Irish director’s all-male Beckett play cancelled as only men could audition | Hacker News Reader

Irish director’s all-male Beckett play cancelled as only men could audition

irishtimes.com

35 pointsTomte40 comments

If a different director put on the same play adapted for an all female cast it would be “inspiring”.

I find all of this gender nonsense childish and exhausting. I just don’t care how you want to present yourself or what kind of person you want to have a relationship with. If we’ve gotten to the point where a play has to be canceled because it’s not got any women in it, I think it’s time to declare victory and go home. If it’s not time for that, focus on more important unfairness, for the love of god.

The article mentions two people who did/attempted that, one in France where they had to read a letter of objection from Beckett's estate and another in 2019 that was cancelled due to a lawsuit threat. The fact that Beckett's estate is so willing to sue over this is what makes this story unusual, the director of the play seemed perfectly willing to cast non-males in the play if he had the flexibility to do so.

> “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,” Usva theatre programmer Bram Douwes told the Ukrant newspaper.

So in other words, it's mandatory to waste people's time when you know in advance you won't cast them?

I think they've missed the intention of inclusivity.

They're punishing people today for the actions of someone who died in 1989.

Sam Beckett wrote the play to be only men. That was his vision for the story he wrote, and he was completely unwilling to compromise on it.

Even though other people want to change it, they will have to wait until either the people who enforce the copyright stop enforcing it or until it goes public domain.

Even though the view is outdated, I can't blame the author for wanting his story told his way, even if other people could tell it better with a few changes.

The only people that have done wrong here are the administrators who cancelled the play over their misinterpretation of a policy, following the letter of the law instead of the spirit.

After all, per the article, in their pursuit of equality and inclusivity, they have wasted the time and talents of many women, trans people, and people of color all because some dead person used the power of the law to prevent the possibility of women being cast into a role he wrote for men.

The inclusivity policy is fine, the problem is their decision to cleave to it like a doctrine, without allowing exceptions even for exceptional situations. It just shows a lack of foresight, and a misunderstanding of the spirit in which the term 'inclusivity' is usually intended.

While the author’s insistence on all-male cast is obviously outdated in a “smoking on an airplane” fashion, I would still be inclined to file it under ‘licencia poetica’, and view it as artistically legitimate, no matter what we think.

Arguably, this clear articulation of author’s will could be viewed as an integral part of the work of art.

As much as I think that it should be subject to artistic reinterpretation (like all female cast), and that the estate is being stupidly restrictive in its legal persecution of artistic purity, I believe the opposite should be allowed too. A director should be allowed enough artistic liberty to do a play with all-male cast (as well as all-female, all-trans, all-whatever-your-pronoun-may-be).

University restricting the artistic liberty into a (forcefully diverse) mould is equally stupid as the estate suing any departure from the author’s canon.

Nevertheless, the whole situation is delightfully bizarre. Love it.

This is largely a story about excessive copyright duration. The casting requirement for this 70 year old play is based on legal threats by the estate of the author who died over 30 years ago.

This is a story about the insanity of forced "diversity". Or whatever newspeak you'd prefer.

Please read the article first, not only the title. The above comment is completely correct. Whether their approach is acceptable though, that's another story of course.

Literally no diversity was forced. Not even sure where you got that idea, except if you only read the title.

If they had auditioned women, the play could've gone on. If, of course, nobody objected to none of those women being cast.

Or if they read the policies of the venue and adhered to them, the play could go on. Saying "you can't do X at this venue" is not the same as saying "you must do X".

...but the university is doing exactly that - forcing diversity for diversity sake. The play was written to be all male and they refused them the venue as a result of no women being called to audition for a role that isn't for women.

There's thousands of years of history of women playing men in plays, and men playing women.

That's nice, but irrelevant. Forcing an artist to represent art in a way it isn't intended, is absurd. What is the argument for it?

Is there any venue in the world which has no rules in place for the users of the venue?

Can you provide other examples like this? If not, then you have your answer.

They should've had in the casting call, a role for a woman in a sandwich-board sign, on it printed directions to the theater's fire exits. She stands at stage left for the entire performance, and has no lines, requiring no additions or subtractions to Beckett's work.

How do you propose the producers adhere to both the restrictions of the rightsholders, and of the venue?

Hold an audition allowing all people to try out, and if a woman does get cast because she is best for the role, read the prepared statement before the play indicating the rights holders don't like it.

…and get sued by the Beckett estate; because that’s an out only if you’re in one jurisdiction in France. I suppose if the University was willing to accept liability, that’d be different.

