Samuel Beckett

It’s Beckett’s birthday. Well, a couple days ago, but it’s time to post my first Substack and I want it to be about Samuel Beckett.

There’s a wonderful story about playwright Samuel Beckett. It’s said that Beckett was present at a gathering and an academic seated at his table proclaimed, “Beckett doesn't give a fuck about people! He's an artist!” Beckett raised his voice above the clatter—“But I do give a fuck about people! I do give a fuck!”

Waiting for Godot is a play I’ve read over and over. I’ve seen every production I could. I even got to teach it in an acting class I called The Masters Class, whose operating principle was: “When you master the Masters, you can do anything.” Actors who signed up were to read the play and prepare monologues and scenes. They could play any role, choose any scene; they could set the scene anywhere; they could interpret it however they saw it—with no limit but their imaginations. When a pair of students brought in the opening scene of Godot having envisioned it as two actors in the waiting room of a casting office—and every line emerged with clarity and humanity—it was a moment of nirvana for me as a teacher.

Because you see I’ve always believed that Waiting for Godot is so universal to human experience that it can serve as a template for other brilliant dramatic works. Hamlet is like that too. For instance, three of this year’s Oscar nominees suggest the Hamlet template—Tár, Elvis, and The Fablemans—all of them with a central character who is a genius struggling with their fate and, crucially, their difficult families.

The Oscar nominated film that echoes the travails of Vladimir and Estragon is The Banshees of Inisherin, with Colin Farrell as Gogo and Brendan Gleeson as Didi.

Please don’t for a moment think I’m suggesting that filmmaker Martin McDonagh has plagiarized Beckett! I’m saying rather that Beckett, like Shakespeare, is imbedded so deeply in human understanding that artists can’t help but be illuminated by them.

So I invite you to study Hamlet! And Waiting for Godot!

Here’s a link to a wonderful version of Godot, starring Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel: 

And here’s another Beckett inspiration that cracks me up:

Take care. Keep keeping the faith and doing the work,

Judith