Seeking Stage Manager for Outdoor Staging of 'Waiting For Godot' by Green Candle Productions in May

Green Candle Productions is Seeking Passionate Stage Manager (East Austin)

Seeking a passionate stage manager for a new production of Waiting For Godot in the woods, (at an outdoor stage in East Austin May 4th-11th). Must be an excellent and supportive audience member, have a car, be available for all performances and most rehearsals, have a zesty appetite for the absurd and a weird passion for organization. Responsibilities include: noting blocking, calling the cues, creating the prop table, scheduling.   Contact froschalyse@gmail.com

Arts Reporting: Re-release of Audio of Waiting for Godot with Bert Lahr

Drama critic Terry Teachout writes the following for ArtsJournal:

TT: The Cowardly Lion's bravest night

I rejoice to report that the 1956 recording of the first Broadway production of Waiting for Godot, starting Bert Lahr, is finally back in print. Since no one else in the world seems to be aware of this wonderful fact, I decided to announce it to the world in my "Sightings" column for today's Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt:

Every critic who covered the show heaped praise on Lahr, and the most perceptive ones saw that his performance was profoundly true to the spirit of the play. Though Lahr was no kind of intellectual, he had instinctively understood what Beckett was up to. "I know it's supposed to be tragic, but there are lots of gags," he told his agent after reading the script. So there are, for "Godot" is a Laurel-and-Hardyesque farce about the meaninglessness of life. Even those critics who, like Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times, found it hard to stomach the play's dark vision were staggered by the crazed beauty of Lahr's acting: "His long experience as a bawling mountebank has equipped Mr. Lahr to represent eloquently the tragic comedy of one of the lost souls of the earth."

Alas, "Godot" closed after just 10 weeks, and Lahr never appeared in it again. But Goddard Lieberson, who produced original-cast albums for Columbia Records, had the brilliant idea to record a complete performance of the play. The existence of the resulting album, which has been out of print for the past quarter-century, is no secret, but its long-standing unavailability has caused it to be overlooked by most people who write about "Godot." Even John Lahr, the comedian's younger son, fails to mention it in "Notes on a Cowardly Lion," the uniquely perceptive biography of his father that he wrote in 1969.

It is, therefore, stop-press news for anybody who loves great theater that the 1956 recording of "Godot" is available once again, not as a CD but as an mp3-only sound file that you can download from Amazon for $3.56 or from iTunes for $5.99. (You can find it on either site by searching for "Bert Lahr.") Culturally speaking, I'd call that the deal of the decade....

The 1956 production of "Godot" was Lahr's show all the way, and to hear it now is to boggle at his seemingly infinite comic resourcefulness. He whines, he whimpers, he chortles, he grunts, giving each line precisely the right flavor. Yet never for a moment does his clowning conceal the play's underlying pathos, and whenever he opens his mouth, it's always Beckett, not Bert Lahr, that you hear....

Read the whole thing here.

Waiting for Godot, Sam Bass Community Theatre, Round Rock, March 26 - April 10

Director Veronica Prior took on the job of directing this classic piece of twentieth century theatre despite some misgivings. She writes in the program, "I studied this play in college, as many of us did. I have seen several different productions over the years, and wondered what was wrong with me, that I just didn't 'get it.' I am a simple person, not a philosopher. To be honest, I know very little of the 'isms' that others see in this play. I see a story. A good story, and one that has something for each of us to hear."

This production proves her wrong. Ronnie Prior does "get it." This is a notable staging, an exploration in airy, droll and quizzical comic mode. Actors and director do not flinch from Beckett's dark message, but they glide through it, moment by moment, with a tolerance for ambiguity and for one another.

This text from the 1950s, written first in French and later converted by the author into English, has provoked endless debte and discussion. Martin Esslin used it to push the thesis of his book The Theatre of the Absurd. Vivien Mercier wrote a famous review in the Irish Times calling it "a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." And if you want a summary and a long taste of the "-isms" eagerly applied to the play, spend some time with the entry in Wikipedia.

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Waiting for Godot, Sam Bass Community Theatre, Round Rock, March 26 - April 10

Click for ALT review, April 1

Received directly:

Sam Bass Community Theatre, Round Rock, presents

Waiting for Godot

by Samuel Beckett
directed by Veronica Prior
March 26 - April 10, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
Tickets $13 and $15, available from SBCT website

A road. A tree. And two guys in bowler hats. Didi and Gogo, two beloved tramps, are stranded at a crossroads, awaiting a mysterious person named Godot. Their struggle with even the simplest tasks is a funny and touching glimpse into man’s ability to survive in an absurd world.

Considered by many to be one of, if not the, most influential play of the 20th century, Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot is a blend of Buster Keaton slapstick, high wit, poetic feats and heartbreaking poignancy. Waiting for Godot asks the big questions with theatricality, tension, humor, and grace: how do we get up every morning, fight through every day, and go to sleep every evening never knowing whether our hopes and dreams might be granted?

Featuring Frank Benge, Craig Kanne, Ben Weaver, William Diamond, Rylei Brown and Ashlyn Nichols.