WAITING FOR GADOT To Premiere At Chain Theatre’s Winter One-Act Festival
The play, a humorous take on the anticipation and obsession surrounding the arrival of a celebrity, features a diverse cast and creative direction by Hannah Pederson.
A new absurdist comedy, Waiting for Gadot, a parody of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, by Australian playwright Annabel McConnachie, will premiere as part of the Chain Theatre's Winter One-Act Festival. Performances will take place on February 6 at 6:30pm, February 13 at 8:30pm (followed by a talkback with the cast and creative team), and February 21 at 2:00pm.
Waiting for Gadot unfolds across three neighboring worlds - - a café, a film set, and a park bench - all consumed by one absurdly specific hope: that Gal Gadot is coming. Mara, a baker, obsessively prepares; a director scrambles to capture every possible moment; and two fans measure speed, strategize stamina, and speculate wildly about superhero training. As anticipation spirals into chaos and delusion runs rampant, everyone teeters between hope and absurdity. Waiting for Gadot is an absurdist comedy about obsession, fandom, and the hilariously human lengths we go to while waiting for something that might never come.
The production is directed by Hannah Pederson, whose sharp comic sensibility and confident pacing embrace the play's escalating absurdity, with stage management by Chelsea Castro, anchoring the production's many intersecting worlds. The cast includes Isabel Criado as Mara, a charming, intense baker who finds meaning in muffin arrangements and customer orders alike; Spencer Hazen as Len, her skeptical and dryly sarcastic coworker; Nicole Lado as The Director, a theatrical visionary spiraling between brilliance and obsession (a heightened onstage character, distinct from the production's director); Kaia Parnell as The Producer, an exasperated and pragmatic counterweight to unchecked enthusiasm; Annabel McConnachie as The Assistant, the overlooked engine of action caught between obedience and dawning awareness; Ellie Lauthner as Jay, an analytical superfan who turns devotion into near-scientific ritual; and Gabi Schwartz as Morgan, Jay's loyal yet morally grounded companion. Criado and Lado previously appeared alongside McConnachie in Archive of My Own, also penned by McConnachie, which took home the top prize for Best Production at the 2025 New York Theater Festival.
An absurdist comedy about obsession, fandom, and the hilariously human lengths people go to while waiting for something that might never arrive, Waiting for Gadot examines how anticipation can distort reality and how belief - even when misplaced - can bind wildly different worlds together. Waiting for Gadot runs as part of the Chain Theatre Winter One-Act Festival at the Chain Theatre.
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