle Ernst Lab Th eatre
Panelists: Elisa Joy White, Ricardo D. Trimillos, Laura E. Lyons,
Jonathan Kamakawiwo’ole Osorio, Jean Toyama; Moderator:
Markus Wessendorf.
Th e scholars will relate the production to our present moment,
especially here in Hawai‘i.
Sunday November 21 2010, 4:30 pm Earle Ernst Lab Th eatre
Free to the public
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Directed by Markus Wessendorf
Kennedy Th eatre November 12, 13, 19, December 2, 4 at 7:30
pm; November 21 at 2 pm
All the World’s a Stage, a non-profi t theatre company originally
based in Seattle, has recently moved to Hawai’i under the
direction of UHM Associate Professor of Acting Paul T. Mitri.
Th e mission of AWS is to see and create theatre everywhere and
make theatre accessible for all.
Th e Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities (HCH) is a private
nonprofi t educational organization dedicated to supporting and
promoting activities that further awareness of the worth and
value of the humanities among the general public in Hawai‘i.
Th e UHM Department of Th eatre and Dance is internationally
recognized for the following focus areas: Asian Th eatre, Western
Th eatre, Design, Youth Th eatre, Dance Education, Dance
Ethnology, and Dance Choreography and Performance. Kennedy
Th eatre’s Page to Stage program links Kennedy Th eatre productions
to other classes and departments at the UHM campus and beyond.
6
BOOKS
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Th e Complete Dramatic Works.
London: Faber and Faber, 1986.
Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: Th e Life of Samuel Beckett.
New York: Grove Press, 1996.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Bloom’s
Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Infobase
Publishing, 2008.
Dow Fehsenfeld, Martha and Lois More Overbeck, eds. Th e
Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume 1: 1929-1940. London:
Cambridge UP, 2009. A collection of the author’s letters
from 1929-1940.
ONLINE RESOURCES
“Lucky’s Th ought” http://www.samuel-beckett.net/Penelope/
Pozzo_Lucky.html
An in-depth look at Lucky’s famous monologue.
“Waiting for Godot in New Orleans”
http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/2007/chan/
welcome.html
A collaborative project between Paul Chan, Creative Time, and
the Classical Th eatre of Harlem of a production of Waiting for
Godot in New Orleans.
VIDEO
Beckett on Film. Dir: Various. Ambrose Video: 2002. A collection
of all of Beckett’s dramatic works on DVD.
Th e Impossible Itself. Dir. Jacob Adams, 2008.
http://www.newfi lmmakersonline.com/
A documentary about the 1957 production of Waiting for
Godot at San Quentin Prison by the San Francisco Actor’s
Workshop.
Audience Guide Editor: Lurana Donnels O’Malley
Audience Guide Assistant: Eleanor Svaton
Audience Guide Designer: Laura Ruby
Please see the Page to Stage website for additional educational
materials and information: www.hawaii.edu/theatre/stage/
pagetostage/
For more information on educational events, contact KTPage@
hawaii.edu
For more information on public performances of Hamlet and
Waiting for Godot call Kennedy Th eatre Box Offi ce at 956-7655
or purchase tickets online through etickethawaii.com/kennedy.html