The world premiere of Waiting for Godot was in Paris at the Théâtre de Babylone on 5th January 1953. Samuel Beckett attended many of the rehearsals for this production, which was directed by Roger Blin. Beckett’s own involvement with the staging of Godot continued through many productions in France, Germany, the UK and America, up to and including advising on an American television production in 1988. During this time he continually worked on the piece, editing, cutting and adding dialogue. The script we are using in this production is from “The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett” and is generally recognised as being as close as you can get to his final revised script.

When asked who or what Godot is, Beckett replied, “If I knew I would have said so in the play.”

In the context of twentieth century theatre Waiting For Godot is important because it marks the transition from Modernism — with its pre-occupation with self-reflection — to Post-Modernism, with its use of pastiche, parody and fragmentation. Instead of offering us a play with exposition, a climax and a denouement, Beckett gives us a play with a cyclical structure that might be described as a diminishing spiral. It presents images of entropy in which the world and the people in it are slowly running down to a closure that can never be found.

When asked what Godot is about, Beckett replied, “It means what it says.”

Beckett did not care for his work to be analysed in the traditional way — by working the psychological realism of the piece. In fact, in Godot the worst insult that a character uses is “Critic”!

“The most important word in the play is ‘Perhaps’.” Samuel Beckett

Beckett worked through suggestion rather than statement, creating images that appeal to and reverberate in the imagination. If they relate, as many would suggest, to important thematic issues that ask us to consider our lives and situation they do so subtly and hardly ever crudely.

" I know no more about this play than anyone who just reads it attentively. I don't know what spirit I wrote it in. I know no more about the characters than what they say, what they do and what happens to them...everything I have been able to learn, I have shown. It's not a great deal. But it's enough for me, quite enough. I'd go so far as to say that I would have been content with less... Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky, I have only been able to know them a little, from far off, out of a need to understand them. They owe you some explanations, perhaps. Let them unravel. Without me. Them and Me, we're quits."

Samuel Beckett