OU Weitzenhoffer College of Fine Arts celebrates a century of the arts with OU Helmerich School of Drama’s “Waiting for Lefty” on Friday.
Clifford Odets’ play “Waiting for Lefty” premiered in 1935. The play centers around six taxi drivers debating going on strike due to the poor treatment of laborers in the 1930s. The play takes place in a series of vignettes at a union meeting. “Waiting for Lefty” is performed in a style of theater called agitprop, a type of political theater that raises awareness for political issues.
A year after the play’s premiere, the OU School of Drama was scheduled to perform "Waiting for Lefty," but was shut down by the university due to overtones regarding unionization and communism that then-OU President William Bizzell deemed politically radical. For the centennial anniversary, the drama department was asked to perform a play with significance to the college, making “Waiting for Lefty” that choice.
Director Seth Gordon is a professor at the OU School of Drama. Gordon received his bachelor's and master's in fine arts from Carnegie Mellon University. Gordon hopes “Waiting for Lefty” will remind the audience to appreciate the work of the often unappreciated.
“We are living in an age in which if you want something, you go on your computer, you click on it and 24 hours later, it arrives at your doorstep,” Gordon said. “This play asks, ‘When you do that, do you take the people who made it happen for granted? Are you really thinking about what it takes to do the daily tasks that make our economy work?’ These are humans, and they deserve to be treated with the respect of a human.”
Gordon describes theater as a collaborative process. He and his team of student designers and actors bring the production from the page to the stage.
“The script itself is really nothing but a blueprint, and our job is to take these words on a page and bring them to three dimensional life,” Gordon said. “I lead the process, but it's a collaborative process, and it's one in which countless decisions about what something will look like, how it will all work, and how it will be performed or made on a day-to-day basis during the rehearsal process.”
Lexy Babler, a senior acting major, plays Edna, a wife who encourages her husband to join the strike, pushing him to take a stand and fight for fair working conditions.
“With Edna specifically, the message is that it’s not just about making money for the companies,” Babler said. “It's about who is affected by greedy businessmen or people with power and what greed can do to a whole community.”
Through her participation in the play, Babler reflects on how the historical context of “Waiting for Lefty” can relate to the modern day.
“It just shows that throughout history, this has always been a problem, and the people who don’t hold the power have had to stand up for themselves in drastic ways and that continues to happen, just in different ways,” Babler said. “Maybe it’s not taxi drivers now, but it is actors in the (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) strike who are doing the work for big companies, but those companies only care about making money or cranking out as many things as possible without considering the safety of the actors.”
“Waiting for Lefty” will run Friday through Sunday and Feb. 13-16 at the Weitzenhoffer Theatre. Tickets purchased online are $34 for adults, $29 for seniors and military and $12 for students. At the door, tickets are $45 for adults and $15 for students with ID.
This story was edited by Madisson Cameron. Gretchen Schultz, Sophie Hemker and Mary Ann Livingood copy edited this story.
