Files
Playwright
Samuel Beckett
Performance Dates
December 6-9, 1967
Creative Team
Director - Gregory Sabatino
Designer-Technical Director - William Ahl
Synopsis
It has been said Waiting for Godot, with destructive intent, that it is a drama in which absolutely nothing happens. "And does that seem a small accomplishment?" we should ask. This is precisely what is so fascinating about Waiting for Godot: that nothing happens. It is a lucid testimony of nothingness. But while we are left cold by many dramas of intrigue in which a great deal happens, this "nothing happens" of Waiting for Godot keeps us in suspense. These men who are bored cast us out of our own boredom; their boredom produces our catharsis, and we follow their adventure breathlessly, for they have suddenly placed us before the "nothing happens" of our lives. The gray and meaningless mass of our everyday existence is suddenly illuminated, disclosing its true structure, naked and desolate. That is the great revelation. Besides, we are not before a plotless drama. We are before a mono-situational plot. Considered in this light, Waiting for Godot is a drama which conforms to the artistic requirements of traditional drama. It is rooted in sure ground, the only ground in which theater can be seriously rooted: situation. Thus, "nothing happens" can be the form in which the most extraordinary and profound events are presented, just as "many things happen" can be a form of emptiness.
Waiting for Godot captures this "nothing happens" which constitutes our daily existence. For this reason, it is a familiar picture, a radiographic plate in which we recognize ourselves with horror. The story of Waiting for Godot is precisely a story of our lives.
Disciplines
Acting | Theatre and Performance Studies | Theatre History
Keywords
College Theater, Otterbein University Theater, Drama
Recommended Citation
Otterbein University Theatre and Dance Department, "Waiting for Godot" (1967). 1967-1968 Season. 4.
https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/production_1967-1968/4