Do you ever notice how much time you spend waiting? Waiting for things to change, waiting to grow up, waiting for some future event. It's a gift (or curse) of our capacity for abstract thought, and the theme of one of the most famous plays in the abstract tradition: Waiting for Godot.
Northampton Community College's theatre department has cast an all-female production this month, so two women share wandering conversations and chance encounters while they wait near a tree for a character named Godot. Traditionally, these two people have been portrayed as hobos to get at the everyman universality of the play's perspective, but today, “everyman” has a much wider definition than playwright Samuel Beckett gave it.
“One of the wonderful things about Beckett,” says Bill Mutimer, NCC's theatre department chair, “is that he's so symbolic and metaphoric. There's no exact message. You can pull whatever strikes you.” And if its esoteric nature leads to confusion and then to frustration, Mutimer adds, maybe that's fitting. “Maybe you're frustrated with not knowing what the future is.” Allow yourself to discover what the play means to you.
The experience of Waiting for Godot, which lends itself to endless variation in staging and interpretation, is always different. Unlike attending a production of Oklahoma for the well-loved sassy characters and score, Waiting for Godot can be a liberating excursion into the unknown. “You go to this one thinking ‘I'll see where this takes me,'” says Mutimer.
Performed in the intimate black-box Lab Theatre, Waiting for Godot at NCC gives focus not only to female actors but to female aspects of the eternal questions. What is life and to what extent is it career or motherhood? When will these dynamics find balance?
What are you waiting for? Get your tickets!
$5; Free to students with food bank donation | 2 & 7:30 p.m. | Northampton Community College | 3835 Green Pond Rd., Bethlehem | 484.484.3412 | ncctix.org
