THE HISTORY OF THEATRE3

Today, two groups, Tristan and Hugo and Silvana and James, performed their interpretation of the first few pages of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Each group contextualised the play and made it relevant for contemporary youth.

In today's lesson, we split into groups of 2, to work on duologue from Waiting for Godot. Tristan and Hugo worked together, while Silvana and James worked on theirs. Each group were tasked with contextualising the play and to make it relevant for contemporary youth.

Tristan and Hugo

Tristan and Hugo experimented with accents and stuck to the Russian accent at the end. This portrayed a sense of comradeship and I interpreted it as two brothers in the army together. There were specific lines that stuck out which anchored this, such as, "crawling around in the mud". This is relevant to today as there are wars going on in the world.

Silvana and James

Silvana and James were initially looking at doing the play in the style of Steven Berkoff but eventually went to the style of Stanislavski but they kept the East London accent which they were using with Berkoff. This made the piece appear to be set in the cobbled streets of London outside a bar or pub. I interpreted that Godot was the bar owner who they were waiting for. This also lead to the idea of poverty and homelessness which is more relevant than ever right now due to the high unemployment rate from the global pandemic.