Thursday I had the opportunity to attend the first Rose Scholars event offered this year! We watched a play called Waiting for Godot preformed by the Yiddish theatre troupe at the Swartz preforming arts center. Honestly, when I signed up for this I had NO IDEA what to expect. So to answer the first question that I’m sure came to your mind… YES the play was in Yiddish. Which, according to the very informative packet they handed out is a language rooted in Middle High German and Hebrew, and can also include vocabulary derived from Polish, Russian, or Romanian. And as far as I know, I have never heard Yiddish before, so unfortunately I had no idea what they were saying! Luckily though they had translated the play into English and projected those subtitles for those not proficient in Yiddish (I’m pretty sure the man next to me understood every word though!).

For those of you wondering what the play was about:

I’m not quite sure to be honest. There was a lot of random banter among characters, but it did seem sort of cohesive. These two older men, Didi and Gogo, were waiting by this tree for a man (or being? Or someone?) named Godot, and for the most part it seemed they were trying to find ways to pass the time. At one point a rich looking man and his servant come on stage and have some interesting dialogue with the main characters. (This was my favorite part as there were many things to laugh at). After this point, I had to leave due to other obligations (we all thought the play ended at 9, when it actually went on longer!). So I look forward to reading the other blogs to see if the characters ever got to meet Godot! I hope they weren’t left to continue waiting indefinitely…

(Picture: Man on left is Gogo, man on right is Didi)