【Taro Kai Archives】

If the waiting is Taro Kai Archivesindeed the hardest part, then Lauren Evans has probably suffered enough.

The Los Angeles-based TV and indie film actress on Tuesday posted her 1,000th installment of "Waiting for Godot," a series of social media-sized short films that she started as a lark – the first one occupied her time while a casting director was running late for a meeting – and have continued apace for the better part of four years.

As of this writing, and all those mini-movies later – a thousandof them! – Evans is still waiting for her Godot. But maybe not much longer?

"Ironically, as I've edged closer to number 1,000," she told me, "the big delay has been happily shooting something like four indie film projects since August." (The final, exquisitely ironic delay came over the past two weeks, as Evans, who wanted to post her milestone miniflick before Thanksgiving, waited for music clearance. It never came.)

Well, at least the wait for #WaitingforGodot1000is over.

Here's the first of its three parts (click over to her Insta for the other two):

#WaitingForGodot 1000 part 1 of 3 #samuelbeckett #art #actorslife #actor #director #cinematography#womeninfilm#filmmaking #indiefilm#cinema#film#tv#microfilm#installationart #song #sexmusic by #beak> #bristol #hollywood #iphoneonly #LA #SAGAFTRA #series #miracle #feminism #burbank

A post shared by Lauren Evans (@yeslaurenevans) on Nov 28, 2017 at 9:19am PST

As you can see, Evans' tiny cinematic creations are lyrical to say the least; dreamy, bite-sized metaphors. And even if you watched all 1,000 in a row, you wouldn't be able to say exactlywhat she's been waiting for – which is very much the spirit in which they're intended, true to their namesake Samuel Beckett play.

"What I'm really trying to encapsulate is the everyman or everywoman experience that we're all having, wether we're running Sony or running dishes in the back of Shake Shack," she said. "So whether there's a frame of me waiting for a bus or whatever, to quote [hip-hop group] The Beatnuts, 'There's no escaping this.' That's what Beckett had really set forth."

Evans' posts are almost entirely self-shot and self-edited, mostly created in impromptu moments of inspiration as she goes about her daily life. When she shot the first one, she never thought she'd even make a second.

"I was waiting for this casting director who ended up being unbelievably late, and me being who I am, I was like, well, how can I fill my time? We're meeting at a restaurant ... and you know those happy-hour stand-up menus? Literally out of nowhere I had the idea that 'I'm waiting for [REDACTED], just like I'm waiting for Godot. I took a check stub or something out of my purse and wrote 'Waiting for Godot' and inserted it into the happy hour menu. I was literally just messing around. I'd been planning on deleting Vine – but then people showed interest."

tomorrow #WaitingForGodot #1000 drops, so i thought it apropos to re-visit #1 and its déjà vu—which was merely an exercise in boredom, waiting for the wonderful #castingdirector @em5hay in #franklinvillage [who is always worth the wait.] on 06.26.14 @ 5:24pm #actorslife #filmmaking #actor #director #cinematography #editing #dedication #mondaymotivation #losangeles #hollywood #stayready #samuelbeckett #existentialism #microfilm #SAGAFTRA

A post shared by Lauren Evans (@yeslaurenevans) on Nov 20, 2017 at 10:16am PST

Vine wound up taking care of the "deleting" for her, so she migrated to Instagram, where the slightly longer runtime gave her a slightly longer narrative leash.

The Toronto-born actress has been performing since age 5, graduated from George Brown Theatre school and took a 2-year hiatus from steady work to teach and practice Shin Sun Do, meditation and energy healing – which probably helps explain the meditative, existential nature of the Godot series (not to mention the patience and persistence it takes to do a thousand of, well, anything).

#WaitingForGodot 733 déjà vu of 728 #samuelbeckett #art #director #actress #filmmaking #actorslife#microfilm#series#tv#film #cinematography #womeninfilm #la #losangeles#installationart#hollywood #artist #actor #RussianState#symphony#cappella #setlife #SAGAFTRA #indiefilm#cinema#iphoneonly #editing #love

A post shared by Lauren Evans (@yeslaurenevans) on Nov 20, 2016 at 6:05pm PST

"It's a constant extrapolation out from just the very simple sense of waiting for – something," she said. "I'm remembering this one sequence I shot and I was in Griffith Park and there was a pacifier on the pavement. And I just loved how it would get illuminated as the cars go by. And of course as I was shooting it, I was like, yes, this is a clear metaphor for all the ways we pacify that desire for our Godot to arrive – the next job, a husband or wife, the next president – "My life will be OK when."

Will there be 1,001? Two thousand?

"Now that I'm about to drop 1,000," she said, "I feel very encouraged to keep going."