Info:

While Waiting

Director Udi Aloni performed by The Freedom Theater of the Jenin Refugee Camp

Open rehearsal 

Mon, Oct 17th, 7:00 pm
Schapiro Theater: 605 W. 115th Street
RSVP for the performance: arts@columbia.edu

In conjunction with the film screening and panel discussion for the Theory-Art-Action: On Binationalism and Other Specters series.

Inaugural performance 

Tues, Oct 18th , 7:00 pm
Miller Theater: 2960 Broadway at 116th Street
First come, first served.
 
About the performance:
While Waiting – The Freedom Theatre

Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece, Waiting for Godot, is one of the most important and challenging literary works of modernism, and as such, it is a perfect graduation project for the students of the acting school at The Freedom Theatre of the Jenin refugee camp.

Some might claim that at the core of Waiting for Godot lies a nihilistic repetition -- a representation of the meaninglessness of modern life.

Directed by Udi Aloni, this production will focus on the search for meaning, solidarity and friendship within the repetition itself. This search within the perpetual repetition is what creates an opening in a world where friendship and devotion may seem to be impossible.  

Through a kind of “weak energy,” the two clowns, Didi and Gogo, fill their endless time with an intense creativity -- an act of devotion within a place where meaning is impossible to uncover.  It is this insistent search for a meaningful game that continually recreates us as human.

In a way, this production of Waiting for Godot is a reflection on the experience of the students of The Freedom Theatre after the recent murder of their Master Teacher and beloved Trickster, Juliano Mer Khamis. The students’ performance of the play is in itself an act of fidelity and healing after a meaningless and tragic loss.