Waiting for Covid
tragicomedy in 1 act
By Wade Chambers
With deepest apologies to Samuel Beckett
This short play is a direct and deliberate imitation of the style and narrative strategies of the playwright Samuel Beckett. It is not so much an effort to parody that important artist’s writing techniques, as an attempt to comment on some of the cultural detritus of the Trump years in relation to the deadly social and political issues raised by the pandemic and perhaps even more significantly by climate change.
In particular, I am thinking of the ennui and despair to which so many of us succumbed in recent years on almost every front.
In this parody, I have substituted two gay men (Vance and Erick) for Becket’s Vladimir and Estragon. Erick is depicted as a gay stereotype far from the reality of most gay men, but one whose sluttish demeanor is nourished by political unwillingness to allow LGBTQ people to lead normal constructive lives.
Erick
Vance
a largely deserted train station. a closed hotdog stand nearby.
an afternoon during the pandemic.
Erick, sitting at one end of a bench, is trying to remove a ring from his little finger. He gives up, angry, rests, tries again. As before.
Enter Vance…
