Breaking The Rules: Waiting For Godot

BREAKING THE RULES: WAITING FOR GODOT:

“A play which requires the spectator to ‘re-examine the rules’ of drama demands her/his collaboration and active participation in the production of meaning. Such a re-examination challenges the spectator’s relation to both the dramatic world and the actual world. It is a process of engagement whereby what is known becomes ‘unknown’ and which, in consequence, invites a rethinking of the world as it exists”. (E. Aston and G. Savona)

According to Aston and Savona’s quotation, the spectator have to pay extremely attention when is watching a radical play as Waiting for Godot. The evolution of generic and stylistic forms is linked within dramatic canon. Postmodernism theater introduced a new concept: Defamiliarisation. Samuel Beckett, as a dramatist undermines traditionally elements that make up drama and “defamiliarises” spectator with canonical drama features. There is the reason why the spectator is disturbed and has to “re-examine” rules and conventions. In the case of Beckett, he breaks all traditional schemes of drama in sense of characters, action, plot and language. Waiting for Godot is a great example to prove Beckett’s “radicalism”.

The first scene of a canonical drama introduces the story-line information, setting the scene, characters and the beginnings of the action. Contrary, in Waiting for Godot, the opening scene does not specify the setting. In the case of characters, they are not presented to the audience- What is more, their actions are so absurd: “Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting.” (Waiting for Godot p.1). The spectator does not have any kind of information and has to do an effort to understand the situation. Another controversy of the play is the sense of time. In Waiting for Godot, the time is circular and repetitive. Only one of particular reference about time appears in page 2, when Stragon and Vladimir are talking about the 1890’s, the Torre Eiffel and 50 years before the World War. According to Mark Taylor-Batty and Juliette Taylor-Batty:

“… the patterns, repetitions and variations and narrative circularity of play are all very carefully constructed to resist narrative resolution and any attempt by the audience to impose meaning upon the play” (p.31)

Another topic that has to be discussed is the relation between “rules of drama” and “the world as it exists”. In Waiting of Godot, Beckett’s aim is to align spectator’s experience of time with the characters. Changing the rules of drama provokes that spectators do not have any sense of specific time and place. They are in “the world as it exists”. The audience takes part of the play without specific references. In the real world, we do not have to explain about our time or situation in everyday acts. And is this new stylistics rules

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