Waiting for Lefty

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 form 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 Scene

In these 3 scene rewrites of Odets’ Waiting for Lefty, the characters Joe and Edna were used to reflect the modern issues that we face today as the COVID pandemic rage. Several themes that were explored were the financial struggles families face, an unsafe working environment, and unionization. Other issues that were already present in our current society presented was gender inequality and the wage gap. These issues were intensified during the pandemic and they are demonstrated in the rewrites.

Our Scene Rewrites: Pujan Patel, Alexandra Shinkareva, and Jake Vu