ᴡʜᴀᴛ's ɢᴏᴅᴏᴛ ɢᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ ᴡɪᴛʜ ɪᴛ?

            

              24 - 26

play by Samuel Beckett

both plays set in world without established order or
fulfilling relationships

relationships that exist sustain themselves because they
are inevitable and participants are afraid of being alone

Beckett plays: 
Endgame, Waiting for Godot
echoed in Stoppard's work

two characters, trapped in empty wasteland of life, seeking
answer to profound and essential questions

Waiting for Godot:
composed in late 1950s
first performance in 1953
first English performance in 1955

voted "most significant english language play of 20th century"

origin precedes 60s, but most influential performances
occurred then

in 60s - Beckett produce more nontraditional work, unconcerned
with entertainment or pleasure

philosophy replaced with vernacular language, settings became
more abstract

Ryan Diller (in article on Beckett's theater): rather than focusing
on abstract absurdities in concrete locations, expose concrete
futilities of life in abstract settings

after first performance in New York, theater theorist June
Schlueter say new gen chisel away realistic form

cites list of American playwrights who follow Beckett into
abstract and nonrepresentational realms:
Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Ntozake Shange, LeRoi Jones

Ihan Hassan: central elements of postmodernism are ambiguity,
discontinuity, heterodoxy, pluralism, randomness, revolt, perversion

Groups that bought vitality through performance:
Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, The Open Theater,
productions by Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotoski

in career retrospective of Stoppard by William Demastre,
defines 60s as divided between realists and anti-realism

British theater:
politically active, left leaning vision that change can occur
using logic and reason
others believe logic and reason exhausted themselves

Didi and Gogo - Vladimir and Estagon
Ros and Guil - Rosencrantz and Guildernstern

Laurel and Hardy - silent era until late 1950s

Abbot and Costello - 40 films from 1940 - 1959

Ros and Guil - destiny prewritten
Didi and Gogo - repeat the same day

discover ways to pass time, lack of specific direction makes
monotony of living deadly for each pair

Endgame - characters Hamm "I dream of life to come",
Clov: "mine was always that"

Godot seen as a kind of hope

Didi and Gogo keep on waiting, Ros and Guil lack prehistory,
"enough to swell a scene or two" (T.S. Eliot), but eventually
discover their purpose according to Shakespeare

death of Ros ad Guil appear offstage

sparagmos - term from Greek theater, means offstage violence

Stoppard choose path of drama to probe complex uncertainties
and abnormalities of human experience

indebted to Beckett and innovators from the sixties