Student theatre company GUTS will be able to put on the play Waiting for Godot after all. The group can perform at the Der Aa Theatre and on theatre ship Verwondering in April.
Although the dates have not yet been definitively confirmed, it looks like the Waiting for Godot production team will be at Verwondering on 7, 8 and 9 April and at the Der Aa Theatre on 21 and 22 April.
‘These are the venues that the production team itself has written to’, says GUTS board member Bram van Beek. In addition, however, at least three more offers have come in. One of them is at the Badhuis Theatre in Amsterdam. ‘We’d also like to perform there, but we don’t know yet when that will be.’
Auditions for men
GUTS saw its planned performances at cultural centre Usva cancelled a few weeks ago because the auditions for Waiting for Godot were only open to men. This was because writer Samuel Beckett stipulated that only men could play the five roles. Usva’s student board felt this was unacceptable: the auditions should have been open to everyone.
With that, GUTS lost both the venue and corresponding subsidy, just under two months before the play was to be performed. ‘The production team has made calculations and says it is absolutely possible to perform in the new venues. It is in fact even more profitable than at Usva’, says Van Beek.
Charitable cause
GUTS expects to recoup the cost of staging with the two performances at the Der Aa-Theater, which has 120 seats. By comparison, Usva fits about 75 people. ‘In the Verwondering there are about 40 seats’, says Van Beek. ‘So you do reach a lot more people in total. We want to donate all the profit made to a charity dedicated to inclusivity.’