New Play by Kesav Wable '02 Puts Contemporary Spin on Classic Beckett

It was during his Haverford days, in a junior year acting class with Bryn Mawr professor Mark Lord, when Kesav Wable '02 was first introduced to Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot.“I fell in love with the script,” Wable recalls,“and kept a copy with me when I came to New York.”

Now, seven years later, lawyer-by-trade and playwright-by-passion Wable has re-imagined the classic work as a hip-hop fable called For Flow. The play won him a 2006-2007 Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) Inaugural South Asian Playwriting Fellowship from New York City's Lark Theater and Play Development Center, and in November the show was performed at Theater for the New City's Community Space Theater in New York.

For Flow tells the story of young aspiring rappers Dee and Kane, who are waiting for a producer named Flow on a deserted street corner in the Bronx. Much like Beckett's creations Vladimir and Estragon, they toss quips back and forth and constantly threaten to leave without ever doing so. Diversions from Dee and Kane's vigil are provided by a DJ named Roxanne and a blues guitarist named Broonzy.

Wable was a fan of contemporary hip-hop artists Jay-Z and Nas at the time he started writing For Flow, and he was struck by the fact that these rappers' lyrics often carry the same existential undertones that are found in Godot:“Namely, the confounding problem the human ego presents—it hungers to dominate another, to separate itself as superior but it requires that ‘other' to do it. So, in the end, the presence of another, even companionship, seems to be the overriding need.”

Because the play is about hip-hop, Wable also wanted to examine African-American culture, the genesis of hip-hop and how it fits into the tradition of African storytelling and music.“I researched and drew upon other great African-American classics such as August Wilson's Fences, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog. I incorporated a character who plays the Delta Blues [Broonzy] and drew upon real blues guitarists whose lives are documented in a film called You See Me Laughin'.”

For Flow received its first break with the IAAC fellowship and an October 2007 staging of excerpts at the Lark Center, where, says Wable, it was received“very warmly.” In February 2008, Wable and two friends formed a production company called 25 to Life (www.25tolifeproductions.com), and, using money from their savings and what Wable earned as a law clerk after graduation, arranged a run of the show at Theater for the New City this fall.

“We had complete control over the whole process, from hiring a director to the music that we'd produce ourselves,” says Wable.“The leads were naturals when it came to rapping, though they'd never written one verse prior to this show. We had an up and coming rapper, Nysis from New Rochelle, N.Y., coach them in this craft.”

A couple of other theaters, including some in Chicago, have expressed interest in staging For Flow, and Wable hopes to mount a college tour of the play as well.“We want to include as many historically black colleges and universities as possible,” says Wable.“And you can bet that Haverford will be getting a proposal letter!”

A political science major at Haverford, Wable moved to New York shortly after graduating, took a day job at Morgan Stanley, and acted in Off-Off-Broadway and Off-Broadway plays and student films.“After reading and acting in so many plays—some good, many bad—I was emboldened to start writing myself, with the specific goal of writing more interesting roles than those that were out there for young brown/South Asian men.” His first script, Ashoka's Wheel, was a finalist in the 2006 Chicago Dramatists“Many Voices” Project.

Wable passed the New York bar exam in July and now practices corporate and commercial litigation. In the evenings and on weekends, he works on his latest play, Chakras, about a couple who checks into a yoga retreat hoping to save their troubled relationship.“The lead male, Neil, has just returned from Iraq where he was working a desk job in a security contracting firm and where he witnessed some events, the consequences of which he must reckon with during his stay at the yoga ashram.”

He gets ideas from reading news articles, meeting people and keeping his eyes and ears open while riding the subway.“When I'm working on a script, everything I encounter in day to day life is fair game,” he says.“I sift through all of it to find pieces that will move the characters forward towards whatever their fates may be.”

-Brenna McBride