Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, first performed in 1953, is one of the most influential plays of the 20th century.
Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, wait by a tree for someone named Godot. They talk, they argue, they joke, they fall silent — but Godot never arrives. Along the way, they encounter the strange pair of Pozzo and Lucky, and time passes without resolution.
On the surface, almost nothing happens. But beneath the simplicity lies a profound meditation on existence. What does it mean to wait? To hope? To live when meaning seems absent?
Waiting for Godot is often called the masterpiece of the Theatre of the Absurd — tragic and comic, bleak and funny, it strips theatre down to its bare bones.
Beckett himself once said: “Nothing happens, twice.” And yet, in that nothingness, the play finds everything.