The Bakersfield College Performing Arts Center presented “Waiting for Godot” on Nov. 17 in the Edward Simonsen Black Box Theater to a full audience.
Audience member, Timothy Swanson appreciated how well the students’ performed an absurdist play.
Waiting for Godot, written by Samuel Beckett and directed by Kimberly Chin, is an absurdist tragicomedy that features characters Vladimir, played by Ruka, and Estrogen, played by Daniel Lizarraga Ramos, who wait for an unknowable amount of time for someone named “Godot.”
The set is spare but for a tree that Vladimir and Estrogen contemplate death at, a tire that Estrogen falls asleep in, and random trash thrown littering the ground.
Eventually, a master and his slave, Pozzo, played by Logan Scott, and Lucky, played by Xaviahn Yunior Rodriguez, run into them. Pozzo decides to start up a conversation after being on the road for hours.
“It’s the most absurd thing you will ever see. This play is something else,” Scott said enthusiastically.
The audience laughed as Vladimir and Estrogen try to figure out the relationship between Lucky and Pozo as Lucky does his master’s bidding, hunched over with the weight of traveling luggage.
Scott described this relationship before the show, saying, “It’s a very fascinating relationship because…although I (Pozzo) do treat him very poorly, I couldn’t survive without him (Lucky).”
The two acts represent two days of waiting for Godot, and both times “The Boy,” played by Easton Salazar, comes to tell Vladimir and Estrogen that Godot will not show that day and to wait the next day there for him, continuing the monotonous waiting.
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play, describes the play program. Such plays purposely lack concrete meaning as well as plot. Thus, Waiting for Godot simply consisted of a series of interactions and dialogue between characters.
When asked about working on her character, Ruka stated, “It feels like I’ve had to relearn everything I know about acting,”
This was the last production for BC’s performing arts until the Spring Semester.