the audience's very search for meaning in the play is ridiculed. Beckett is saying, in

effect, "I know you don't get this. And you're not going to either. Ha Ha." At the

same time, if the play is working, by this point Hamm and Clov actually do mean

something to us. Even if we cannot articulate what that meaning is, we are aware

that something is indeed happening.

The second question: When will this end? is worked into the text on a very

delicate level. Hamm and Clov repeatedly speak of this situation ending. Here

again if we apply this in a non-metaphoric manner and make it apply to the

production itself we end up with almost continuous teasing of the audience. Clov

gets this ball rolling right away by opening the play with the word "Finished."

Aside from textual references to the end of the play, the question also fuels

the pauses in the text with a great deal of potential. What if we could raise the

possibility in the pauses that the play has actually stopped. If we could raise the

possibility that it will not start again the pauses become much deeper and more

connected with the audience.

Both of these questions gave us a lot of practical issues to work with in terms

of the actual performance. It was clear that the play existed in a world that needed

an audience. This was not a abstract work hanging out there on ethereal plane of

avant garde art: It was a performance. ENDGAME is an interaction between a group

of performers and an audience.

The emphasis of the work had to be on keeping the action in the actual room

the play was being performed in. We worked at referring to the actual performance

as much as we could and spend a lot of time trying to determine, moment to

moment, the nature of the character/actor's relationship to the audience in this

light. The text suggested that the awareness of this relationship increased in clarity

as the play progressed. Hamm makes references to such things as "...warming up