Waiting for Godotand the Racial Theater of the Absurd

Abstract

AbstractThis essay argues that the 1957 Black-cast revival of Samuel Beckett'sWaiting for Godotstages an Africana absurd sensibility that precedes and supersedes European philosophies of absurdism. While the Continental absurd developed as a repudiation of Western reason and aspired to a universalizing assessment of the human condition, the Africana absurd is situated in the historical formation of racial slavery and colonialism. More specifically, the Africana absurd is a response to the formal meaninglessness and incoherencies of Western racial logic. Locating it within the existential and historical situation of Black theater in the Jim Crow era and attending to theatrical elements such as casting, stage props, and choreography, this essay shows how the production recasts Beckett's absurdism, metatheatricality, and antihumanism to present, rather than represent, the felt absurdity of racial modernity.