Theatre must wait for a female Godot

23 January 2004

WILHELMSHAVEN – A German publishing company has stopped a theatre’s planned premiere of a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” because the play’s director had cast women in two of the play’s four roles.

The Beckett work was due to be performed on 24 January in the northern town of Wilhelmshaven, but Frankfurt-based publishers S. Fischer Verlag has prevented the play going ahead.

The publishers said Beckett had strictly forbidden women being cast in any of the four roles. All theatres had to adhere to the author’s wishes until the expiry of copyright 70 years after Beckett’s death in 1989.

Theatre director Gerhard Hess criticized the publisher’s action as “a joke”.

DPA
Subject: German news