Waiting For Godot

Adam Cook : Head of Acting at Actors Centre Australia and the ACA Company Artistic Director.

Adam is a graduate of the NIDA Directors Course. He has directed over 160 productions across Australia, London, Canada and the United States. He was Artistic Director of the State Theatre Company of South Australia for the years 2005-2012, the longest tenure in the company’s 40-year history. He is currently Head of Acting at Actors Centre Australia.

He has created works for the Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane Festivals, Melbourne Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir, Ensemble, Sydney Opera House Trust, NIDA, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, La Boite, Q Theatre, Florida Grand Opera, Opera de Montreal, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Outhouse Theatre, Opera Australia, Griffin, Bell Shakespeare, Sport for Jove, OzOpera, Playbox, Festival of the Dreaming, WAAPA, QUT, Marian Street, Strange Duck, Windmill Performing Arts, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, City of London Festival, the Barbican International Theatre Event (BITE).

He also has a number of writing credits for the theatre to his name, including stage adaptations of Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story for Belvoir/Melbourne Theatre Company/Melbourne International Festival and Brisbane Festival, Songs from the Yellow Bedroom, an adaptation of the letters of Vincent Van Gogh for the Adelaide Festival and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick for Sport for Jove. Most recently he completed a new play about the William Dobell trial for the centenary of the Archibald Prize, called What’s Art Got to Do with It?

Waiting for Godot was first performed in Paris in 1953 and had its English language premiere in London two years later. In a theatrical revolution for the time, Beckett broke with convention and created a truly unique work that defied the accepted rules of dramatic structure. The play made him a celebrity and a small fortune. He was nearly fifty years old and had spent the better part of a quarter of a century trying to make a living as a professional writer. He knew a lot about waiting.
It’s a play I have lived with and loved for close to fifty years. Beckett made a huge impact on me when I was a fledgling writer in my mid-teens, when the uncompromising astringency of his writing blew my mind, as did the indelible iconography at work in his stagecraft. I am very excited to create this new production for our schools audiences with a wonderful quartet of young graduates.

-Adam Cook

TBC