THE RADICALS & AVANT-GARDE 1920–1970

A pair of tramps on a country road, waiting by a bare tree for a man who never comes – this is Samuel Beckett’s contribution to theatre, and it changed the course of drama. When Waiting for Godot premiered in 1953, audiences saw a play where “nothing happens… twice.” Many were baffled or angry. But beneath its apparent nothingness, Beckett was digging toward the most profound questions of human existence. In the shattered aftermath of World War II, Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd dared to show life stripped of comforting storylines. It was as if the stage itself had become a mirror to a world that had lost its familiar plot.

Beckett (an Irishman who wrote mostly in French) had a dark, wry view of life’s “sordid side”, but he insisted that wasn’t the point. The tramps in Godot or the people buri ...