Bad Godots
‘Vladimir Emerges from the Barrel' and Other Interventions

The answer to 'Who wrote Godot?' may depend on the edition or the attention that was paid to the script.

S. E. Gontarski (Author)

9781009467803, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 February 2024

82 pages
23.5 x 16.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.27 kg

This Element focuses on the machinery of commercial theatre, on extra-authorial interventions into the creative process and on the people and institutional forces that foster them. Such a process challenges the autonomy of the artwork and authorial integrity. The primary focus of this Element is then on the hybrid genre of theatre where collective esthetics tends to override and so to supersede individual creation. The essay pays special attention to Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play, Waiting for Godot, primarily its English language premieres in the US, UK, and the Republic of Ireland. Its implications, however, reach far beyond the genetic and production histories of a single theatrical work to deal with the nature of authorship in a monetized culture, the process of realizing dramatic texts in such a culture, and Samuel Beckett's engagement with such machinery of art.

Contents
1. Overview: a genealogy of intervention
2. Broadway and other theatrical adepts
3. Godot's bad blood: firing the director, rescuing the play
4. Cutting up Godot
5. Transatlantic parallels and contrasts
6. The case for multiple authorship
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]