“Waiting for Godot ” for the first time at Onassis Stegi and like never seen before. Monumental, on the border between high poetry and audacious comedy. The direction carries the stamp of internationally renowned Greek theater director Theodoros Terzopoulos, who guides an exceptional Italian cast in a major co-production of the Emilia Romagna Teatro that is currently on a worldwide tour.
“Nothing is more real than nothing,” said Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), and with Waiting for Godot, he launches this “nothing” like a meteorite onto the stage. For, nothing remarkable in terms of stage action and plot happens in the work of the Nobel Prize-winner Irish thinker, poet, and writer. Two street pariahs, two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, dressed in rags, stand by a tree, chit-chat trivially, and meet by chance two or three equally weird figures, while basically, they are waiting for someone who never shows up. Who, after all, is Godot of the title who never shows up? Some savior or God himself, as his name implies (God-ot)? Becket has, however, admitted that he was not interested so much in Godot as in “Waiting.”
This endless waiting is approached direction-wise by Theodoros Terzopoulos with a sense of tragicomic officiation. In his performance, a black gallows pole is erected on stage like a funerary monument. A cross of light tears it in half. At its base is a tiny bonsai tree. Church hymns, tangos, bombings, and air raid sirens resound. There, like figures who were restored to life from an unknown ancient frieze, refraining from looking or touching each other, lie and wait Vladimir and Estragon, played by veteran Sicilian actors Enzo Vetrano and Stefano Randisi. They swoop in their respective roles with the madcap wisdom and holy despair of Buster Keaton. Figures that are bizarre and contradictory, witty as well as naïve, blabber on while waiting statically and ecstatically for the one who will never come to save them from their existential cul de sac of always waiting for something.
The play by Terzopoulos—the director who began from Makrygialos in the region of Pieria and in the last forty years travels the world with Attis Theatre, teaching his much-admired acting method from Asia to Australia—unveils “a crucified humanity in which the nails are words,” as noted in the foreign press, before concluding that this is “an opera that will be included in the annals of contemporary theater.”
Factors
COPYRIGHT: EDITIONS DE MINUIT
ITALIAN TRANSLATION: CARLO FRUTTERO
DIRECTION, SET, LIGHTS & COSTUMES: THEODOROS TERZOPOULOS
WITH (IN A.O.)PAOLO MUSIO, STEFANO RANDISI, ENZO VETRANO, AND ROCCO ANCAROLA, GIULIO GERMANO CERVI
MUSIC: PANAYIOTIS VELIANITIS
ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTION: MICHALIS TRAITSIS
ASSISTANT TO ACTORS’ TRAINING: GIULIO GERMANO CERVI
PRODUCTION: EMILIA ROMAGNA TEATRO ERT / TEATRO NAZIONALE, FONDAZIONE TEATRO DI NAPOLI – TEATRO BELLINI
Info
Wednesday 15 May 2024 - Sunday 19 May 2024
Onassis Stegi, 107-109 Syngrou Avenue 11745 Athens, Greece
Further information on the venue and the exact dates of the event will be announced soon.
