I wanted Beckett's play to speak for itself: Director of Waiting for Godot in Cairo staging

Soha Elsirgany , Sunday 29 May 2016

Ahram Online speaks with director Mostafa Khalil on the play’s timeless relevance, richness and comedy

Waiting for Godot
Lucky, Estragon, Vladimir and Pozzo in Waiting for Godot, directed by Mostafa Khalil (Photo: Ahmed Taha)

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s existentialist tragicomedy directed by Mostafa Khalil, was staged on Cairo’s Falaki theatre for four days between 21 and 26 May.

The two-act plot is simple. Two seemingly homeless men, Vladimir (Waleed Hammad) and Estragon (Nezar Alderazi), wait for a man named Godot, who may or may not show up. They are eventually joined by Poddo (Jason Will) and his slave Lucky (Maria Doyle) for some time, and a messenger from the mysterious Godot.

Beckett’s first professionally-produced play, Waiting for Godot premiered in 1953 and has since been considered a seminal piece of 20th century drama and a landmark of absurdist theatre.

Waiting for Godot expresses Beckett’s own views, including the “suffering of the being,” as the main characters endure the anguish of waiting for someone or something to come and set everything right, only to be reminded of their frustration, and be faced with no choice but to keep passing the time.

The characters do not quite know where they are or who exactly they are waiting for, and the audience is left equally in the dark. Irresolution and not knowing are at the core of the play.

“Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!” Such may be the laments of Estragon, yet despite nothing actually happening, Khalil’s direction channels Beckett’s ability to sustain an audience’s interest using just language.

Khalil’s own interest in the play stemmed from his love for the script and regard for Beckett.

“Though I have never seen this play live on stage, I’ve seen many filmed productions, and watched the production that Beckett himself directed many times. The Beckett-directed one was always my favourite,” Khalil tells Ahram Online.

“I feel like this kind of theatre is where I am comfortable and where I belong artistically,” he adds.

After many years of acting, Khalil taught at Helen O’Grady Drama Academy, a prominent drama school for children with locations across African countries, before directing For Her, his debut as a playwright performed at Rawabet Theatre in April 2015.

For Her was in a way close to “this kind of theatre” Khalil refers to, being primarily focused on the script, having an element of humour, and questioning the state of being as the characters reflect the writer’s thoughts.

Waiting on Falaki Theatre

In Waiting for Godot, the scenography is stripped to simplicity; the set in Act One was comprised of a leafless tree placed left centre-stage and a grey cement block on the right.

Beckett’s script refers to only a tree and a mound on stage, not demanding much, yet welcoming of further interpretation and additions.

What added an elegant and contemporary freshness was a projected animation on a sheer screen upstage. After opening the play with a landscape animation, the projection was used to indicate the fall of night at the end of both acts, on cue with the changing light that floods the stage in a glowing blue.

“Keeping the stage raw helps the audience focus on the words spoken. Omar Madkour is a fantastic light designer and a great person to work with. We have developed such a loving trust with each other, so when he told me he wanted to use a projector, I trusted him,” Khalil says.

The ingenuity of Beckett’s script is complemented by the cast presenting exciting performances and characters that made the agony of waiting in vain for Godot a thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile evening, earning itself a standing ovation from the audience.

Estragon and Vladimir in their ragged, wrinkled costumes are like the famous comic duo Laurel and Hardy, their energy bouncing off one another.

Alderazi depicts the cheerless Estragon with barely-blinking eyes and a blank expression, quite like a lost puppy. In turn, Hammad gives Vladimir an air of self assurance, being the more responsible of the two, yet with his own set of anxieties and insecurities.

Doyle’s performance of Lucky involved a wonderful use of body language, so that even when her character was idle, she was an active presence, never intruding, yet never forgotten.

Lucky’s famous monologue, when ordered to think by Pozzo, delivered the incoherent string of sentences with such flair that it played out like a dance of delightful choreography.

With rehearsals lasting a tight 20 days, Khalil’s casting process was concise.

“I wanted to make sure I had the right cast. That they were up to the challenge and would be able to cope with the limited time,” the director says.

Of the four actors, Khalil had previously directed one of them, Alderazi, but had seen Hammad and Will perform many times.

“I have always been a big fan of all three. Doyle I hadn't known before this production, but had heard a lot of great things. And she was as fantastic as the rest.”

All the cast members brought their own comic sense to the stage, highlighting the comedy of the play, the situations and the absurdity of it all.

According to Khalil, “the script itself is extremely comical. The way Beckett structures his dialogue, the way the characters speak, and the topics mentioned. The whole play is one big joke, whether it's an anti-joke, a sad-joke, or a repetitive joke, but all the jokes come together to create how Beckett views life.”

Waiting-for-Godot
Estragon and Vladimir (Photo: Ahmed Taha)

Waiting in context

Theatre of the Absurd appeared on the local Egyptian theatre scene in the beginning of the 1960s.

Theatre critic Nehad Selaiha refers in a 2005 article in Al-Ahram Weekly to how absurdism rose in popularity on the stage, then retreated to library shelves and highbrow literary criticism.

She traces how Beckett was received in the early socialist 1960s in Egypt with controversy, and regarded by some as “yet another example of the socially irresponsible, self-indulgent, reactionary writing of the decadent 'art for art's sake' school.”

“By the time the monthly Theatre Magazine published Fayez Iskander's translation of Waiting for Godot in its first issue (January 1964)… Absurd drama, though it continued to intrigue writers, critics and scholars, had completely withdrawn from the stage to live quietly in books, with occasional airings on radio,” Selaiha writes.

The Arabic version of the play has since been staged in Egyptian theatre many times.

“I think this play is relevant on a human level. It can be translated into any language and be relevant. There is no demand or necessity for cultural relevancy. As long as human beings are the audience, then the play will be relevant,” says Khalil.

A recent performance of Waiting for Godot was last year at the eighth Egyptian National Theatre Festival, where Pozzo was performed as a woman.

In Khalil’s Waiting for Godot, Lucky remains a male character performed by a woman.

“I believe even Vladimir and Estragon have surely been performed as women before. They are not real people, but rather symbols of characters, the oppressor and the oppressed, you can theatrically imagine them in any way you like,” Selaiha comments to Ahram Online.

Besides the predominant theme of waiting, the rich text holds many other threads, like friendship, aging, class differences, death.

“I didn't want to pick a branch of thought, but rather let the audience create their own and find their own meaning and understanding from the play,” Khalil says, adding that he was careful not to highlight any aspect of the play more than the other.

“I wanted the play to speak for itself, and for Beckett's words to matter more than what I had to say about the play.”

The beauty of Beckett’s work is that it means what you want it to mean. Beckett himself did not discuss the meaning of his play.

“A stain upon the silence” is how the playwright had described his own work.

Khalil thinks Godot can be different for everyone.

“Beckett says that he definitely does not represent God. But he also says the play is about an impossible earth with an indifferent heaven. So I don't know, and not knowing is a great mirror of life, where a lot of questions aren't answered, and might never be. And there's a comfort we have to have with that. I don't care to know who or what Godot is, but I really relate with the way Beckett depicts life on stage. It's truly beautiful.”

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