Get Yer Godot On

For any of you who are considering it let me pass on a rather unique and dire warning: A drunken, cold read of "Waiting for Godot" is never a good idea.

Now you've been warned.

Last night a friend of mine with whom I've been doing casual play readings on Saturday nights and I decided that Godot would be an easy enough play for the two of us to read together. I don't think we were wrong. It is just that Godot requires specificity. Godot requires planning. Godot requires a certain level of comprehension that simply cannot be achieved after a 15 year absence from the text and a few beers accompanied by a dinner of spinach and poached eggs.

This discomfort of slogging through Godot caused my friend to muse about why Godot is held in such high esteem. I kept my mouth shut because I did not want to be one of those pretentious morons that have blind reverence for avant garde classics. I see her point. It does feel disjointed and unsettling. It is hard to find the thread- the thought in the text through a simple read. It requires much more of the artist and the viewer. It is demanding. This is probably why you don't see it done very often. It takes either a brave or a pompous soul to put up Godot and tackle not only its text, but its reputation, It is in this way that Godot has been stolen from us and placed firmly in the realm of academia. The more I think about it, the more this seems just wrong.

When I first encountered Godot it was through class work at an Arts High School. So you can imagine how intellectual "peacockery" (to coin a phrase) trumped the text. I saw and participated in scenes from Godot that were heavy with teenage symbolism, many of which were positively awful. Most memorable, though, was a group doing a scene with Estragon, Vladimir and Pozzo (if I am correct) where all the actors wore masks made from a newspaper photo of a kid who shot up his school and the song "Jeremy" playing throughout. Damn, Godot can mean anything!

Okay, maybe not.

But what Godot does have going for it is it's tremendous sweetness, sadness and absurdity. I don't think Samuel Beckett broke his arm patting himself on the back for his depth. I think he sincerely loved Estragon and Vladimir the way Estragon and Vladimir love (or at least cling) to one another. It seems that reverence for the material and the backlash against the reverence obscures the real text and renders it almost unproduceable. Which, I think, is somewhat sad.

As we were caught up in a discussion of the text, my friend and I could not break the cadence of the play's language.

I don't get it.

It's sad.

Is it?

It's sad.

Why hanging?

What else is there to do?

Seems stupid.

That's funny.

Is it?

This is the play, isn't it.

It is.

That, in itself, should prove as a testament to its power.