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Waiting for Godot

Courtesy: The Hindu The literary world is celebrating the 60 th Anniversary of the first performance of Samuel Beckett’s short play, Waiting for Godot .  It was first staged on 5 Jan 1953 in Paris.  Though it has no plot in the conventional sense, it went on to create history in literature.  It established a new convention in drama called the Theatre of the Absurd .  True, dramatists like Ionesco and Arthur Adamov had already written plays in that convention in 1950.  But Beckett catapulted the genre into limelight. Estragon and Vladimir are the two major characters in the play.  They are beggarly creatures waiting in a desolate street for someone called Godot.  But they are not sure whether they really have this appointment, nor whether they are in the right place.  They don’t know why they are waiting for Godot.  In fact, they are not even sure of their own names.  While waiting, they indulge in seemingly meaningless conversation .  They talk about the two thieves