Michael Zilkha, founder of Ze Records and Ze Books, recalls how a school production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot at Westminster School in 1968 transformed his artistic outlook. At 13, Zilkha had just switched from the French school system, where theatre meant Molière or musicals like The Sound of Music. The play, performed in French by older boys including Nigel Planer as Lucky, revealed a world of abstraction and tension that defied conventional rules.
Zilkha was struck by how little happened on stage, yet the characters—Vladimir and Estragon—felt fully alive in their mutual dependence. This sense of 'less is more' later influenced his work as a record producer, where he would deliberately strip back instrumentation to isolate individual sounds. The play also inspired him to commission the Waitresses to write a song based on Beckett's line 'I Can't Go On, I'll Go On'.
The experience made Zilkha fearless about failure, as Beckett's worldview suggested that rules are optional. It opened the door to London's avant-garde theatre scene, including plays by Pinter and Osborne at the Royal Court. 'I don't know how my life would have turned out if I hadn't gone to that show,' he says. 'It just awakened something in me.'
