The New Group Off Stage on-line production of Waiting for Godot: Members Offer

The latest on-line version of Waiting for Godot is the first project of American company The New Group Off Stage, and is described as ‘an experimental exploration of a storied play, bringing together a roster of lauded artists from across the cultural spectrum. A combination of theatrical invention and innovative filmmaking. At once both a…

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New Georgian Translation of Waiting for Godot

In March 2020 Inga Zhghenti’s translation of Waiting for Godot received critical acclaim as the first Georgian translation of Beckett’s play (from the English text). The translation has been uploaded to the Internet Archive of Georgian Theatre, and is available here. Zhghenti is currently an associate professor at East European University and an invited lecturer at Caucasus University.

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Alvin Epstein, Theatre Director and Actor Associated With Beckett’s Work, Dies at 93

“Alvin Epstein, a classical stage actor and director who appeared in the Broadway premiere of “Waiting for Godot” and went on to become widely known for his mastery of that and other plays by Samuel Beckett, died on Monday in Newton, Mass. He was 93.

[…]

Mr. Epstein’s acting career ranged across the Greeks, Shakespeare, Pirandello and the occasional musical, but Beckett was always at its core. He played the slave Lucky, who delivers a 700-word monologue, in the first Broadway staging of “Godot,” Beckett’s groundbreaking existentialist work.

Although Mr. Epstein never met Beckett — he did talk to him by telephone — he came to know that playwright through his words. “Alvin knows the material so well, it gives him the confidence — the courage, really — to do what’s right,” Charlotte Moore, who directed “Endgame” at the Irish Rep, said in an interview with The Times in 2005. “He doesn’t hit anything with a hammer, because he doesn’t have to.”

— The New York Times

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“As with many works of literature, it is easier to say what Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is not about, or what it is almost about, than to state its theme definitively or be certain, or even fully uncertain, about its meaning or indeed its origin in Beckett’s imagination. Most ways of describing it require terms that are in conflict with each other. Thus the play is concerned with exhaustion, with language and communication in a state of decay, but it is also nourished by strange energy, by wit, by tension, by moments of pure verbal excitement.”

Colm Tóibín

“Soft Border. Hard Beckett.”

“This latest Godot is part of the Happy Days: International Beckett Festival, now in its sixth edition, which shares August with the somewhat newer Lughnasa Frielfest, dedicated to another famous Irish playwright and located further up the Brexit frontline, at venues in Derry and Donegal. ” Frank McNally, The Irish Times

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Druid presents Waiting for Godot (National Opera House, Wexford)

On a bare road in the middle of nowhere, two world-weary friends await the arrival of the mysterious Godot. While waiting, they speculate, bicker, joke and ponder life’s greater questions. As dusk begins to fall, two figures appear on the horizon.

Regarded as one of the most significant plays of the twentieth century, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is a masterpiece that draws endless interpretations. Directed by Garry Hynes, Druid present a new production of this seminal work featuring members of the acclaimed Druid Ensemble: Garrett Lombard, Aaron Monaghan, Rory Nolan and Marty Rea.

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Eimear McBride on Beckett’s Development as a Writer

“Of all I’ve read in my life, and all that’s yet to come, what’s going to count? How much of it has changed me? How much has even marked me? How much has done both but I don’t know it yet? Readers get to make these discoveries in the privacy of their own heads. Writers must make them in public and then wear them in their back catalogues for as long as they have a readership who cares.”

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