by Lianna Salva, The Rocky Mountain Collegian

The audience files in, seeing a mysterious figure center stage sitting perfectly still underneath a white sheet. This figure remains unmoving for a full 20 minutes before the stage lights go down.

Blue light filters through missing window panes from above, slightly illuminating the figure as well as another sheet covering a rectangular structure.

Michael Toland, who plays Clov in CSU’s production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” enters the room, hunched over and humming to himself.

“Endgame” takes place in a post-apocalyptic world.  The house, where Clov is a servant to Hamm, played by Tim Garrity, sits on a beach where nothing else remains except for a grey sky, a grey sea and a grey earth.

Clov whips off one of the sheets revealing two trashcans, making a small cloud of dust fly into the air. These two trashcans are the homes of Nagg and Nell, Hamm’s elderly and legless parents, played by Tony Vessels and Kelly Oury, respectively.
Garrity, Oury and Vessels remain in the same positions for the entirety of the play. Toland is the only person on stage with the ability to walk, but not to sit.

This contradiction, and many others, is what embody Absurdist Theatre such as “Endgame.”

Read the full article (PDF)