Analysis Of Rudi Azank's Waiting For Godot

From Theatre of the Absurd to Film of the Absurd: Screening Beckett for the

21st Century Audience

As one of the significant literary figures of the twentieth century, Samuel Beckett left his mark on literature with his unique contribution ranging from prose to poetry. Although Beckett's oeuvre has been subject to innumerable analysis from divergent perspectives and various approaches, screen adaptations of his stage plays are unfortunately neglected, and thereby less scrutinized.

This study aims at investigating how adapters reinterpreted Beckettian absurdity in adapting his plays for the 21st century audience. As James M. Welsh remarks on screen adaptations, "the

The fourth chapter will analyze While Waiting for Godot, directed by Rudi Azank, who created an episodic web-adaptation, premiered on YouTube, in August 2013. Set in modern day New York, shot in black and white, with Pozzo and Lucky as females, While Waiting for Godot deserves particular attention in the sense that it is the first online Beckett adaptation, designed in four episodes, which succeeds in making the YouTube generation audience wait for Godot in digital platform.

As the starting point, rather than the source texts, my analysis will be on the adaptations, which emerge in different contexts, and evolve out of collaborations between various creative workers. Each of Beckett's film adaptations, interpreted by different creative workers, is a vantage point for understanding how individual viewpoints shape the adaptations, and how audiences respond to them at different time in different places. As Thomas Leitch expresses, "the primary lesson of film adaptation [is] that texts remain alive only to the extent that they can be rewritten and that to experience a text in all its power requires each reader to rewrite it" (26). In this context, this study will include interviews with creative workers, critical reviews on films, and audience receptions from various websites such as IMDB, and