Waiting for Lefty Scene Rewrites: The Struggles of Minorities in Today’s Society

Our Class’ Project

As part of our class’ exploration of artistic protest and resistance, we studied the creative movements that flourished during the turbulent years of
the 1930s, including the Mexican muralists, the music and poetry of the Harlem
Renaissance, and the role of Jewish theater in New York City.  Among other
works, we read Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets, and produced by New York
City’s Group Theater, which aimed to support new plays that took on issues
of political and social significance. Waiting for Lefty focuses on New York
City cab drivers preparing to go on strike during the Great Depression and
delivers a scathing indictment of capitalism. For this project, students
selected scenes from Odets’s play and rewrote them to reflect modern social
and economic struggles. Many of the student rewrites focus on the challenges
and hardships posed by the Covid19 pandemic.

Our Scenes: “The Young Hack and His Girl”, “Waiting for Justice”, and “Opening Scene”

Reflecting on the hardships of today’s modern circumstances, each group member focused on different situations in their scenes. Upon revising the scene, “The Young Hack and His Girl,” Katherine Quach reveals the difficulty that many Americans face as interracial couples in our current society, as it is widely unsupported by conversational and religious ideals. Emma Sassouni’s “Waiting for Justice” magnifies the lack of air conditioning in minority school districts to the growing racial gap in the United States education system. Last, but not least, Puspita Dasroy’s Opening scene rewrite displays the life of illegal immigrants working under the table, as they struggle between the lines of social and financial issues.

Our Scene Rewrites: Puspita Dasroy, Katherine Quach, and Emma Sassouni