An empty intersection. A tree surrounded by hurricane debris. Ruined houses still untouched since they were flooded by roof-deep water. Now they've been joined by an outdoor stage, with actors and an audience.
The city's darkest corner, the flood-flattened Lower 9th Ward where few people have rebuilt their homes 26 months after Hurricane Katrina, has been turned into a theater presenting symbolic and poignant free performances of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
The performances are capturing the zeitgeist of a city waiting impatiently for Katrina's aftershocks to subside. So many people showed up for Friday's opening night performance, even those who had never heard of Beckett before, that hundreds were turned away because seating was limited to 500. Some arrived with babies in their arms, others still in their blue work coveralls, others from the wealthiest parts of town.
Like the two tramps looking for Godot in Beckett's 1949 masterpiece, New Orleanians know about waiting.
"We waited for Red Cross. We waited for [US President] George Bush. We waited for rescue. We waited for housing. We waited in line for FEMA vouchers," 53-year-old Tyrone Graves said as he swatted mosquitoes in the warm twilight before the start of Friday's performance.
Katrina destroyed his home and drove him to Houston; he returned only recently, but still relies on friends and family to house him while he works with demolition crews.
"Waiting. I can tell you about waiting," he said.
Carmen King, who lost her teaching job after Katrina closed her school, is waiting, too. She's waiting for her best friend, Dorene George, to come back home from Little Rock, Arkansas, where she has had to live because New Orleans rents rose so much after the storm.
"We talk everyday on the phone," said King, 59, as she stood in line to get into the play. "She can't afford to come back."
Waiting is just about all Delores Antoine has done. Her home just a few blocks from the outdoor stage was badly flooded and she still hasn't gotten the money she needs from Road Home, the state's hurricane homeowner grant program that's been roundly criticized for being overly bureaucratic.
"Oh, geez," 53-year-old Antoine said. "I'm waiting for Road Home. I'm just waiting for any kind of help to get me back to my house."
She said it's been "about a year of lines. Everywhere I go there is lines. Everywhere you go you have to have a suitcase of papers. `Oh, bring in this, bring in that.'"
"My life is at a standstill. I can't move forward," she said.
So then, Waiting for Godot and its stark flirtation with insanity and bouts of existential doubt speaks the language of the people here.
But the play is not purely gloomy. It is a vaudevillian tragicomedy, and this production seeks to point out the awfulness of Katrina while illuminating a place lacking in light.
"It's a form of resistance to a landscape that does not seem to be fertile to develop any sort of art," said Paul Chan, an activist artist who came up with the idea of doing the play in scarred New Orleans.
He said the production, arranged by the Classical Theatre of Harlem, is following in the footsteps of other Waiting for Godot stagings set in bruised landscapes.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS