You could argue that the characters in The Office are waiting for something, like a promotion, love, meaning in their lives? Well, their daily existence is pretty funny, if you put aside the larger existential ennui. Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight in The Office, now portrays Vladimir in Samuel Beckett’s classic inquiry into meaninglessness — Waiting for Godot. The play is running now through December 21 at Westwood’s Geffen Playhouse.
The lead characters, Vladimir and Estragon (portrayed by Aasif Mandvi), respectively known as Didi and Gogo, are down on their luck and waiting outside by a tree for a person named Godot. Nothing (big) happens in either Act I or II, says Wilson. The lead characters do get visitors named Pozzo and Lucky. Godot never shows up.
Still, he says, “I think Waiting for Godot is one of the most brilliant plays ever written. It is the play that brought me and my wife together.”
Wilson and his future spouse met at the University of Washington — he played Didi while she played Gogo in scene class. “We didn't get together then. But we started a friendship. Five or so years later, we got together in a couple-ship. So Samuel Beckett brought us together.”
Didi and Gogo are like a married couple too, having known each other for a long time. Wilson says they reference that they’ve been together 50 years. “Recollection of memory and recollection of time in the play is very dubious. Nothing is remembered correctly.”
He adds, “A lot of people say that he based the play on his marriage. Samuel Beckett fought in the French Resistance, and I think the play was really conceived of during World War II. And him and his wife were essentially starving to death in the French countryside, eating a lot of root vegetables. And in the play, root vegetables feature prominently — turnips and carrots and radishes — and there is this kind of married couple dynamic.”
Did Wilson think about his own marriage when rehearsing? “I think my marriage is a little more evolved. Maybe we've had a little more therapy. We're a lot closer than Didi and Gogo,” he says.
L-R: Aasif Mandvi and Rainn Wilson rehearse “Waiting for Godot” at Geffen Playhouse. Photo by Jeff Lorch.
Waiting for Godot is one of the most misunderstood plays, Wilson points out. “I think it's often described as existentialist and absurdist. I truly believe that Beckett is saying something deep and profound and actually positive about humanity through Waiting for Godot.”
Audiences could say the play is about the theater, class, war, immigration, forgotten workers, Wilson acknowledges.
But to him, one of the production’s most central themes is that people are stuck, repeating the same behaviors and expecting a different outcome, and don’t take action to improve their lives.
“There's a whole Christian element to the play too. One could say that they're not doing anything to improve their lives because they're waiting for this mythical figure to come, and redeem them, and save them. And I definitely feel like that is a central pillar of Godot. This is about what happens in the waiting. Humanity despairs. Humanity falls apart in the waiting and in the habituated lack of action.”
Wilson points out that Vladimir goes through an incredible transformation from the start to the end of the story — which he didn’t realize when he began working on the project.
“By the end of the play, he says, ‘Was I sleeping while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now?’ Then he says, ‘Habit is the great deadener. Is that humanity's condition or not? Are we sleeping while others are suffering? Is habit deadening us to the reality of suffering in the world?’ All of Act II is this exploration of Pozzo and Lucky, who have gone deaf and dumb and blind, and are stuck in a pile on the floor, and we essentially just don't help them for about half an hour. And it's this incredible metaphor of humanity. Is it us with Gaza? Is it us with Ukraine? Is it us with the border crisis? Is this humanity's fate, or are we going to choose a way out of this? Again, the deadening morass of habit?”
When Wilson was 20 years old, he did portray Estragon. He recalls, “All I know is like, ‘Oh, they talk about erections … and they do funny little gags to pass the time.’ And I was not able to access the deeper, darker elements of the play.”
And so, he says playing Vladimir now was exciting because he wanted to dive into the story, and director Judy Hegarty Lovett was a Beckett scholar and authority who previously directed several of the late writer’s plays. “It was having someone that could personally guide you into an exploration of Samuel Beckett's thinking process and language process. So we were very fortunate to have her and her husband, Conor, as part of this production.”
Wilson emphasizes that Waiting for Godot could be performed in Gaza, or on a subway platform with unhoused people, or in a city alleyway. That’s because the play reminds audiences of the suffering of individuals who’ve been cast out (such as refugees), are scrambling for food, and sleeping in ditches. “There's a lot of people out there like that, and I hope the play too can increase our overall empathy.”
Wilson stresses that the play is linguistically and physically challenging. “It's nonstop. The precision that is required to tell the story is absolutely extraordinary, and it's great. It's testing my limits as an actor. And working in TV, your limits are not tested very often.”
Wilson notes that he did theater well before he got into TV. He attended NYU’s graduate acting program in the late 1980s to early 90s, then did Shakespeare and Off-Broadway regional theater. After 10 years on the stage, he went to LA, later gaining TV fame as Dwight on The Office.
He says that returning to his first love — theater — is revitalizing for him as an artist. “I gained this skill set … playing odd, extreme, wild, weird characters. … The act of engaging in front of an audience and transforming to someone other than Rainn Wilson, is … incredibly liberating and exciting. And in that sense, it's healing.”