In Netherlands it was already decided by a judge:

> Famously, in 1988, Beckett brought legal action against a Dutch theatre company, which wanted to stage a production of Waiting for Godot, with women acting all the roles. His lawyer argued that the integrity of the text was violated because actresses were substituted for the male actors asked for in the text. The judge in the Haarlem court ruled that the integrity of the play had not been violated, because the performance showed fidelity to the dialogue and the stage directions of the play

https://eprints.qut.edu.au/86803/#:~:text=Famously%2C%20in%2....

Nice, but insofar as Dutch law lacks stare decisis, it's not stopping the Estate from suing someone else and at least getting to trial...

It would have been a non-problem if copyright died with the author.

I have doubts that this is the real reason.

I'm reminded of a a time when I was a student at Carleton University where the student counsel voted to stop participating in the "Shinerama" Cystic Fibrosis fundraiser based on the fact that it was a discriminatory disease- it primarily impacts white men[0].

But in reality, that was just the best reason they could come up with rather than the real reason, which was that they wanted to try something new instead- I suspect they had a few other options in mind. And they knew the rest of the counsel was dumb enough to vote for any motion that was against discrimination.

And so I propose an alternative explanation for you: this director has pissed someone off. That person went and found a reason to cancel the play. It's not about discrimination. It's not about Beckett or sexism. It's about somebody not liking Oisín Moyne.

[0]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/carleton-student-counc...

the whole topic is kinda absurd. for me it lies in the same spectrum as rewriting old books, because of some pc bullshit. Hope one day we can appreciate the differences instead of going for the lowest common denominator

There's a lot of debate whether this is a story about archaic artistic views or stubborn policy, but the story lies only in the failure to mate the two.

It's all perfectly fine. A venue may choose not to host a play. A work of art is confined by the artist's views. Either one, the venue or the work of art, may become obsolete or more relevant because of these constraints.

Whenever I complain [who me?] about some software I use being flawed, someone will always come back with the old "If you don't like it, write your own...". Whenever I complain [who me?] about a website's policies, someone will always come back with the old "Their playground. Their rules..."

I'm tempted to play the same card here; "If you don't want to stage the play the way the person who wrote it wanted it to be staged... write your own play"

That would require talent.

It seems that the reason these hacks continue to piggyback off of existing art and demand its "modification for diversity" is because they can't create anything novel or unique on their own.

This is just a byproduct of that where the university demands non-males be allowed to audition for a role that is supposed to go a male.

Wouldn't this apply to the venue too though? If you don't want to follow the venue's rules for what they will and won't host, find or build your own venue?

Yes. It would apply to the venue too. Which kind of begs the question why they [the venue] decided, in the first place, to stage a play written for an all male cast by a playwright who had very definite views about how his works should be staged?

Once the literary work is published, the author should lose control over it. Money is one thing, enforcing your rules is another.

Full disclosure: I made a popular (unauthorized) translation of Waiting For Godot many years ago.

That is precisely what they did. Good for them.

They don't need to write their own. There are lots of other playwrights out there. They've decided not to perform a play which has such limited opportunities for actors, and find one that does.

It would have been nice if the Beckett estate had instead decided to let other people interpret the work, but it's their right not to allow it. Their loss, both artistically and financially.

I think I have gender-fatigue.

My first exposure to "gayness" as a thing was La Cage aux Folles. I'm curious if they are required to audition women now to play gay men? It seems like that would just confuse the issue and dilute the drama. What about Philidelphia? Do we want a woman to play a gay man who is dying of aids in the 80's. I'm a senior citizen and find this all to very confusing, so I usually don't say anything, because it truely doesn't make sense to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cage_aux_Folles_(musical)

What about a story about a historical event? If there's a play about soldiers in a war long ago, or some male historical figure, are they required to allow women to audition for the roles?

I think what they're saying is Waiting For Godot could be played by any gender and it would still make sense, but Samuel Beckett made it a legal requirement that they be men. It seems that is viewed as sexism from the grave?

Yes, I get that. I'm just wondering about other hypothetical plays that don't have such a legal requirement from the author, but where it simply wouldn't make sense to force women into the roles because they're obviously male roles.

No. They're required (at this program) to put on shows that have both men and women. La Cage does have female roles in it, but if it didn't (and were forbidden to change that), they simply wouldn't perform it.

It was a mistake to put it on their schedule without nailing down the rights, but that's a mistake theaters make all the time. (We tried to put on a Zoom production of a play during the pandemic, and were told that the broadcast rights are not available. Fortunately we realized that before we got too far in the process.)

The writers get to make their rules for performances. The theaters get to choose what plays they put on.

It's unfortunate that things like this distract from real issues around gender equality.

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