‘Waiting for Godot’ in Yiddish to play at Sweden’s Royal Theater – Forward
Swedish National Theater, the The drama in Stockholm, have ordered Congress of Jewish Culture to stage Samuel Beckett’s play, “Waiting for Godot” in Yiddish on 13 and 14 November.
This will be the first Yiddish production in the history of Sweden’s national stage for spoken drama, a venerable institution founded in 1788. All performances will be accompanied by subtitles in Swedish.
The Jewish version of Beckett’s existential play, translated by the actor and director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, Shane Baker, got critical statement when it was first staged Off Broadway 2013.
“Vartn af Godot”, as the Yiddish production is called, is directed by Moshe Assur and plays the author and lecturer, Michael Wex, as Estrogan and Baker as Vladimir. The production will also include actors Allen Lewis Rickman, Luzer Twersky and Nicholas Jenkins.
Although the news of the production was just announced last week, both performances have sold out. As a result, a third performance has been added.
Among the actors who marked their professional debuts at Dramaten are Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson and Ingmar Bergman. Housed in a spectacular Art Nouveau building, the Royal Dramatic Theater also presented August Strindberg’s late dramatic works.
Yiddish has surprising roots in Sweden, which had a significant Jewish population since the end of the 18th century. During World War II, Sweden gave refuge to almost the entire Jewish population in Denmark. After the war, thousands of Eastern European Yiddish-speaking Jews arrived or passed through or passed through Sweden, which made a significant impact on the country.
Today, Sweden is home to a number of Jewish and Jewish cultural organizations, including Swedish Yiddish Association (Swedish Yiddish Association) and Jewish culture in Sweden (Jewish culture in Sweden). Both organizations collaborate with the Royal Dramatic Theater to bring the Yiddish play to the stage.
In 1999, Yiddish was declared one of five official minority languages in Sweden. Today, Sweden has the award to support a number of Yiddish events and institutions, including a Yiddish publisher, [“Olniansky Tekst Farlag”](https://olniansky.com/about-us/ – largely due to state support and official recognition of the language.
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