Another Play Cancellation: This One Is Even Stupider Than the Others

There are a lot of really stupid reasons to cancel a scheduled theatre production. Just in the past couple of weeks, we’ve learned of examples in Florida and Ohio. Little did we know those stories were just the warm-up acts. The University of Groningen has just responded with a metaphorical “hold my beer.” At least the place is in the Netherlands, so the beer in question is likely to be Amstel, Grolsch, or Heineken: a step above Budweiser or Coors, to be sure. 

A scene from the original production of 
Waiting for Godot (En Attendant Godot)

The production in question was of Samuel Beckett’s most famous play, Waiting for Godot, scheduled to be staged at the university’s Usva student cultural center in March. It was cancelled because—get this—someone at the venue found out that the director had auditioned only men for the all-male cast. Yes, really. No, it wasn’t that he’d cast only men: that apparently would have been acceptable. 

Usva theatre programmer Bram Douwes, a serious contender for the dimmest light in the firmament, told the local Ukrant newspaper that “if it concerned a play with five white guys that they’d held open auditions for, everything would have been fine. But you can’t ban people right from the start.” In other words, The Idiot Douwes apparently has no objections to an all-male cast, only one which came from a process which did not involve wasting the time of everyone involved: the director, the women who auditioned (and who might have believed it was possible to be cast), and the men who auditioned (as auditions would have taken longer). 

By the way, the part about “white guys” was just a bit of gratuitous virtue-signaling, as Curmie seriously doubts that non-white males were excluded from the process. Curmie’s own experience as a director has included both casting BIPOC actors in roles obviously first played by whites and ending up with all white actors when he went into auditions thinking he’d almost certainly get a multi-racial cast. It works out how it works out. 

It’s important to call attention to the play in question. Samuel Beckett insisted that his scripts be followed to the letter: no line changes, no omissions, no changes, period. He got furious when he learned that Alan Schneider, who directed the American premiere of Endgame (and several other Beckett plays) had given Clov an additional prop to carry offstage at play’s end. So if he said Godot has an all-male cast, he meant it, even suing the producers of a different Dutch company in 1988 for casting women. Beckett’s estate has been conscientious about upholding his wishes; they control the production rights for another several decades. 

What passes for a brain trust at Groningen, of course, supports the suppression of the play. “Times have changed,” quoth university press officer Elies Kouwenhoven. Yes, they have. What hasn’t changed is the need to acquire the rights to perform an author’s work. We can speculate all we want about whether Beckett might have a different perspective were he still alive, but there is little that could be less relevant. Kouwenhoven proceeds to proclaim that “We as a university stand for an open inclusive community where it is not appropriate to exclude others, on any basis.” 

“On any basis”? Like, for example, it would be inappropriate to deny students the opportunity to perform one of the most influential plays of the 20th century because you hired a moron as your “theatre programmer” and you care about neither art nor your students, right? 

And it would be inappropriate to cancel a production already well into rehearsal because you and your minions failed to do their jobs by not bothering to read the audition notices which clearly stated that “unfortunately no leniency can be afforded in this casting”? And no, Ms. Kouwenhoven, it is not at all “outdated and even discriminatory” to cast only men in male roles. More to the point, it wouldn’t matter if it were. Obeying the law is generally considered a good thing. 

Nor are protestations that the play is better, or at worst unharmed, by casting women in any way relevant. Curmie has, in fact, seen a university production with a female Gogo (Estragon, one of the two leads); presumably either a waiver was acquired or the school got away with it because the rights-holders didn’t find out. He doesn’t think the play suffered at all. 

It doesn’t matter. It might be a little—only a little—too strong to say that if you want to do Beckett’s play, you must do Beckett’s play. But certainly obeying the wishes of the playwright, adhering to the dictates of the rights-holders, and avoiding the potential of a lawsuit ought to be at least acceptable behavior. Not in Groningen, apparently. 

Curmie has also seen the argument that Shakespeare gets changed all the time, as if that is a pertinent observation. It is not. For one thing, Shakespeare is in the public domain; Beckett is not. Obeying copyright law really does matter. 

Equally importantly, it is also reasonable to do Shakespeare outdoors on a thrust stage with an all-male cast. (One of Curmie’s most treasured memories as a theatre-goer was seeing Peter Hall’s production of Aeschylus’s Oresteia at the National Theatre in London; it had (OMG!) an all-male cast, meaning that Clytemnestra, Cassandra, Electra, Athena, and two of the trilogy’s three choruses were, contrary the norm of modern productions, played by men, as would have happened in the original production.) 

Oisín Moyne, the young Irishman at the helm of the production, notes the absurdity of the acknowledged masterpiece of the Theatre of the Absurd being thus subject to the whims of irrational yet powerful forces. And now, seeking another venue for their work, the company are waiting for Godot.