Fifty-years ago this Sunday, Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece, Waiting for Godot premiered in Paris. The play where “nothing happens” on a stage with next to no scenery or props; enjoyed instant success and has become one of the most important and universal theatrical pieces ever. After seeing Godot, the American writer William Saroyan praised it by saying “It will make it easier for me and everyone else to write freely in theatre”. Over the last 50 years, Waiting for Godot has been performed on the four corners of the earth, on Broadway, in summer stock, and even in San Quentin Penitentiary. Tonight, we look into what has made this theatrical masterpiece stand the test of time

Guests:

Lois Oppenheim, Chair of the French, German and Russian department at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ, Author of: “The Painted Word: Samuel Beckett’s Dialogue with Art” and Editor of “Directing Beckett”

Enoch Brater, Professor of English and Theatre at the University of Michigan and author of “The Essential Samuel Becket” and “The Approaches of Teaching Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’”

Actors of the New Repertory Theatre in Newton, Massachusetts, Austin Pendleton as Vladimir, John Kuntz as Estragon and Ken Baltin as Pozzo.