"WAITING FOR GODOT" AT COMÉDIE DE CAEN #4

“But what are you doing?”

Accidentally walking into the rehearsal room, a young man asked this wonderful question: “But what are you doing?”… “We are waiting for Godot!” replied Michel Bohiri. “One has to pass the time” added Fargass Assandé. “Ah!” replied the young man. “Stay a little longer” suggested Marcel Bozonnet. Jean Lambert-wild crossed the stage to take off the visitor’s coat and carry his bag. 

But the young man had already disappeared. The only thing that remained in the room was an echo to his question: “But what are you doing?”, which none of us had provided an answer to. 

Could we answer that question? Could we have given a collective answer? Of course, we could have said that we were rehearsing a Beckett play, that we were working on Act I, that we were having trouble working out the blocking, that the folding chair was still not working, which was a big problem, because how can one sit down when nothing is certain? This would have been a coherent answer, of course, because this was indeed what we were doing at the time. But wouldn’t the coherence of that answer close off the question’s meaning? What are you doing, Lyn? And you, Fargass, Michel, Marcel, Jean? What are you up to? “I am listening”, says Lyn. What are you listening to? “I am listening to what comes from the stage, and also what comes from the auditorium. I’m also listening to what comes from myself.” And why? “To combine these things, of course”. “I am trying to… I am trying to” replied Fargass. But what? “I am trying to understand how to respond to what is said to me”. But what is it, that is being said? “This is also what I am trying to understand”. Michel thinks “Can I be refused what I have been asked for! I was here yesterday. I am trying to be here today.” But to what end? “I could of course move, put myself there for instance. But to move, I must first of all be certain of where I am.”

Marcel enthusiastically continues, laughing “First, blocking. Working to find out what the blocking is.” But blocking what: “Everything, of course: the meaning, the musicality, the reach, the tensions of the play, everything that will mean we are in tune without even noticing it.” And Jean, what are you up to? “I am working on being present in my existence.” Present to what? “To my existence, of course! How do you expect me to dance or think without it? I need to find the support and the lever of my own chaos to hoist it into the world.”

ESTRAGON: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?

VLADIMIR (impatiently). Yes, yes, we’re magicians. But let us persevere in what we have resolved, before we forget. (…)

Actors are athletes of the doubt. The constancy of their wandering turns their dreams into lifeboats for our shipwrecked emotions. All these disruptions that break the tranquillity of the everyday are never set. We build and destroy them with every instant. An actor’s art is to be the architect of our collapse’s grandeur. One day is enough for a performance to empty tomorrow. 

Theatre is always transitory: it is the voluntary determination that our chaos asserts itself in the face of infinity. Unfolding intensity, an actor leaves the audience alone in front of immensity. 

To perform is solitary, to share this solitude is what theatre is.