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En novembre 2006, plus d'une année après Katrina, Paul Chan, un artiste new-yorkais, visite la Nouvelle Orléans. Une impression de vide et de silence l'assaille : "The streets were still, as if time had been swept away along with the houses. Friends said the city now looks like the backdrop for a bleak science fiction movie. ... I realized it didn’t look like a movie set, but the stage for a play I have seen many times. It was unmistakable. The empty road. The bare tree leaning precariously to one side with just enough leaves to make it respectable. The silence.” Et dans ce silence, Chan rencontre aussi des hommes et des femmes en attente : "The sense of waiting is legion here : People are waiting to come home. Waiting for the levee board to OK them to rebuild. Waiting for Road Home money. Waiting for honest construction crews that won't rip them off. Waiting for phone and electric companies."Alors, tels des flashes, lui reviennent en mémoire des scènes d'En attendant Godot : “The longing for the new is a reminder of what is worth renewing. Seeing Godot embedded in the very fabric of the landscape of New Orleans was my way of re-imagining the empty roads, the debris, and, above all, the bleak silence as more than the expression of mere collapse. There is a terrible symmetry between the reality of New Orleans post-Katrina and the essence of this play, which expresses in stark eloquence the cruel and funny things people do while they wait: for help, for food, for tomorrow.” Paul Chan est en effet Un an plus tard, il montera la pièce, à l'air libre dans deux des quartiers les plus dévastés par Katrina : the Lower Ninth Ward and Gentilly.Cette mise en scène de l'attente, sur la scène même d'une attente en train de se dérouler, est une invitation à réfléchir à la dimension théâtrale des territoires de l'attente.