Waiting For Godot Performance - Paris 1953

QUOTES

PETER HALL (source)

The process began exactly 50 years ago, on January 5 1953, when Godot was given its first performance in a 75-seat theatre in Paris. France was where you went for radical theatre in those days. Whether it was the surrealistic images of Eugene Ionesco, the classical splendours of Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud, or the political philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Paris continually outshone London.
And then came Samuel Beckett, soon to be recognized as the master innovator of them all. But he did not appear so at first—in fact, it took Godot several years to conquer. I heard of the play when it opened in Paris. But I am ashamed to say I did not see it. I had no idea that it would shortly dominate my life.
Godot returned theatre to its metaphorical roots. It challenged and defeated a century of literal naturalism where a room was only considered a room if it was presented in full detail, with the fourth wall removed. Godot provided an empty stage, a tree and two figures who waited and survived. You imagined the rest. The stage was an image of life passing—in hope, despair, companionship and loneliness. To our times, the images on the cinema screen are real, though they are only made of flickering light. Since Godot, the stage is the place of fantasy. Film is simile, lifelike; theatre is metaphor, about life itself.

"Why Theatre has never been the same." 
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/jan/04/theatre.beckettat100