Director: Zha Wenyuan
Playwright: Samuel Beckett
Institution: The Central Academy of Drama, China
Venue: Chung-Ang University, Korea
Time: 13:30, May 20, 2018
Event: 5th Asian Theatre Schools Festival
Director’s Notes
An actor walks on an empty stage. It is just like when we come into this vast world, we do not know where we are from, we do not know where we will go. In this long and short life, human beings are always waiting for something, perhaps for a person, a thing, a kind of life, or for a certain existence, process and ending.
Waiting is the midpoint between struggling and ambiguity. It is the coexistence of the pursuit of spirit and the feeling of loss.
We are waiting in a dilemma, experiencing the passage of time purely and directly.
Synopsis
Running Time: 60 minutes
This is an ordinary day, quite normal in our life. Early in the morning, Estragon, who has left before, comes back home and meets Vladimir, then there comes the endless troubles.
They are two completely different people: Estragon is always afflicted by the trifles of life, but Vladimir keeps hoping for the future. They feel difficult together, but never depart from each other. They quarrel for the daily trivialities, but they are always side by side resisting the erosion of boring life. They try to defend the harmony between them, but always fall into conflicts and torture each other again and again. They struggle to delight themselves to defeat the emptiness, but they lose these battles in every senseless minute and second. On the surface, they enjoy their happy life. They have a good material condition, so they constantly satisfy themselves through consumption. However, it can never change the weakness of their spirit. From early morning to dusk, they clean up, enjoy three meals, immerse themselves in the internet and receive express deliveries. After that, they quarrel and reconcile, and then fall deeper into the net woven by the emptiness. When all their struggles turn out to be hopeless, they begin to integrate their own life with the status of characters of the classic drama "Waiting for Godot." At that moment, the daily experience eventually submerges into a philosophical absurdity.
Indeed, it is like a common day in our life, we have become accustomed to it and the characters are similar to two ordinary modern day people, just like ourselves. What are we expecting? Perhaps, after a long wait, that day will come, from morning to evening, we will realize we have been waiting for Godot for a long time.