Pat Cumper: Waiting to Begin

The first time I sawGodotwas one Autumn mid-afternoon seventeen years ago. I had switched on my tiny television to watch the news while making my umpteenth cup of tea, trying to ignore the writing deadline that hung over me. I was riveted. It was so clever, so funny, sad and uplifting by turns. And there was no easy way to describe it. It was justWaiting for Godot, the play where nothing happens twice.

Born and raised in the Caribbean, I recognised the rhythm of the language because the English I grew up with came to the islands with the Irish hoopers, Scottish bookkeepers and Welsh blacksmiths over hundreds of years. There were references to casual violence, time spent competitively debating the meaning of stories from the bible, the image of a man with a rope around his neck, that triggered a welter of personal and historical connotations. I watched a warm and fractious friendship between two old man, how power is negotiated between master and servant, fear of the unknown, silly jokes and exuberant word play.

All these years on and now I am lucky enough to be producing Godot. Sitting in the auditions and listening to actors draw on their lives and backgrounds to inform their reading, the text with all its humour and pathos bounces off the page. The temptation can be to try and impose a world on the play in order to make your production stand out. If it's to have a Black cast, why not place it in West Africa or the Caribbean? Why not a baobab tree and red earth? The answer has to be because Waiting for Godot creates its own world. The text and the events of the play have their own inner logic.

There is no need to impose a concept as Beckett was quite clear This is the play, this is all the play is, and the directors and actors have to trust it. I am tremendously excited by what will happen when the richness of the actors' experience meets the text in the rehearsal room. It will be a Godot that looks and sounds like no other. Fine British actors whose roots reflect the complexity of Empire's legacy bringing one of the 20th century's best plays to the stage. I can't wait.