We're waiting for Godot.

1) What was French classism and social structure like in the time in which the play was published?  What was the political scene like at the time that could have possibly had an influence on the work itself?

2) Does the juxtaposition of the physical realities of Didi and Gogo (the five senses, i.e. pain) with the seeming lack of metaphysical elements (time, memory, etc.) serve to highlight certain themes within the text? If so, what? Additionally, how have prior productions dealt with this juxtaposition?

3) What are the “rules” of the play? How have prior productions dealt with the “rules” of such elements as the passage of time, character relationships, etc. and how can we incorporate those “rules” or new “rules” into our production?

4) What does this text look like in the original French? Is there a preference for the use of “masculine” words in the original text?

5) Why is this play relevant for our audience? Do we need to find a theme, such as the New Orleans production, to use as a lens to view the play through to continue to make it relevant for audiences? If we do need to find a “theme,” what would it be?

6) Is there any literature that is written on the similarities between the pairing of Didi/Gogo and Hamm/Clov or the similarities between the language used in the interactions between the two sets of characters?  If so, are there over-arching themes between Waiting for Godot and Endgame (or any of Beckett’s other works)?

Godot dramaturgy questions

So sorry these are so late.

Some musings:

-How can we track the decay of these characters' bodies in relation to the play? Going off our questions re: time, it seems to me one of the more reliable markers of time is how the characters interact with their bodies: how Pozzo decays from sighted to sightless, how Estragon registers his wounds.
         -Is such decay "significant" somehow, thematically? Or symbolically? Or should we just take it as "decay?"

-Who are the pugnacious "they" and why do they beat up Estragon/Vladimir?
         -Is this in any way connected to something autobiographical? Beckett's own time sequestered in the countryside? (Probably reading a bit too much into that one)

-What is the landscape of the play? We know that it's a "country road" with "a tree" at "evening." Does anything surround this tree? Is there a soundscape? Are there critters? How far are they from those locations in France Kat/they mention?

-What is the nature of Vladimir and Estragon's relationship? We know they have known each other for a long time. Are they friends? Are they brothers? Are they lovers? Did they transition between these relationship (friends to lovers, brothers to friends, lovers to friends, brothers to lovers (!ack!))?
         -For that matter, what is the exact nature of Pozzo and Lucky's relationship? Is it slave/master, or servant/master? How did this come to be? How does the nature of their relationship affect the world of the play?

-How can we explore the comedy of this play? Is it vaudevillian? Lecoq? None of the above?
         -To what extent can we/should we imbue the play with contemporary stylistic elements? I'm thinking about the Classical Theatre of Harlem production; the NY Times review I read mentioned that the production "owed debts" to rap. Would such contemporary elements overdetermine the setting/Godot somehow?

And, of course, some of the questions we brought up in class last week:
         -Why do this play? How does it relate to us? To our audience? To our theater company? Does it resonate with us philosophically? Aesthetically? Politically? Topically?
                   -What does it mean for this play to be "political?" Does imbuing the play with contemporary politics "overdetermine" Godot? If so, do we mind?
         -Should we/How can we explore the difference between the specificity of Beckett's stage directions (Estragon's boots, musing on the struggle, watching the sun set) and the ambiguity of an audience's perspective?

ESTRAGON: ...Stay With Me!

--> -Tenderness in Godot
[...ESTRAGON wakes with a start. Jumps up, casts about wildly. VLADIMIR runs to him, puts his arms around him.] VLADIMIR: There...there... Didi is there... don't be afraid...
Why does this play appear to have substantially more inter-character tenderness?


How mutually beneficial is the relationship between Pozzo and Lucky?


How do audiences respond to productions of Godot that err on the side of indefinite setting and non-politicization?
How does/does one “read” a production in which Godot is predetermined differently from one in which he/she/it is not?


Who is “Mr. Albert”? (85)
What role does the BOY play in the [determination of the] physics of this world? Is he in a position of dominion? Does the boy age? Why doesn't Godot dye his beard?


Why will he never let him sleep?


What has Pozzo got to prove?


