WAITING FOR GODOT Opens Tonight in Stockholm With All American Cast

Stockholm's prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre commissioned America's Congress for Jewish Culture to present director Moshe Yassur's critically acclaimed 2013 Off-Broadway Yiddish language staging of Waiting For Godot

Shane Baker's landmark Yiddish translation of Samuel Beckett's existential masterpiece will be presented tonight (Saturday) and tomorrow. A third performance was added as the scheduled two-performance engagement sold out shortly after tickets went on sale. This marks the first ever Yiddish language production to appear at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre.

Waiting For Godot stars Michael Wex as Estragon and Shane Baker as Vladimir, along with Allen Lewis Rickman, Luzer Twersky and Nicholas Jenkins. The play will be performed in Yiddish with Swedish supertitles.

Waiting For Godot (Vartn Af Godot) will be the first ever Yiddish production at Sweden's premiere dramatic venue, which was founded in 1788. Among the luminaries who marked their professional debuts there are Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Max Von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, and Ingmar Bergman. Housed in a spectacular Art Nouveau building, the Royal Dramatic Theatre also introduced August Strindberg's late dramatic works.

Yiddish has surprisingly deep and broad roots in Sweden, which has had a significant Jewish population since the late 18th century. During World War II, Sweden provided refuge for almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark. After the war, thousands of Eastern European Yiddish speaking Jews arrived in or passed through Sweden, making a significant impact on the country.

Sweden is home to a number of Jewish and Yiddish cultural organizations, including the Sveriges Jiddishförbund (League for Yiddish) and Judisk kultur i Sverige (Jewish Culture in Sweden), who are the Swedish producers of this production in partnership with the Royal Dramatic Theatre.

In 1999, Yiddish was proclaimed one of five official minority languages in Sweden. Today, Sweden has the distinction of supporting a lively Yiddish publishing and literary scene, in large part due to government support and official recognition of the language.

Director Moshe Yassur states, "We are thrilled to bring our Yiddish GODOT to Sweden. Waiting For Godot holds special resonance for refugees, those stuck between here and there, waiting for redemption which may or may not come. Whether or not they made a home there, Sweden played a substantial role in the post-war journey of so many Jewish refugees, making the Swedish debut of this Godot especially poignant." A veteran of both the Yiddish and modern theatre, Yassur was born in Iași, Romania (the cradle of the Yiddish theatre). He worked for several years with Jean-Marie Serreau at the Théatre de Babylone in Paris, taking part often as assistant director in several first productions of Beckett and Ionesco. In New York Moshe Yassur was a protégé of Woody King Jr., directing at the New Federal Theatre, and he helmed acclaimed Off-Broadway productions of Death of a Salesman and Rhinoceros.

Waiting For Godot will be performed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre this evening at 7 pm and tomorrow at 1 & 6 pm. For more information, visit www.dramaten.se/en/repertoire/waiting-for-godot.

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