Waiting for Godot in the Lower 9th

On November 2-4, the quiet, abandoned streets of the Lower 9th were filled with N.O.P.D. vehicles, strings of parked cars, and the sounds of jazz and people. All of this was brought to the Lower 9th Ward by Creative Time's production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a tragicomedy directed by Christopher McElroen and Paul Chan, starring Wendell Pierce (of HBO's "The Wire"), J. Kyle Manzay, T. Ryder Smith, Mark McLaughlin, Tony Felix, and Michael Pepp. The production was enormously successful, and because of the unprecedented response, a third day was added in the Lower 9th to accommodate the many people who were turned away the first few nights. Even on the extra night, the number of people who attended were in excess of 400.

It was an exciting event. Hundreds of people stood in lines snaking through the Lower 9th. Media was everywhere, cameras flashing, police posted for crowd control, and gumbo to feed 600. A band blaring brass music and twirling umbrellas accompanied a parade-like procession that lead to the site of the play, where there was standing-room only. The set was stark and eerie: one lone tree standing in the middle of the street--in the background nothing but jungle where neighborhoods once stood, the occasional house rising out of the isolated landscape.

The production was well-done, the direction and the actors top-notch. The setting gave the play a new resonance, as the lone actors waited and waited in the desolate atmosphere of the abandoned Lower 9th. It was a new and innovative artistic endeavor, born of the grass-roots atmosphere of New Orleans and advertised with "guerrilla-type" advertising involving cryptic signs posted on telephone poles, reading the first words of the play: "A country road. A tree. An evening."

The play was presented in collaboration with The Classical Theatre of Harlem and New Orleans' Partners: University of New Orleans, Xavier University, Dillard University, NOCCA Riverfront, Lusher High School, Frederic Douglass High School, John McDonough High School, Students at the Center, Neighborhood Story Project, The Porch, Renaissance Project, and Neighborhood ambassador Robert Lynn Green Sr. There will be two more performances on November 9 and 10 in Gentilly.