Didi...Afraid...Dreams...Why...?...

VlADIMIR: Suppose we got up to begin with.
ESTRAGON: No harm in trying.
[They get up]
ESTRAGON: Child's play.
VLADIMIR: Simple question of will-power. (78)

Why do these passages jump out at me so?


VLADIMIR: ...it's the way pf doing it that counts, the way of doing it, if you want to go on living. (55)



ESTRAGON: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?
VLADIMIR: Yes yes, we're magicians. But let us persevere in what we have resolved, before we forget. (64)



VLADIMIR: You must be happy too, deep down, if only you knew it.
ESTRAGON: Happy about what?
VLADIMIR: To be back with me again.
ESTRAGON: Would you say so?
VLADIMIR: Say you are, even if it's not true.
ESTRAGON: What am I to say?
VLADIMIR: Say, I am happy.
ESTRAGON: I am happy.
VLADIMIR: So am I.
ESTRAGON: So am I.
VLADIMIR: We are happy.
ESTRAGON: We are happy. [Silence] What do we do know, now that we are happy?
VLADIMIR: Wait for Godot. (56)



-And particularly this'n:



POZZO: [Suddenly furious] Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day like any other day, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? [Calmer] They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams for an instant, then it's night once more. [He jerks the rope.] On!

Cheers,

-Jo

Ponderings

1) Where is the play set? And furthermore, what time period is it set in?

2) I'm interested in what hats signify to Beckett. I have seen them in each of the plays that we have read and they are always there and noted. Is it a sign of masculinity? If we don't know when these plays are set, we cannot just say that it is a result of the time period or common in the area because we do not know where they are set either.

3) I also want to know more about loyalty/slavery. Why does lucky stay with pozzo even when he has opportunities to escape? We see that also in Endgame, why doesn't Clov leave Hamm when he has the ability to and he is unhappy with him? Is it just loyalty? Is it slave mentality? I s it the closest show of love that exists in these worlds?

4) How do the stage directions play a role in Godot? How do they create the absurd and grotesque that we associate with Beckett plays?

5) Forgetting is a common theme in the play and in Beckett in general. I want to know if in Godot it is a result of deterioration, because that is what i think it is. Or is it an issue of aging. This is why I would like to know what the ages of did and gogo are.

6) Where does the inspiration for the names of Beckett's characters come from?

Some Questions

1) How does time progress in this play? Is it linear or circular? Does the play progress from one day to the next or from one season to the next? I know the stage directions indicate that act 2 is "the next day" but how does that explain the "three or four leaves" (usually indicative of a change in season).

2) What is the relationship between act 1 and act 2? Are they, as we briefly mentioned in class, different versions of one another? I think there is a crucial shift that occurs when Pozzo shows up blind. Why reference this difference and what does it want to portray/highlight?

3) What is the purpose of juxtaposing a specific time (for example, the nineties) with the no-man's-land feel of DIDI and GOGO's landscape? Does this specific time serve to highlight the timelessness of the landscape, or does it serve as a ludicrous counterpoint to this strange world? Does it tell us anything about the actual nature of the landscape?

4) How have past productions defined/refused to define Godot? What incarnations or forms has "Godot" taken? We talked briefly about some examples in class but I would be interested to hear more.

5) Why can't any of the characters remember anything? Mike Nichols attributes this loss of memory to some kind of human nature (he talked about how he forgets things all the time), but I think these lapses might indicate something more interesting about the relationship between act 1 and act 2. Can their lapses support the "act 1 and act 2 are versions of each other" hypothesis? ie: they remember different versions of themselves as written by the author?

6) Does Beckett-the-author emerge as an implied character in the text through different re-writings or versions of the same day? If so, what are some ways in which we could represent this figure in our own reproduction?

Godot Questions

1. What time period is the play set in? No time? Every time? Turn of the 20th century?

2. Where are they? The play references regions of France.

3. What is the world of this play? The hierarchical structure, the history. Are there other people populating this world? If there are, what are they like? Are we in a Judaeo-Christian, European world?

