Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen on ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘No Man’s Land’

SAG-AFTRA Foundation October 30, 2026 3:50 Acting Training

Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen on two and a half weeks at the table for Waiting for Godot, the questions they asked there, and why you listen to a play.

Sign in to save this

5 Things Actors Should Know About Rehearsing a Hard Play

Drawn from what is actually said on camera, so you can decide whether to spend the 3:50 watching it.

Every moment of every night has to be new

Making each moment as fresh, spontaneous and immediate as possible was the driving force of both productions. That held even in repertory, arriving at seven o'clock on a Wednesday to play No Man's Land after four performances of Waiting for Godot.

Go there 0:00

Stay in your chairs for two weeks

Of six or seven weeks of rehearsal, Stewart says the first two to two and a half were spent sitting around a table, never on their feet. He says this is increasingly the principle among UK directors of a certain age. The moderator, after some 16 productions of Godot, says this was the first one they truly understood.

Go there 0:57

Ask what is going on, not what it symbolizes

The table talk was not analytical. Nobody asked what the play means or symbolizes. The most frequent questions were what is going on, who are these people, and what Stewart calls good old acting 101: what do they want.

Go there 1:25

Know the backstory before you stand up

By the time the company got on its feet, Stewart says they were pretty clear who they were, why they were there, what their backstory was and what their hopes were. McKellen's reply is that he was asleep during most of the process.

Go there 1:47

A play is for listening, even for trained actors

McKellen says you should no more read Godot than read Mozart off the page. You listen to it. He adds that trained actors still needed two or three weeks to lift the words off the page, so a high school student should not expect to get there with a teacher and a text.

Go there 2:25

Acting Craft is built by Web For Actors, who also wrote what a class actually buys you, which draws on videos like this one.

Was this helpful?

Yes 0 No 0

Sign in with Web For Actors to vote.

0 comments

Full transcript (515 words)

Making something as fresh, spontaneous, and immediate as possible, every single moment of every night, has been the driving force of both productions. But then all of a sudden, hello, it's seven o'clock on a Wednesday evening and we're doing No Man's Land after four performances waiting for Godot. And the plays are very different in their setting and style, while at the same time in content and themes, they overlap perpetually. Yeah, you're actually a perfect foursome up there because you're also playing with Billy Crudup and Shula Hensley, and you have one of the finest directors in Sean Mathias. And Patrick, you had mentioned something backstage that I had told him and I had seen like 16 productions awaiting for Godot, and I've never truly understood the play until this production, the clarity of it all. And you told me that for the first few weeks. Tell us, you sat around a table read, right? Well, I think we had six or seven weeks total rehearsal. And the first two, two and a half weeks of that rehearsal period was spent in a room sitting around a table. We never got on our feet. And the principle, which is becoming increasingly a principle, I find with directors of a certain age in the UK, is that we read and read and read and discuss and discuss, not in an analytical way of what does this mean? What does it symbolize? But rather, the most often asked question would be, what is going on? Who are these people? And good old acting 101, what do they want? And by the time we got on our feet, I think we were pretty clear in our heads who we were and why we were there, what our backstory was, and what our hopes were. Is that right? Yes, I think so. I was asleep during most of the process. I mean, after the shows, we meet any of the audience who waited at 48th Street to say hello to us. And the number of people who studied waiting for Godot at school, I mean, ordinary high school, astonishes me. What crackpot educationists thought I know what would be good for the boys and girls. They should read Waiting for Godot. But they should not read Waiting for Godot any more than you should read Mozart off the page. You listen to Mozart and you listen to Godot. You listen to any play. You're an audience, audio, audio. You can't do it yourself. And witness the fact that it took us two or three weeks. And we're trained to read scripts and still find it difficult. But it takes us two or three weeks to begin to lift the words off the page. So why should someone in high school, led through by a teacher, expect to get in there with it? And that's, I think, perhaps why they're enjoying the show so much that they celebrate. Oh, I see. It's an entertainment, is it? It's a play. There's lights. There's music. Patrick Stewart sings, dances after a fashion.