‘So there you are again’

back to Waiting For Godot

Since its first production in French in the tiny Théâtre de Babylone in Paris in 1953, Waiting for Godot has been played all over the world in different languages and in all sorts of venues: not just in theatres, but in prisons and hospitals, war zones and lockdowns. It is a play that continues to resonate in new ways with changing contexts.

Join Beckett scholars, academics and theatre-makers in a conversation and Q & A facilitated by Dr Russell Smith from Australian National University with Prof Mark Byron (University of Sydney), Dr Rebecca Clode (ANU) and Dr Geoffrey Borny (ANU Alumni) about the origins of the play, its enigmatic meaningfulness, and its ongoing influence in the history of theatre.

Reservations are essential to manage numbers. Please RSVP with name and telephone number via rsvp@thestreet.org.au
---
Mark Byron

Mark Byron is Professor of Modern Literature in the Department of English at the University of Sydney. He is author of the monographs Ezra Pound's Eriugena (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) and Samuel Beckett’s Geological Imagination (Cambridge UP, 2020), and with Sophia Barnes the critical manuscript edition Ezra Pound’s and Olga Rudge’s The Blue Spill (London: Bloomsbury, 2019). Mark co-edited a dossier with Stefano Rosignoli on Samuel Beckett and the Middle Ages in the Journal of Beckett Studies 25.1 (2016), and is editor of the essay collection The New Ezra Pound Studies (Cambridge UP, 2019). He is President of the Ezra Pound Society.

Russell Smith

Dr Russell Smith is a lecturer in Modern Literature and Literary Theory at the Australian National University, Canberra. He has published widely on the work of Samuel Beckett, as well as on various topics in modernist literature, contemporary literature and visual art, and literary theory. His current project examines the impact of James Joyce’s 1930s radio listening on the composition of Finnegans Wake and its treatment of the emerging global wireless communications network.

Rebecca Clode

Rebecca Clode is the Ethel Tory Lecturer in Drama at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on playwriting practices and theatre history. Bec is a PhD graduate of the ANU and also holds an MA in Text and Performance Studies from King’s College and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London. Prior to her academic career, she was a theatre practitioner, and she now maintains her practice locally as a dramaturg for playwriting development projects.

Geoffrey Borny

Dr Geoffrey Borny retired from his position as Reader and Head of Theatre Studies at the ANU in 2023. His publications include Interpreting Chekhov, Modern American Drama and Petty Sessions (a verse translation of Racine’s only comedy Les Plaideurs). Besides being an academic, he is also an award-winning actor and director. He has played the role of Estragon in Waiting for Godot three times and has also directed productions of Beckett’s Endgame, Happy Days, Krapp’s Last Tape and Play.

Image L-R Russell Smith, Geoffrey Borny, Mark Byron, Rebecca Clode