WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett The Questors Studio January 1961 Directed by Michael Almaz Designed by Tony Carruthers Programme     PHOTOS

Cast: David Emmet, Ned Gethings, Robin Ingram, Lawrence Irvin, George Richie, Peter Whelan Production Team: Michael Almaz, Richard Brown, Tony Carruthers, Bill Collins, John Deutsch, Judith Emery, Tony Graeme, Rex Mahany, Margaret McKenzie, Joyce Percy, Enrico Ressiga Vacchini, Rena Rice

DIRECTORS' NOTES

Waiting for Godot is probably the best, and certainly the most celebrated, play of the avant-garde school. Before its first night in Paris in 1953 the avant-garde theatre was essentially a fringe (some would say “freak”) movement. Godot has changed all that. Thanks to its immense success all over the world the avant-garde theatre has been accepted as a fully fledged member of the theatrical establishment. It has demonstrated more than any other play written in the modern idiom, that the oblique style, developed by the new playwrights, is no affectation, but a means of unravelling the complexities of existence, complexities undreamed of in the old days.

Godot is a symbolic play which probably means many things to many people. It is existentialist in that it deals with existence. It is religious. It is an exaltation of mankind prostrate at the feet of a God that failed. But above all it is theatre, and on the strength of its dramatic force it should stand or fall.