Watching "Waiting for Godot" Again, with a New Generation of Brit Lit Students

Yesterday I showed my British Literature class the first 40 minutes of Waiting for Godot; that's likely all we'll watch because to show the whole thing would wipe out a week.  And frankly, 40 minutes is about all we need to get a taste of theatre of the absurd, and yes, I realize that in some ways, we're not getting the full experience at all.

This morning I was trying to remember when I last showed this play to students, and I think it was as long ago as 1997 or 1998.  I didn't show the play when I taught the survey class at the University of Miami.  That syllabus shows that we did Beckett's End Game, which would have been in the Norton Anthology in the early years of this century.  Also, I didn't have an easy way to show classes anything.  

Even in the 90's, when I worked at a community college, it wasn't easy to show anything.  I had to go to the library to check out a TV and VCR that were bolted to a rolling cart, which I would then wheel across campus to the classroom.  Then after class, I would wheel it back (and part of the year, that meant wheeling it back after dark, across parking lots and sidewalks).

It was so much easier yesterday, with the ability to stream a YouTube video on the big screen that's part of the classroom, and happily, the technology didn't fail me.  But was it any easier to watch in terms of content?

I've always found Beckett a mix:  delightful, absurd, disturbing, and on some level, boring, despite being also profound.  Yesterday was about the same for me, although as I watched, I did see a new interpretation, as I have more experience with aging.  It's hard for me to watch this and not jump to a dementia interpretation, although that interpretation is new to me, and I don't think it's what Beckett intended.

Tomorrow, my Brit Lit class will do a different type of debate--both sides will argue that the play is brilliant.  It's too easy to argue that it's not brilliant.  I'll put them in 2 groups and see if they can come up with reasons why it's brilliant, why I'm showing them this play, some 73 years after it premiered.