‘Waiting for Godot’ reflects on the idea of waiting and finding hope

‘Waiting for Godot’ reflects on the idea of waiting and finding hope

Waiting can feel unbearable, but it all comes down to the question of whether something is worth the wait.

For Teatro Meron, all their waiting and preparation are worth it to stage Waiting for Godot, which Founder and Artistic Director Ron Capinding describes as “one of the greatest and most significant plays voted among theater professionals.” Written in the late 1940s and first performed in 1953, the play is widely regarded as a landmark of absurdist theater. At its center are two men waiting on a nearly empty road for someone named Godot who never arrives. Vladimir, or Didi (Tarek El Tayech) is more thoughtful and often tries to plan or remember things, while Estragon, or Gogo (Jesus Joseph Ignacio), is focused on his physical discomforts, like his sore feet, and tends to forget easily. Together, they pass the time talking and arguing, moving between moments of humor and silence. 

Philippine theater has revisited Waiting for Godot in several ways over the years. In 2015, Tanghalang Ateneo presented GODOT⁵: Five Ruminations on Samuel Beckett’s ‘En Attendant Godot,’ using both the English text and a Filipino translation by Guelan Varela‑Luarca at the Ateneo Fine Arts Black Box Theater. In 2017, the Marikina‑based Ikarus Theater Collective staged Paghihintay kay Godot, a Filipino production directed by Jay Crisostomo IV and translated by Joaquin Cerdas. That same year, the UP Repertory Company mounted Walang Katapusang Godot, a devised adaptation inspired by Rolando Tinio’s Filipino version Paghihintay kay Godot, as part of UP Rep’s 44th theater season.

Now directed by Ron Capinding, the production presents Waiting for Godot in English. It marks the company’s third production since its 2025 founding, following Sopranong Kalbo and Ang Medea, and continues their focus on staging classic plays for contemporary audiences.

Who is your Godot? 

Staging Waiting for Godot now felt urgent for the company. “We always need to be reminded of these great themes,” says Capinding. “We have a lot of plays that probably teach us, enlighten us. But to go back to classics, among which is Waiting for Godot, is to remind us of something we might not even be looking for, but realize later that we need to remember.”

Capinding adds that the play’s lessons are open-ended. “This is rarely staged. When it is, it’s often done in a comic way. Totoo naman, it’s comic, but it’s also rich with insights. And even the lessons are not prescribed. We offer it the way it is, and you take what you need to take.” 

Watching Vladimir and Estragon navigate their waiting is less about following a linear story and more about sitting with the experience. John Bernard Sanchez, who plays Pozzo—a pompous landowner who arrives with his servant Lucky and interrupts Vladimir and Estragon’s waiting—added, “We’re all waiting for something different. So, when you watch a play that’s mainly about waiting, it makes you think about what that is for you. Who is Godot for you?”

On the insufferable waiting 

If Waiting for Godot offers a glimpse into the insufferable experience of waiting, it also gestures toward how one survives it. Capinding described the play as “tragicomedy” for a reason. It confronts audiences with hard truths, but it also allows space for laughter. “Life is naturally funny,” he said. “Life is too serious to be taken seriously. So when you see something so seemingly tragic, you just laugh.”

Capinding notes, however, that they did not intend to chase the comedy for its own sake. If anything, the production leans toward realism and relatability. “In fact, the parts that you were somehow laughing at were really something you can identify with, even in a symbolic way,” he said. The humor lands because it is rooted in something real.

That intention shaped several creative choices, including the make-up design. Make-up designer Ara Fernando shares that Capinding initially wanted the characters to look more realistic. “At first, [Capinding] didn’t want it to look clownish because it might convey certain emotions already,” she says. But after they reflected on the role of clowns in the postwar context in which absurdist theater emerged, she found a middle ground. “I tried to make neutral clown faces and incorporate each character’s age and characterization and that’s how I came about with the make-up,” Fernando says. 

The production also grounds its characters to embody ordinary people—fathers, brothers, men simply trying to look for and wait for something. “A lot of it started with our director trying to get us to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. So a lot of it just started with us during rehearsals just trying to be comfortable and walking old, talking old, being old,” says Tayech regarding preparation. Yael Ledesma’s Boy carries a youthful lightness that contrasts the weariness onstage, while Lucky, portrayed by Lenard Tiongson, calls for sustained physical endurance throughout the performance.

On finding hope

Despite the range of themes the play carries, Teatro Meron chooses to lean into one in particular: hope. Capinding shares that among absurdist playwrights, Beckett stands apart in a quiet way. “Of all the absurdist plays, parang si Beckett, may konting humility. May konti siyang hope,” he says. For him, even in the bleakness of Waiting for Godot, there is something gentle underneath. “You see, even in this tragic state… you have each other, at least. There could be things that you just take for granted.”

That sense of hope surfaces not only in performance but in design. Capinding points to the tree onstage, and more specifically, to the leaf that appears. For him, it signals that despite the repetition and routine, something changes. Waiting is not entirely static. To make this visible, he worked with the technical team to allow “further blooming to happen” within the set.

The production’s design followed the same thread. Technical Director Arjay Rosales shares that the set was anchored on the idea that hope is most urgent where it seems absent. “Ron said that Godot is all about hope. So I said, why don’t we set it in a place where hope is needed right now?” The visual drew from an image of a young man seated on rubble beneath a pink sky.

For Production Manager Gabrielle Barredo, staging classics also means challenging the idea that they are only for a select few. Guided by the legacy of their mentor, Dr. Ricky Abad, the company approaches these works to be accessible and relatable—not “a museum piece.”

In staging yet another classic, Teatro Meron embraces the challenge with intention. For the company, Waiting for Godot was not simply a return to a well-known text, but a reminder that even in uncertainty, there is hope.

Waiting for Godot by Teatro Meron runs from February 13 to March 1 at The Mind Museum’s Special Exhibition Hall.