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Samuel Beckett’s "Waiting for Godot " as an Avant Garde Performances


If Avant-Garde musical is Boulez's Livre Pour Cordes, films in  Michelangelo Antonioni; Ingmar Bergman; Luis Buñuel; Sergey Mikhaylovich Eisenstein; etc, avant-garde theater and playwrights must comply with  Antonin Artaud; Samuel Beckett; Bertolt Brecht; Jean Cocteau; Friedrich Dürrenmatt; Jean Genet; Eugène Ionesco; Alfred Jarry; Vsevolod Meyerhold etc. Notably Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot is an exquisite Avant-Garde production.

But before we commence to define Avant-Garde in Waiting For Godot, we must define The term avant-garde. Avant-Garde is a sector of the arts that draws its inspiration from the invention and application of new or unconventional techniques and is therefore on the vanguard or cutting edge of new styles. Participants in the creative process can be considered members of the avant-garde.  It indicates a tendency to experiment at any cost, and is seen as a gesture away from the acceptance of traditional form and structure. What characterises an Avant-Gardist , above all else, is the way he uses his medium, his precise and unique method of moulding his language in respect both of external and internal rhythm for the expression of his personal sense of life. It is here that the Avant-Gardist comes upon his hardest task. For he should try, hopeless as that may seem, to use his medium of expression in a given art form even as the obscurity and absurdum looms large. The Avant-Gardish play, in brief, should be such as the original set is used aboriginal platform.

 Written in French and translated into English by the author, the play, Waiting For Godot fused music-hall comedy with philosophic musings about the nature of human existence. Its nearly bare stage and disconnected dialogue defied the conventions of realistic theater and both puzzled and captivated early audiences.

In fact, En attendant Godot  Waiting For Godot is a landmark in modern drama for its new dramatic experience. It is one of the best-known plays of the Irish-born writer Samuel Beckett. The tramps Vladimir and Estragon, shown here, wait for Godot, who never arrives. Beckett’s play addresses the absurdity of, and man’s need for, hope. Audience at its first performance become disgusted, puzzled and some wildly enthusiastic. In fact, the epoc- making drama has some distinct aspects. The play has an austere stage setting almost bare yet significant stage properties:  an open road, a mound of earth and a bare tree.

Next, as a protagonist we find two tramps, Valdimir and Estragon in Godot. The late European profound sense of meaninglessness and rootlessness in life reflects monologues and silences in the drama rhythmically. The drama is further noted for its static nature as the plot lacks linear progression or there is no basic change in the protagonists’ situation. Further, the play is sufficed with various thing alike the damming, clowning, fashioning, mining, musicality etc. Thus in analyzing these it is fair to say Waiting For Godot a play of new literary device with skill and dexterity.   

Ardhendu De

Ref  1. Hooti, N., & Torkamaneh, P. (2011). Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: A Postmodernist Study. English Language and Literature Studies, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.5539/ells.v1n1p40
        2. Bloom, H. (2009). Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett, New Edition. Infobase Publishing.

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