Usva’s decision to cancel a performance of ‘Waiting for Godot’ because only men were allowed to audition has been met with criticism over the past week. Is the cultural centre going maybe a little too far trying to be inclusive? What if the play had been for women only? Five questions to Fay Sterken, with Usva’s student board.
In case you missed last week’s article: before his death, playwright Samuel Beckett wrote a clause that only men were allowed to play the five roles in his play. Members of student theatre company GUTS wanted to perform ‘Waiting for Godot’ in spite of this and signed the clause. They made sure the play’s crew was diverse.
Your decision to cancel the GUTS play has caused quite a stir. People seem to be quite confused about your exact policies. Can you explain it to them?
‘What we’re essentially doing is copying the UG’s inclusivity policy, since we’re part of the university. We’re perhaps even more sensitive to the responsibility that entails, since we’re just a small organisation, a little island within the UG. We have to be extra careful to get it right. Our policy is simple: everyone should get the opportunity to do something, no matter their gender, background, or whatever.’
You say you don’t interfere with companies’ choice of plays or how they’re performed. But now you’re saying that you think ‘Waiting for Godot’ cannot be performed. What’s up with that?
‘People can decide for themselves what plays they want to put on. But in this case, GUTS isn’t meeting the requirements as set out on our website. One of the requirements is that plays are open to all students. That refers to all aspects of the play, including the roles on stage. No matter how diverse your crew, when you say only men are allowed to be on stage, you’re excluding people from the auditions.’
‘That’s where we draw the line. The play was going to be performed in our theatre and it doesn’t jive with our inclusivity policies. It’s our responsibility to provide access to culture to everyone. We have to be inclusive in that.’
What if a future company wants to perform ‘The Vagina Monologues’, which involves a diverse group of women talking about their experiences with things such as menstruation, sex, rape, body image, genital mutilation, and prostitution. Should that company be forced to cast a man?
‘We believe that people can play any role, no matter their gender. The choice of play is one thing, but we’re more concerned with the way they excluded people from the audition process. If a man had a perfect audition for ‘The Vagina Monologues’, considering our past experiences with GUTS, we’d expect them to cast that perfect man.’
But wouldn’t that lead to a form of surreptitious exclusion? Where companies have ‘open’ auditions when they’ve already made up their minds about not casting people of certain genders?
‘It would be awful if a company held open auditions and then still excluded people based on their gender. We don’t know what goes on inside someone’s head during the audition process, so we’d never actually be able to find out. But we have always had blind faith in GUTS, because our bond is so strong. They perform three times a year with us on average and their plays are always well done and fun.’
‘That’s exactly why we were so shocked by what was happening here. The point is that they signed a clause that excludes people. They made a conscious choice, and we can’t support that. If they’d based their choice on acting ability and how suitable someone was for a role, it would have been okay. But everyone should have had the opportunity, regardless of their gender.’
Why didn’t you simply say that while you approve of what they did, you would use this opportunity to draw attention to the topic of inclusivity? You could have taken ten minutes before each performance on a short lecture on the topic instead of just cancelling the play. Why didn’t you?
‘If they’d done someone like that themselves and discussed it with us beforehand, we could’ve talked about it. When we met with them, it was to understand their intentions better. But when we saw what happened, that they’d already made the decision to only cast men, which is very much against our principles. It wasn’t part of our mindset to create an extra step in the play. The auditions had already passed, so we couldn’t undo that. The things we provide for them, a free venue and technician, doesn’t outweigh the exclusion of members.’