4. I would ask the dramaturg to research French clowning methodology.

5. Who is Godot?

6. Where are all the women?

Peter Hall’s Waiting For Godot (1955)

Hey all, 

Since I wasn't in class last week, I'm providing an outline of what my presentation would have been. 

Music by Bartok: 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmkDMTU-hb4 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvdJSVmi404

Pictures of the 1955 production: 

Picture 1 Picture 2

First production in English. Imported from France, directed by Peter Hall at 24. Before Godot, English theater was dominated by drawing-room comedies. The theater’s purpose was to be morally and artistically uplifting to the masses. Scripts were censored by the Lord Chamberlain, except for shows put on by privately owned clubs. London had very little room for small avant-garde theaters due to this censorship.

Peter Hall was the new, young director of the Arts Theatre, with 347 seats and a cramped stage. He cast mostly young, unknown actors. To compensate for the sparse language, Hall provided atmosphere and context with the set, which focused on providing realism. The set included a raised bank with scraggy vegetation upstage, a substantial tree on the bank upstage right that looked like a gnarled oak. Stage left there was “a tar barrel, a rock and some pieces of stone, as if abandoned by road-menders” (Bradby 75). The tar barrel was a focal point for a lot of the action. The set was extensive enough that some critics misinterpreted it as Expressionist. The costumes were elaborate and theatrical. Estragon and Vladimiir wore pinstripe suits that had once been nice, Pozzo wore a checkered suit with a check waistcoat in different check, check overcoat, cravat, monocle and watch chain – a member of the aristocracy. Pozzo, Estragon and Vladimir wore bowler hats. Lucky wore a stovepipe hat and was dressed as a porter. Estragon and Vladimir were portrayed as tramps.

The play was seen as degrading, squalid, pretentious drivel. Critics worried about understanding the play. The audiences and actors were embarrassed by the long unnatural pauses. It nearly closed until Kenneth Tynan, a critic for The Observer, wrote that Godot “forced me to re-examine the rules which had hitherto governed the drama; and having done so, to pronounce them not elastic enough.”

The play’s religious implications were pointed up more in this production, for example, when the Boy is asked where Godot is, he points at the heavens.

Hall added background music by Bartok before the play began and at points in the show to “heighten the sense of strangeness and the feeling of dusk falling on an isolated country road” (75).

Bradby, David. Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.

Questions on Godot

1) What is the temporal context for this play? At one point in the beginning of the play, Didi says, "We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties."

2) Going off of question 1, how can a production reflect this temporal context and space through scenery, music, cues, etc?

3) What can we make of the various and resounding Biblical messages throughout the play? Another way of asking this is: How can we allow our audience, who may not be informed of the Biblical implications, to understand them?

4) I'm increasingly interested in Beckett's stage directions. As Erin pointed out last class, how can we take Beckett's directions in light of all the renditions of this production? In particular, Didi, Gogo, and Pozzo's reactions to Lucky's monologue is detailed and even tracked throughout the course of the speech. What if this doesn't fit into the context of one particular interpretation?

5) In relation to question 5, how can we interpret/manage the physicality of this play? Although the play is historically credited to "not much happening" there seems to be a plethora of physical motion, abuse, and self-expression through movement. (See the stage direction on page 82 - With sudden fury VLADIMIR starts kicking LUCKY, hurling abuse at him as he does so. But he hurts his foot and moves away limping and groaning. LUCKY stirs. Also, this is particularly interesting to think about in terms of Laurel and Hardy's "The Music Box")

6) After all the profound meaning that can be gleaned from this play, why does Beckett choose to end it on Estragon's dropped trousers? What can we make of this?

[7) This question relates to both Godot and "The Music Box." Based my presentation last class that brought up points about bourgeois society and power relations, I'm interested in how both Didi and Gogo - and to this extent Laurel and Hardy - play the roles of the lower classes that are subservient to the bourgeois. Do we find humor in their service or in the ridiculousness in the upper class systems? How do these power relationships color these two productions?]

For Production Histories

Choose one of these landmark productions of GODOT to report on to the group. (Check the COMENTS section below to see if any productions have already been claimed. 

