CU theater troupe toured production of Waiting for Godot to Poland

Twenty Cornell staff members and undergraduates traveled to Poland in October to reprise the Cornell production of Waiting for Godot, which had played to sold-out audiences on campus last February.

Renowned experimental director and A.D. White Cornell Professor-at-Large Richard Schechner '56 directed the Schwartz Center production. A legend of American alternative theater, Schechner presented this classical theater piece using unique ways to involve the audience and interpret playwright Samuel Beckett's work.

This past spring, Schechner was invited by the Confrontations Theatre Festival in Lublin, Poland, to bring the Cornell production of Waiting for Godot to its international festival of avant garde theater. The festival aims to bridge the gap between Russian and American art. There were many Polish and Russian theater groups represented as well as five American theaters, including LaMaMa Theatre and Playwrights Arena. Cornell was the only university theater present at the festival.

"Not only were we the youngest theater group at the festival," said Waiting for Godot stage manager Jennifer Nelson, "but we were praised for being the most friendly and most professional."

In addition to the challenge of being in a foreign country where few spoke English, the touring troupe was, at the last minute, denied the rights to produce the play in its entirety by Beckett's estate. "Because of the experimental nature of Schechner's directing," said Nelson, "we couldn't remount the original production. Instead we held a Beckett workshop, where we showed parts of the play, places where we varied from the original script and why the director made the choices he did. Schechner and an academic familiar with the restrictions of Beckett's estate gave opposing views and a discussion on the rights of censorship of translations of scripts."

The Beckett workshop, which was in two parts, played to full houses both days at the festival. "We received an excellent response," said Nelson. "Understandably, the Polish people are passionate about censorship. They were so enthusiastic about our shows and its issues ... they wished they could have seen the whole production."

In addition to Schechner and Nelson, the touring troupe from Ithaca included five undergraduate students, one graduate student, two local school children, a Cornell Resident Professional Teaching Associate, three department technical personnel and various family members. The trip was funded by a grant from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, a New York City foundation that promotes international arts projects.