{"id":790,"date":"2019-03-28T13:57:08","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T13:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/staging-beckett\/?page_id=790"},"modified":"2019-04-15T10:54:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T09:54:08","slug":"module-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/staging-beckett\/case-study-waiting-for-godot\/module-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Module 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Before Beckett, drama was synonymous with action: a plot in which nothing happens was inconceivable. Beckett is the first dramatist to focus exclusively on the act of waiting and to make this into his dominant metaphor for existence.\u2019 (Bradby, 2001, 25)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Samuel Beckett\u2019s Waiting for Godot\u00a0<\/em>changed the rules of twentieth century theatre.\u00a0Written in French as En attendant Godot<\/em>, the play premiered at a small left bank theatre in Paris, the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de Babylone, on 5 January 1953, directed by Roger Blin. Although it is reported that many audience members walked out during that first run, the play was praised by influential French \u00a0writers such as the novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, and it provoked much debate in newspapers not only in France, but elsewhere in Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States. The play was translated into English by Beckett and premiered in London at the Arts Theatre, directed by Peter Hall on 3 August 1955, and in Dublin, directed by Alan Simpson on 28 October the same year. \u00a0This series of modules will explore why Godot\u00a0<\/em>made such an impact in the middle of the twentieth century, and why it remains a challenge and an inspiration to audiences and theatre makers today.<\/p>\n

You can find a more detailed introduction to Samuel Beckett and to Waiting for Godot <\/em>by Prof Anna McMullan here<\/a><\/p>\n

Why study Godot <\/em>today, if it was written over sixty years ago? Is it still relevant? <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s International<\/strong><\/p>\n

Waiting for Godot<\/em>\u00a0has been performed in many languages and in many geopolitical contexts such as in the San Quentin penitentiary (dir. by Herbert Blau in 1957), in apartheid South Africa (dir. by Benjy Francis at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg in 1976), a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic production in Haifa (dir. by Ilan Ronen in 1984), during the Siege of Sarajevo (dir. by Susan Sontag in 1993), and in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (dir. by Paul Chan, performed outside in the Lower Ninth Ward and Gentilly in 2007). The play\u2019s political relevance and aesthetic ingenuity have made Godot <\/em>one of the most famous and frequently staged plays of the twentieth century. It is no surprise that when the National Theatre in London asked playwrights, directors, actors, and journalists to rank the ten plays of the twentieth century that they considered the most \u2018significant\u2019, Waiting for Godot <\/em>came in at number one. Yet, at first glance, this notoriously ambiguous and knotty play can seem off-putting due to the many difficult questions it sets up and leaves unanswered. This can lead us to ask why we should read Godot <\/em>in the first place. Iseult Gillespie helps us to answer this question in the following short video \u2018Why should you read Waiting for Godot<\/em>?\u2019.<\/p>\n