Bad Godots

Download or read book Bad Godots written by S. E. Gontarski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.