Aspettando Godot

ERT has entrusted the Greek director Theodoros Terzopoulos with the direction of Beckett’s most famous work: in the hands of Terzopoulos, Waiting for Godot becomes one lens to decipher the Other who, inside and outside of us, summons opposites: animal longing and divine tension, madness and dream, delirium and nightmare. A show that questions our own humanity.
On stage, two young performers and three of the most intense and sensitive Italian actors; the music is signed by Panayiotis Velianitis, one of the first Greek composers of computer and computer aided music.

About Waiting for Godot
by Theodoros Terzopoulos

Our performance of Waiting for Godot will be set on “the ruins of the world”, in a future more or less close to us, where all the present and the past wounds will be kept open. The same for the expectations… At this borderline of human existence, what are the minimum possible conditions for restarting life, a life that is worth living? In Waiting for Godot there are two possible answers and there we intend to support our work:

The first is the effort to communicate and coexist with the Other, the one who is before us, despite of any obstacles, even when these seem formidable! The second is the effort to communicate with the Other inside us, this inscrutable and dark area of repressed desires and fears, forgotten senses and instincts, the region of the animal and the divine, where madness and dream, delirium and nightmare are born.

This is the journey we will try to make: towards the Other inside us and towards the Other outside, opposite, away from us. This is the journey we try to do every day. Waiting for what? The Redemption of life from the shackles of death? The meeting with the Human, the end of every humiliation of human by human? The Nothing or the Waiting, as Beckett derisively says?

But is there another way to envisage the emancipated human, without breaking down the walls that separate this “inside” from this “outside”?

Trailer 

Aspettando Godot – trailer from Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione on Vimeo.

Extracts from press review

PARALLAXI – Penelope Hatzidimitriou – 29/05/2024
(…) Terzopoulos scenically realized the impossible: that everything changes while remaining the same. (…) Terzopoulos is a director of the constant flow of energy of the body and therefore knows well how to manage the energetic short-circuits and fires they cause.

DOCVILLE – Iraklis Logothètis – 21/05/2024
Terzopoulos has emphasized with magistral equilibrium the two-dimensional character of the expectation of the two heroes (…). He perfectly used all the technical possibilities of the stage without losing for an instant the sense of proportion and move on to their abuse.

EFIMERIDA TON SINTAKTON – Dimitris Tsatsoulis – 19/05/2024
(…) Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, directed by Theodoros Terzopoulos, is a cry for our lost humanity. (…) A performance of supreme scenic poetry about the “nothing” that will come.

ATHINORAMA – Tonia Karaòglou – 17/05/2024
(…) What Theodoros Terzopoulos managed to achieve with Emillia Romagna Teatro is unique, as if he managed to condense in ninety minutes everything that can enter in this culminating moment of world dramaturgy. (…) The show (…) is monumental but also deeply human, tender and heartbreaking, comic and tragic, is a glimpse of reflection in the total darkness.

HARTISMAG.GR – Savas Patsalidis – 07/05/2024
Five charismatic Italian actors were chosen to give life to the masterpiece of the Irish author, investing in it the aesthetics of Terzopoulos, mixed with elements of their Italian theatrical education. (…) this is a play perfectly suited to his method, in the sense that it strips the theatre in its entirety and plunges into the dark compartments of human existence in search of true essences.

HYSTRIO – Giuseppe Liotta – June 2023
(…) Vladimir and Estragon, the two fetish characters of Beckett’s play who, escaping from their tragic and theatrical abstraction, have the body and voice of the longest-lived and most anomalous stage couple in Italian theatre, Vetrano and Randisi, here in one of their most effective and successful performances.

L’ESPRESSO – Francesca De Sanctis – 15/02/2023
(…) Let us tell you right away: ‘Waiting for Godot’ is a show with a very strong impact, not easy, but absolutely a must-see.

SIPARIO – Nicola Arrigoni – 2/02/2023
(…) The Greek director uses Beckett’s text, reshapes it and makes it the verbal column of an art installation that shows a bleeding humanity.

GLISTATIGENERALI.COM – Walter Porcedda – 18/01/2023
(…) “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett as you’ve never seen before. Powerful and definitive. It’s signed by a Master, Theodoros Terzopoulos. (…) a production that is a jewel of both the actor’s art – rarely seen so motivated and inspired – as that of directing. And it’s not a simple adaptation but an original creation tout court.

CONTROSCENA.NET – Enrico Fiore – 13/01/2023
(…) And this is a precious, as well as rare, example of how a director can put himself at the service of an author, clarifying and enhancing his message; and, moreover, illuminating the “consistency” of that author in the world, in history and in the today’s society. (…) Terzopoulos pushes the theatre out of itself, reminding us that we live in a world much bigger than a stage.

All the Press Extracts