Waiting for Godot

Available for over a year

Stories and reflections of actors from across the world who have all played the same parts. They tell us what the roles mean and what the parts mean to them. This time it's the turn of the pair of tramps in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot: Vladimir and Estragon. It's a play where famously "nothing happens". Vladimir and Estragon are bowler-hatted tramps standing on a country road waiting for someone called Godot. The play divides audiences - but its slapstick humour, staccato dialogue, and existential themes have made it one of the most acclaimed plays of the twentieth century. Vladimir and Estragon have travelled the world and the play has been performed in moments of crisis, from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to Sarajevo in the Balkans War. The two main characters are like partners, friends, enemies... And Beckett's precise directions for the play have provoked questions about who can play Vladimir and Estragon. So pull a rock, sit by a tree, take off your boots... this is Roleplay. Featuring Tweedy aka Alan Digweed, Aaron Monaghan, Marty Rea, Bill Paterson, Velibor Topić, J Kyle Manzay, Silent Faces Theatre (Josie Underwood, Jack Wakely and Cordelia Stevenson) and Sophia Almaz and Oleksiy Dashkovsky from Theatre UZHIK in Uzhhorod, Ukraine. Produced by Sam Grist and Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol Mixed by Michael Harrison Acknowledgements: From the Fifties: Waiting for Godot, BBC Home Service, 5 Feb 1962 Play by Samuel Beckett Producer - Robin Midgley Vladimir - Nigel Stock Estragon - Kenneth Griffith The Boy - Terry Raven Waiting for Godot, BBC Archive, 5 Sep 1981 Play by Samuel Beckett Director - Richard Callanan Vladimir - Max Wall Estragon - Leo McKern Archive: Masterworks: Waiting for Godot, BBC Radio 4, 22nd March 1977 Druid Theatre, Trailer Waiting for Godot, November 2016 Points West Evening News, BBC One, 13th February 2019 Reporting Scotland, BBC One Scotland, 21st September 2015 News Special: Hurricane Katrina, BBC One, 4th September 2005 Newsnight, BBC Two, 8th Sep 2005 News & Notes, NPR, 9th Nov 2007 Godot is a Woman - teaser, Silent Faces, 7th June 2022 Artsnight, BBC Two, 31st July 2015 Still Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, BBC Radio 4, 21st August 2015 Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, BBC Radio 4, 20th March 1994 1992 Sarajevo, BBC News Archive Waiting for What?, BBC Network Radio, 14th April 1961 Theater-studio "Uzhik" video, 23rd October 2022