Ahead of the 2020 performance of Waiting for Godot at The Centre for the Less Good Idea, two In Conversation events were initiated as part of The Centre’s SO Academy in order to further explore the complexities of thinking and feeling that constitute the world of Samuel Beckett’s significant play in a contemporary South African context.

This second In Conversation, titled “Searching for Godot, Researching Beckett” takes place at The Centre on the evening of 29 October 2020 and sees writer, artist and academic Jane Taylor, who serves as dramaturg for the work, in conversation with animateur for The Centre, and director of the play, Phala Ookeditse Phala.

While the first In Conversation explored the embodiment of the characters in the play, this discussion sees Taylor and Phala working through the text itself, drawing out and pursuing various intertextual skeins of thought from Beckett’s own political history in order to further locate the play in a contemporary global and South African context. Over the course of an evening, the two engage in searching Beckett’s “fearless inventory of exploring and being the ‘other’ in making the story, and revealing the complexities of thinking and feeling that constitute the world of the play.”

Performative fragments from the cast (Tony Miyambo as Estragon/Gogo, Billy Langa as Vladimir/Didi, Jemma Kahn as Lucky and Boy, and Stefania Du Toit as Pozzo) also provide a brief bit of insight into the way that these themes and complexities take shape in the text. The mutual bondages that characterise the relationships between these characters are unpacked and contextualised in relation to the central questions and explorations in Beckett’s work, as is his research into imperial oppression, the post-war condition, and the asymmetries inside power and gender.

Beckett’s interests in, and considerations of, Africa and South Africa are touched on, helping to further locate the work of the playwright, and make sense of the staging of Waiting for Godot on the African continent, further demonstrating how the text finds a South African locality. Finally, a discussion on the motivations and functions of absurdism in the text explores meditations on fallibility, and the political unconsciousness in Beckett’s characters.

– David Mann