Note: I'm afraid that "landmark" productions may be famous for their oversimplifications of the play's themes. So: while you should certainly report on your production's singular qualities, I'd encourage you to also pay attention to ways that the production deals with the play that any team would need to/want to address.

If you run across a production that isn't listed, but about which you feel passionately, email me and see if it's a good substitute.

There will be some sources for each of these productions online, but the internet is not the only place or way to do research. Reference librarians are your friends.

Susan Sontag (dir.), Sarjevo 1993

Classic Theater of Harlem, 2006--

San Quentin, 1957/Wuppertal Prison, 1954-56

French premiere, dir. Roget Blin (Paris, 1953)

Beckett’s German language production, Berlin,1974-75

American premiere (dir. Alan Schneider) and TV version (dir. Alan Schneider)

Walter Asmus, 1978 BAM (and other productions of WFG directed by him)

Mike Nichols, 1988 LCT

Peter Hall, 1955

New York, 1956

When you have selected the production you want to present on, claim it in the COMMENTS section below, so that there will be no more than one presentation on each production.

A quick response to our last dicussion of physics vs. reality: I am interested in the way that Beckettian landscapes shift and re-shift in an almost hallucinatory way. Throughout these novels names and characters interchange and replace one another almost seamlessly, and the landscape itself transforms joltingly. These transformations depict our narrators' mental landscapes (heightened sanity or insanity?)

On another note I am working with stones for my project. valuable possessions in the Beckettian world include stones, pencils, paper, old hats, and other small possessions. At one point these objects become invaluable, like lovers, but are then discarded in order to make room for another. These objects are then missed and grieved over. I wonder if this sequence references the characters' profound loneliness or whether Beckett is doing more with these seemingly inconsequential objects. Anything has sentimental value when one cares for it long enough. The object becomes curiously tied with the person's history and trajectory.

Just a thought on affirmations and negations (in reference to my last post) in Malone Dies: "But my notes have a curious tendency, as I realize at last, to annihilate all they purport to record" (252).

 I realize this post is quite choppy and all over the place.

Recursion

I reckon there's something to be said for recursion.

Dictionaries say this:

Recursive -
[Computing] relating to or involving a program or routine of which a part requires the application of the whole, so that its explicit interpretation requires in general many successive executions.

I fancy our sensory experience of existence, beyond which there is arguably nothing else (for ever and ever, Amen), gets a wee bit more engrossing and attractive when one has ready access to varying levels of awareness of this experience.  If I were bold I'd say "To exist to exist wholly [holy?] necessitates an intuitive or deliberate perception of an infinite series of perceptive levels beginning [perhaps] at the level of physical phenomena."

Slugs.

A slug, slugs along. 
A [lucky] slug has slug-sex and eats slug-food. 
This slug-sex and slug-food is probably damn good if you're a slug.  [Maybe there's bad slug-sex and food too]. 
There is also the off chance, if you lead a slug-existance that some punk-kid will empty the contents of Papa's table shakers all over your glorious-slimy slug anatomy, sending you into a world of biblical-level suffering. 

The ability to step outside of our immediate experience of pleasant and unpleasant, visceral attraction and aversion to environmental and psychological stimuli adds another layer of cognition to our dealings with the sensuous world.  Claiming the agency to decide [intuitively or intentionally] to sense one's sensing or appreciate one's appreciation of intense attraction, aversion, boredom, pride, elation, etc., I'd say, fosters a depth of perception which, when enjoyed in moderation can be very appealing.  

Once one adds the first layer of recursive appreciation, there logically (whatever that means) is no clear end to the number of layers one might add:

One could feasibly appreciate the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation of the appreciation ...
[ad nauseum]. 

Whether this be a logical asymptote with little to no appreciable significance in your daily experience, or the intersection of Earth St. & Nirvana Blvd., the Truth is, its curious as all hell to ponder 'bout. 
I dig it. 

I read [allusions to] something of this [maybe] in Beckett. 

