Waiting for Godot in New Orleans

Featuring contributions by Alain Badiou, Andrea Boll, David Cuthbert, Terry Eagleton, Lolis Eric Elie, Anne Gisleson, Greta Gladney, Robert Green, Kathy Halbreich, Jed Horne, Ashley Jones, Gavin Kroeber, Christopher Mcelroen, Anne Pasternak, Kalamu ya Salaam, Natalie Sciortino-Rinehart, Cauleen Smith, Susan Sontag, and Nato Thompson The final installment of Creative Time's multi-part Waiting for Godot in New Orleans project by Paul Chan, A Field Guide brings together a rich collection of primary ephemera, photographs, articles, and essays that explore the project’s unique community-centric process from conception to completion. Divided into eight sections—Remember, Picture, Relate, Organize, Appear, Play, Film, Reflect—the book centers around Creative Time's production of Samuel Beckett's classic play over two weekends in two New Orleans neighborhoods—the middle of an intersection in the Lower Ninth Ward, and the front yard of an abandoned house in Gentilly. The production re-imagines the post-Katrina landscape of New Orleans as the setting for the 20th century’s most emblematic story of waiting, and in doing so, illuminates the personal and political conditions facing the people of New Orleans and the evacuees in surrounding cities. Im November 2007 gab Paul Chan in den Straßen der vom Hurrikan Katrina verwüsteten Stadt New Orleans fünf Aufführungen von Samuel Becketts „Warten auf Godot“. Das Publikum bestand vornehmlich aus Anwohnern, in deren Ohren Becketts klassische Zeilen mit existentieller Dringlichkeit klingen mussten. Der Field Guide ist eine reichhaltige Sammlung von Photos, Graphiken, Zeitungsartikeln und Essays zu Chans engagierter und aufsehenerregender Inszenierung.