Waiting for Godot and The Theatre of Absurd

I first read about “Waiting for Godot”, the play by Samuel Beckett, when I was in my teens. It was because of a spoof of that play written by the legendary Marathi authour Pu la Deshpande. He wrote “Khurchya (Bhadyane Analelya)” / खुर्च्या (भाड्याने आणलेल्या), which he called “न-नाट्य” i.e. non-play. It was a weird form and unlike his other works, very difficult to understand without the context or the maturity. Naturally, I didn’t get it completely. However, it still intrigued me. The original play has been adapted and performed in Marathi. In Hindi, it was done by none other than Naseeruddin Shah!

After many years I came across Waiting for Godot and watched it in bits and pieces. I also read about the philosophy behind it and then re-read Pu La Deshpande’s Khurchya again. Both were great experiences! Waiting for Godot is really interesting in its form and the core concept. It gave emergence to the “Theatre of Absurd”, which is an interesting subject to explore.

Here is a short video I came across which nicely explains “Waiting for Godot”.

Here are two other longer videos which gives a deeper understanding of the author and the philosophy

There are many videos explaining philosophy, nuances of this play and the more your watch/read, the more fuzzy it would appear. I am still exploring more and more of such explanations.