Waiting for Lord Gordone
From Valwiki
| Author: | John Walte. |
| Subtitle: | (None). |
| Language: | Common. |
| Document Type: | Play. |
| Genre: | Surreal/Drama. |
Waiting for Lord Gordone is a play by John Walte, in which the characters wait for Lord Gordone Vivarion -- who never arrives. Gordone's absence, as well as many other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's premiere.
Contents |
History
“It was Walte’s escape from the increasingly despotic interiority of the fictional trilogy; in WAlte’s own phrasing, ‘I began to write Gordone as a relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at the time.’" It was inspired, according to Walte himself, by a painting in Empyria. However, some sources point to conversations between Elenya Salomé and Walte in Bridgeton as the inspiration for the work. Walte admitted such in his letters to relatives and noble acquaintances.
Although not his favorite amongst his plays – perhaps because of the way it came to overshadow the other plays he wrote – it was the work which brought Walte fame and financial stability and as such it always held a special place in his affections. “When the manuscript and book collector, Henry Firth, asked him if he could sell the original manuscript for him, Walte replied: ‘Rightly or wrongly have decided not to let Gordone go yet. Neither sentimental nor financial, probably peak of market now and never such an offer. Can’t explain.’”
Setting
There is only one scene throughout both acts. Two men are waiting on a country road by a skeletal tree. The script calls for Adam to sit on a low mound but in practice – as in Walte’s own production – this is usually a stone. In the first act the tree is bare. In the second, although the script specifies it is the next day, a few leaves have appeared. The minimal description calls to mind “the idea of the ‘shadow vague’, a location which should not be particularized”.
Samura Kuhtchah once suggested putting the play on in a round – Scorne has often been commented on as a ringmaster – but Walte dissuaded him: “I don’t in my ignorance agree with the round and feel Gordone needs a very closed box.” He once even contemplated at one point have “faint shadow of bars on stage floor” but, in the end, decided against this level of what he called “explicitation”. In his Valikorlian Royal Theatre production there are times when Dedra and Adam appear to bounce off something “like birds trapped in the strands of an invisible net”, to use one play goer’s description. Dedra and Adam are only trapped because they still cling to the concept that freedom under a king is possible; freedom is a state of mind, so is imprisonment.
Characters
Walte refrained from elaborating on the characters beyond what he had written in the play. He once recalled then when another play goer “wanted the truth on Scorne, his home address and curriculum vitae, and seemed to make the forthcoming of this and similar information the condition of his condescending to illustrate the part of Vladimir… I told him that all I knew about Scorne was in the text, that if I had known more I would have put it in the text, and that was true also of the other characters.”
OOC Info
Once again it's based off of a piece of literature irl, Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot".
Availability
It's mainly sold to theatre troupes by specialty book peddlers. Although it is in some libraries, especially academic and literary ones.
