1. Welcome
Name : Vora Kiran Shamaldas.
Class : M.A Sem. 3
Roll no. 13
Paper no. 9 Modern Literature
Topic : Waiting for Waiting for Godot
Email Id : Kiranvora5196@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt. S.B. Gardi
Department of English M. K.
Bhavnagar University.
3. Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett
• Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for
Godot” is one of the most iconic and
yet cryptic plays of the 20th century.
Once described by Irish literary critic
Vivian Mercier as “a play in which
nothing happens ... Twice”
• French Title: En attendant Godot
• First published: 1952
• First performed: 05 Jan 1953
• Characters: Estragon · Vladimir ·
Lucky · Pozzo · Godot · A Boy
• Genres: Drama · Play · Fiction
4. DAVE HANSON
• An internationally published and produced
playwright, actor and comedian
• Originally from Olympia, Washington, lives in
New York City
• Dave studied Theatre and English Literature at
Whittier College and trained in improve,
sketch comedy and acting in both New York
and Los Angeles.
• known for Waiting for Waiting For
Godot, Inside Amy Schumer, and
Chelsea Lately.
• Dave is a permanent ensemble member of the
Collective New York. He also writes and
performs regularly with the New York sketch
group The Shorts Show.
5. Waiting for Waiting For Godot
• Two guys on a road waiting for a man
they’ve never met who never comes?
Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,”
of course.
• Two understudies backstage waiting for
their chance to go on — a seriously
unlikely prospect — in a production of
“Waiting for Godot”? That is Dave
Hanson’s delectable “Waiting for
Waiting for Godot.” New York Times
• In Dave Hanson's Waiting for Waiting
for Godot, two hapless understudies
occupy their time backstage, trying to
understand art, life, theatre and their
precarious existence within it.
6. • As a playwright, Dave's full length comedy Waiting for Waiting For
Godot was a hit with critics and audiences in the 2013 New York
International Fringe Festival.
• 1st Produced: Kraine Theater, New York Festival Fringe - Aug
2013
• Organizations: Hansburg Productions, in association with The
Collective NY
• It would be a crime against absurdist-theatrical nature to make
the abstractions of Beckett’s masterpiece concrete.
• But Mr. Hanson’s play gets away with pretending to be a parody,
so we forgive it — even for having the nerve to provide a
resolution.
• “Waiting for Waiting for Godot” is richly, vibrantly, aggressively
acted, and directed in kind by Alex Harvey.
7. • Chris Sullivan has played the role as Ester (Estragon in the original), a big
guy who pretends to know everything.
• He decides to teach Val - played with convincing delicacy here by Mr.
Hanson the Miserly acting technique, which consists of repeating the
other actor’s line ad infinitum, and the Mamet, the art of cursing onstage.
• Half the joke is that Ester
pronounces the name Mam-
may, and pretty much everyone
in the audience knows that
David Mamet’s surname rhymes
with “damn it.” Yes, this is
catnip for theater insiders, but
you don’t have to be one to
appreciate certain comments on
Juilliard and talent agents.
8. PRAISE FOR WAITING FOR WAITING FOR GODOT...
• "Two guys on a road waiting for a man they’ve never met who
never comes? Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” of course.
Two understudies backstage waiting for their chance to go on —
a seriously unlikely prospect — in a production of “Waiting for
Godot”? That is Dave Hanson’s delectable “Waiting for Waiting
for Godot.” - New York Times
• "Who has it worse than Vladimir and Estragon, the two poor saps
caught in the gears of existential ennui in Samuel Beckett’s
Waiting for Godot? The two guys understudying the part of
Vladimir and Estragon, of course." - Time Out NY
• "Dave Hanson’s artful parody, Waiting for Waiting for Godot...is
now getting its South Florida premiere at The Vanguard, courtesy
of Fort Lauderdale’s Thinking Cap Theatre. Here’s betting that
anyone who knows Godot, loves comedy and/or has worked in
theater will adore it... Waiting for Waiting for Godot is a kind of
laugh-filled love letter to those who wait in theater..." - Miami
9. The title: ‘waiting for’ Waiting for Godot
• Beckett first wrote the play in French, En attendant Godot,
before translating it himself into English, Waiting for Godot. The
French word for rehearsal is répètition.
• But what is being repeated when the play has yet to begin? The
waiting.
• What is being repeated is a certain waiting, the condition of
being in waiting for the play to begin, and a waiting as looking
for, or looking out for, being ready for when the play arrives,
ready to grasp it at the right moment, a grasping which must be
repeated until the play opens.
• And for this repetition a space is needed. A rehearsal space. One
which prepares the ground for not being able to control what
happens ‘on the night’.
• The play lies in wait for itself.
• Not the way the director determines or the author dictates, and
still less their ‘estates’, but the way the play itself desires.
10. The play is about…
• And this is something that can only be revealed by the play itself
in its performance.
• The play is the gathering of the actors the director the author and
the spectator for the performance of the play, a gathering in
which all become public.
• And in this the play is always to come, for that gathering is each
time different, and the arriving of the play at that gathering must
be repeated again and again and each time anew.
• And what is it that arrives after the waiting for Waiting for Godot?
Opacity.
• There is no ‘message’ to be had from Beckett, and ‘meaning’ is
impossible to adduce.
• Beckett’s was a practice of ‘vaguening’ the word, reducing it to
tone rhythm affect, subtracting understanding from it, creating
images from it. Thus is why so many visual artists take him on.
11. How Hanson got the idea of this?
• There's a strange effect when you ingest
Beckett's work over and over again. The
world around you starts to transform into
the absurdist reality you're reading. Things
get a little darker, pursuits seem a little
more useless and every action carries its
own sardonic irony. And then you stop
reading it, the world snaps back to how it
was... almost.
• This happened to me when I was cast as an
understudy for a terrible production of
Waiting For Godot in Los Angeles, many
years ago. I sat backstage, for no pay,
almost no rehearsal time and no
guaranteed performances, and came to the
panicked realization that I was living
Beckett's play. I was my own parody and
reference joke. But since my first love is
parody and reference jokes, this tragic
realization seemed pretty funny to me.
12. • Years later, I wrote a showbiz parody called Waiting For
Waiting For Godot. I had to go through a lot more
disappointment and heartbreak for this play to make sense
in my head. The need to do a showbiz parody was what
attracted me to comedy in the first place, a chance to just
laugh at it all.
• All the trivial worries and real fears, all the times I was fired,
all the copious amounts of bad advice given freely with good
intentions, all the training and all the waiting. All of what I
have witnessed and experienced (and continue to do so) as
an artist doing what I love, cracking jokes and telling stories
in the theatre.
• I don't know if my play builds on Beckett's masterpiece. I
hope it offers an inspiring, comedic look into the existence of
artists. Especially those you never hear of, the ones who are
waiting.
13. While Waiting for Godot
• While Waiting for Godot is a web series adaptation of Samuel
Beckett’s play En Attendant Godot. It is the winner of Best
Cinematography at the 2014 Rome Web Awards, and an Official
Selection of the 2014 Miami Web Fest.
• The screenplay is based on a 2013 translation (by director Rudi
Azank), "in order to restore the language of Beckett’s more risqué
original French script (the English script of the play has always
been heavily censored). Also more present in the original
manuscript are strong Vaudevillian and Jewish aspects of Didi and
Gogo, the two lead characters, and a more 'gutter-talk' based banter
between Beckett's homeless protagonists.
• Two tramps, while waiting, are prompted by text message to roam
modern day New York City due to Godot's indecisiveness about
where to meet. They eventually encounter an aristocrat, Pozzo, and
her slave, Lucky.
