Nick Mount on Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot

Samuel becket's uh waiting forato premiered on January the 3D 1953 at a very small theater in Paris uh called the theat DU babyon according to becket's biographer uh James noson the play became a hit only after and because it upset many among its first audiences at the Paris Premiere a group of well-dressed hecklers forced the

curtain to come down after Lucky's monologue and the play was put on hold for that performance at the London Premiere two years later a spectator shouted out in the middle of the play this is why we lost the colonies when estron of the same performance in London asked Vladimir uh if he has any rope with which they could

hang themselves somebody in the audience yelled for God's sakes give him some at the uh opening night of the American Premiere which was of all places in Miami uh much of the audience simply left at the intermission so let's Jump Ahead um into a very different kind of audience for the play this is the 19th of November

1957 this is a story told by Martin Ean in his book The Theater of the Absurd so a small group of very worried actors 19th of November 1957 are waiting behind a curtain in the dining hall at San Quenton penitentiary in California they are about to perform the first live play at San Quenton in over

40 years and it is waiting for gato they chose it uh mostly because it did not require women actors the difficulty of using women actors inside a Maximum Security Prison so the curtain is about to rise on an audience that is made up of 1,400 of the toughest men on the planet and a young San Francisco theater

group is going to perform a highly obscure Avant guard French play in which absolutely nothing happens a play that when it premiered in for sophisticated theater audiences angered and upset them the director Herbert Blau decides that he will try to prepare his audience a bit for what's coming the prisoners so he steps from behind the curtain and he