Triumvirate of the Senses

As I'm nearing the end of Malone Dies and about the embark on our third Beckett story, I'm thinking about how the narrative of Malone Dies can alter my performance. In my last version, based solely on Molloy, I attempted to explore the use of senses in the story; Molloy emphasizes a lot of sound and smell in his narrative. This time around, I'm looking into the latter as a part of my performance to accentuate this duality. Additionally, with the inclusion of Malone Dies, I'm bringing in another sense: touch. As Malone says, "My sight and hearing are very bad, on the vast main no light but reflected gleams," I was interested in how Malone explores his other senses to detect his surroundings. He does talk about sound (how cumulatively the sounds of make up a kind of "buzzing"), but I was struck by his relationship to his belongings through the sense of touch. As they seem to anchor Malone to the outside world and preserve part of his humanity, his sensitivity to them, and how they work as a stimuli, is very significant to his character. I'm hoping to include this aspect of the senses in my performance. Finally, after reading The Unnamable, I'm hoping to channel another part of the senses to make up some sort of reigning triumvirate - one that can embody a written narrative through other sensory mediums.

One thing I did want to bring a part from my performance is a passage on page 232 (in my blue-cover version): "Incommoded by the rain pouring into his hat through the crack, Macmann took it off and laid it on his temple, that is to say turned his head and pressed his cheek to the ground.." This whole section I believed really linked itself nicely to Molloy, and really reminded my of Tania's performance. I think the two could be married, or synthesized, through performance really nicely. Thoughts?

Symmetry and Ambiguity in Molloy

Beckett seems to be obsessed with affirmations and negations that directly follow one another. Molloy, for example, lives in a liminal space between opposites. He states a fact or observation only to immediately negate it. The identities of those around him are not fixed, and he makes a point of consistently changing their names throughout the narrative in order to emphasize their shifting nature.

This structure made me have to choose my own reality in the story--the places, the names, etc, but even after having made a choice I found myself flopping back and forth between one reality and another. For instance: Was it raining or not? Was it midnight or not? After thinking that I had made a choice for raining and midnight (since Beckett had already planted these images in my head) I could not comfortably imagine the scene since the negations kept popping up in my head. I found myself in a doubtful state reminiscent of Molloy's confusion.

Two quotes I found particularly interesting: "I always had a mania for symmetry" (79), and "But I would rather not affirm anything on this subject" (59). Molloy's mania for symmetry may partly explain his inability of providing a conclusive fact, since he must also provide an opposite in order to balance the symmetry.

Beckett also plays with the ambiguity surrounding the identity of Molloy--is he Moran at a different time? Did Moran make him up as a symbol of his decaying sanity?

Decay of the body

As I've been reading Molloy, I've been thinking about Beckett's relationship to the body. In the limited scope of things I've read, Beckett seems fixated on bodily functions. His characters' excretions and cruder urges interrupt (or penetrate, yuk yuk) the text for me: from nowhere, Hamm will need to piss or start pissing; Molloy will recall his May-December deflowering; Malone is voiding his son's sparse excrement. He takes a childish delight in these interruptions, like he's saying, "Tee hee, poop, tee hee."

But he's also obsessed with how bodies fall apart and fail us. There's always some kind of difficulty or dysfunction with Beckett's bodily functions. Thus far, no one ever poops correctly or pees with ease, not to mention sleep. The most pronounced failure for me is the decay of mobility. Malloy goes through a complete breakdown of mobility as he wanders through the forest: in a sort of reverse Sphinx's riddle, he goes from one good leg, one bad; to two bad legs; to no legs, walking with his hands and tools. Still, though, he moves with an intense purpose. No matter how difficult his mobility is, he sets into it with... not a passion, but with a drive. He drags himself across the forest floor, grunting, "Mother," along the way. But he doesn't seem particularly happy when he gets closer to his goal.

Does anybody have crutches I can borrow and play with? I'm thinking about trying to mimic or work through Malloy's decay. I'm worried I don't have the upper body strength for his trek through the forest, though, so if worse comes to worst I'll play with Malone's "touch of neuralgia" after he's left home. In either case, I think Beckett's relationship to the body (his body?) is something I'm interested in exploring further.