UC San Diego Department of Theatre and Dance to Present WAITING FOR GODOT

The UC San Diego Department of Theatre and Dance presents Samuel Beckett's absurdist play, "Waiting for Godot," directed by Gabor Tompa, March 7-18, at the Theodore and Adele Shank Theatre in the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre District on the university's campus.

In "Waiting for Godot" two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly for the arrival of the enigmatic "Mr. Godot." Set in a wasteland where time, place and memory are blurred, the wanderers amuse and distract themselves from oppressive boredom, fantasizing about the impact Godot might have on their lives. Two travelers arrive, one man on the end of the other's rope. The results are funny and ominous in this existential masterpiece.

Previews are March 7 and 9, 7 p.m.; performances run March 10-11 and March 16-18, 7:30 p.m., with a matinee on March 11, 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 for regular performances. Subscriptions and group rates are available. Student tickets are $10 for regular performances. Faculty, staff, alumni and senior citizens discounts are available as well. Tickets can be purchased online or by calling the box office at (858) 534-4574. For information about parking, see the website.

The UC San Diego student cast features Volen Iliev (Estragon), Sean McIntyre (Vladimir), Terrance White (Pozzo), Andrew Gallop (Lucky) and Theo Leffue (Boy). The production staff includes Gabor Tompa (director), Will Detlefsen (asst. director), Justin Humphres (scenic designer), Brandon Rosen (lighting designer), Brooke Rector (costume designer), Steven Leffue (sound designer), Ashley Martin (production stage manager), Tyler Larson (asst. stage manager).

Playwright Samuel Beckett was a French-Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. He is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Beckett's work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature. (wikipedia.com)

Director Gabor Tompa received his training at the Theatre and Film Academy in Bucharest, Romania and began working as a professional director in 1981. Since then, he has directed more than 100 productions worldwide including plays by Shakespeare, Moliere, Chekhov, Beckett, Bulgakhov, Büchner, Camus and Ionesco. In 1990 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj, Romania , a post he has held up to the present time. He served as Head of Directing at the Theatre Academy in Târgu Mures , Romania and has been a guest teacher at the State University of Cluj, Academie Theatrale de L'Union, Limoges, Schauspielschule Freiburg, Brunel University , London, National University of Seoul and Institut del Teatre Barcelona . Professor Tompa is the recipient of many awards (four times Best Director of the Year in Romania, Best Foreign Performance of the Year in England etc.) and has received widespread recognition in Europe for his physically adventurous and conceptually audacious productions of classic plays. He is directing worldwide including France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Canada, South Korea, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Serbia. He received the 2002 UNITER Award for Excellence for the many achievements of his career. His film, "Chinese Defense," won the Best First Feature Award at the International Film Festival in Salerno, Italy in 1999 and has been officially selected for the 1999 Berlin Festival. Four times Best Director of the Year, he received the Best Performance of the Year Award in 2009 for Three Sisters and his production of Born for Never has been voted as Critics' Choice no. 1 in the 2009 Festival of Avignon. Mr. Tompa is also the author of several volumes of poetry and essays on the theatre. His book, Label Curtain, has been published in English by Bookart and has been presented at the BookExpo America in New York, 2015. Mr. Tompa served as Head of Directing in the department between 2007-2015 and continues to teach both graduate and undergraduate classes in History of Directing and Directing.

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