IN BRIEF

Vladimir and Estragon dream while waiting for a certain Mr. Godot. Nearby, other Vladimirs and Estragons, variations of themselves, move within a square, creating the impression that anyone else could be in their place—anyone who has appeared in their lives, anyone they could have become but never did. All the faces and masks of their selves. Yet the tree, the meeting point of the most famous theatrical rendezvous, no longer exists. In its place remains only a beam of light. But when, finally, will Godot come to save them?

One of the most emblematic works of the Theatre of the Absurd, a “tragicomedy in two acts,” as Beckett himself described it, Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot, 1948) is a masterpiece of modern dramaturgy. Despite the various interpretations linking it to Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic theories, the Cold War, Existentialism, and even Christianity, the play remains a timeless parable of humanity’s tendency to await salvation from an external source. As Beckett himself argued, the meaning of the work lies in the act of waiting, not in Godot himself, whose identity even the author did not know.

In this non-place and non-time, Beckett illuminates once more the dead-ends of the most comic, poetic, and tragic existence—our own. The performance was staged in three different versions.