When Speech graduate student Melanie Dreyer inserted a vision of a young boy into her production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” lawyers from Beckett’s estate almost said “game over.”

Dreyer was directing the play, first published in 1957, as the final project for her master’s degree. But the night before the show opened, she was informed she would have to alter the show or risk being shut down.

The play concerns the interaction between Hamm, a blind and paralyzed old man, and his servant, Clov. Dreyer’s production had a 10-year-old boy playing Clov in certain scenes.

“My directorial vision was all about the hallucinations the main character was having, so it made perfect sense that he would sometimes think of (Clov) as a young boy and sometimes think of him as an adult,” Dreyer said. “But we didn’t change the text one bit.”

The boy appeared in the play four times. Dreyer said she got the idea from an early draft of the play, in which Clov came onstage dressed as a young boy.

But lawyers threatened to revoke permission to perform the play unless the character was removed, Dreyer said.

She said the theatre department worked out a compromise so that the show could go on — but only without the boy, played by Evanston’s Scott Shepard.

“We want to make it clear how supportive the theatre department has been in all of this,” she said. “They respect the Beckett estate’s right to do this, but they’re also interested in supporting my opportunity as an artist in school to fully explore my ideas. It put them in a pretty tricky position.”

But Dreyer said losing Shepard detracted from the production.

“It was a big loss because it involved a human being and not just an object,” Dreyer said. “We had given this artist so much reverence, and our enthusiasm waned afterward a little bit.”

Organizers said they did not know who had informed the Beckett estate of Dreyer’s changes to the production — but they did have a message for the “rat.”

“I hope whoever did it rots in hell,” said Russ Heller, the play’s assistant director. “That somebody out there, someone who calls themself an artist, someone who’s walking around this very minute, had the — I don’t even know what you would call it. It’s simply disgusting.”

Heller, a Speech junior, said the forced changes were unfortunate.

“We lost some of the most haunting, beautiful visions I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Brad Love, who plays Hamm, said losing Shepard was hard on the performers.

“We found out the night of our preview, and it was very disturbing because it was a part of our particular artistic vision,” said Love, a Speech freshman.

According to Heller, Shepard had a simple reaction to being cut from the show — “I think that sucks,” he said.

But Dreyer said that in a way, the legal issues actually benefited the show.

“The controversy has generated a lot of talk about what is the artist’s right and where do we have freedom of expression,” she said. “The conversation that’s come up around this issue makes it worthwhile. We need to talk about those things.”

“Endgame” continues through Sunday at the Josephine Louis Theater.