Waiting for Godot is the most frequently performed play of all time and has long been the most popular in the Netherlands, according to a survey in the theatre magazine TM. Perhaps that is why Waiting for Godot has been performed all over the world in such a wide array of settings, ranging from California’s San Quentin Prison in 1957 (waiting for the prison guard who will set you free) to an open-air performance in New Orleans in 2007 for Hurricane Katrina survivors (waiting for help). Beckett’s story is readily adaptable to all sorts of situations. The two characters are actually waiting for an answer to life’s great question: What are we doing here on earth? The despair over the meaning of existence fit well in the post-war years and sounded convincing on stage as well. The Irish writer Samuel Becket wrote the play in 1952 in Paris, where existentialism was popular amongst artists and intellectuals. Who are those two people? What do they do besides waiting? What is the context? Are they hiking through Ireland or are they in Russia during the revolution? And why are they waiting for Godot? The playwright leaves that to his audience’s imagination. No other play in the 20th century caused quite as much commotion as Waiting for Godot. It’s a story full of absurd conversations between two men in bowler hats about waiting for a stranger, in a vague location, at an unspecified time. In the process they philosophise about life: ‘There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.’ Like people in a waiting room carrying on a conversation about what the matter is and how to deal with it. One of them can’t get his swollen foot out of his boot, and the other tries to help him. The two men are old acquaintances who encounter each other again at this spot. Evening.’ That is the place where two of the play’s characters – Vladimir and Estragon – are waiting for an unknown person named Godot. How do you kill time in a waiting room? What thoughts go through your head? When will the doctor appear and what will the outcome be? Samuel Becket portrays this vague state of waiting in his world-famous play Waiting for Godot. A person waiting for a lab result sometimes feels as if time is crawling by at an exasperatingly slow pace.
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