Playwright David Zellnik went to the New York Theatre Workshop last night for the second of three nights of readings of Caryl Churchill's short, Gaza-inspired play, Seven Jewish Children. His report:
So last night was pretty thrilling. From what I understand Wednesday’s audience split very quickly along predictable lines. Last night Tony [Kushner] and Alisa [Solomon] did an amazing job keeping the play at the center of the discussion, its beauty, its challenges, its anger.
The first person to respond said the repetitions at the start of all the lines “tell her/don’t tell her” began to feel like a heartbeat. Someone else compared the text to a Greek chorus commenting on the action, but there were no heroes on stage – only the chorus warning the protagonist in vain. Rashid Khalidi pointed out how the “they” in scene 1 means the Nazis, and how effortlessly it switches to a ”they” that means Arabs. My partner Jordan said the play reminded him of being a kid sitting on the stairs hearing his parents talk. What I loved about that is it also captures how infantilizing the dialogue around this issue can be: we are treated like the seven Jewish girls by the media, by Jewish organizations. People sit behind closed doors trying to figure out how to tell “the children” what is going on.
There were several comments about “why is this just a 3-day set of readings? Why can’t we see plays like this produced?” and also several people (quite rightly) mourning the lack of Arab/Palestinian voices getting produced in our stages.
What else. A Wall Street Journal reporter early on tried to steer the conversation to a very polarizing place (“Tony, how many rights would you have in Gaza as a gay Jew?”). There was a contingent of Jewish/Zionist groups – but only one woman spoke, reading a prepared statement. She then worked herself up, misquoting the play: “the play says ‘we Jews are happy the Palestinians are dead!’ Again and again ‘we’re happy, we’re happy!’”. Alisa had to gently correct her: The text doesn’t say that.
The evening ended with Lisa Kron reading it again, all the comments ghosting the second hearing. Whereas the first time NYTW used several actors, this was just one conflicted voice. Lisa read it beautifully, simply, and I started to cry.
And that was my night.
Related posts:
- Saying ‘Israel has lost its way,’ Aussie-Jewish actress takes role in ‘7 Jewish Children’
- ‘7 Jewish Children’ has its first reading at the New York Theatre Workshop
- ‘7 Jewish Children’ spawns ‘7 Palestinian Children’
- Playwright David Zellnik on ‘Post-Zionist’ Jewish Identity
- Churchill would end the ‘cowed silence’ around Gaza slaughter
{ 23 comments }
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Subjectivity, one's perception from one's experiences, that constructs one's interpretation, is NOT objective.
The experience of a state of harrassment to a state of harrassment is a real experience, whether you look at it through the eyes of "that objective reality does not match up with the second experience", or not.
And, its not a fantasy. Its a real experience.
Its similar to the Palestinian description of chains of persecution at the hands of different communities, or even different Israelis, or different Jews.
Maybe there's a common link between one Jew's treatment of Palestinians, the state's treatment of Palestinians, and another Jew's. Or maybe not.
It doesn't make their experience, and then attitude less real, just less objective.
But, that exactly describes the obnoxious vanity of our American assimilated judgement of an "other".
Art is the RELATIONSHIP between the subjective and the objective. If there is no interaction, no communication, no recognition that it is communication, then its just expression rather than communication.
The VALIDITY of the subjective, of the Jews', MUST be a part of the attendee's experience, and not ONLY the dismissal of Jews' imagined experience.
Its like having a dream, and intentionally only interpreting the importance of one character. Its HALF the lesson of the dream.
@ Witty
All art by definition is subjective, and so more or less objective. Dali thought he had a connection to physics. He even tried to show it–look at his first and second renditions of The Persistence Of Memory.
What do you mean by "The VALIDITY of the subjective, of the Jews', MUST be a part of the attendee's experience, and not ONLY the dismissal of Jews' imagined experience"? I assume you mean the converse also, relating to the Palestinian experience. Is that right? Seems you attack the poem for dismissing the Jews' imagined experience–if so, how so? If not, what do you mean? Are you asking for Churchill to now
write a poem called Seven Palestinian Children? She may well do this. If not, please clarify your comment. Thanks. Exactly how does the poem annoy you, confuse you–or do you think it's very good?
Witty, you should change your handle to Witterer, because that's all you ever do: witter on endlessly about trivial abstract theories. God preserve us from your 'jazz playing', it must be the most boring on the planet.
Do you value the voices themselves, or only what it says about the voices?
If you only value the condemnation, then you've seen nothing.
witty – i would think your jazz playing is quite good for the same reason! i play jazz too….
well, it doesn't matter how crap it is, anyway, given that all the mainstream jazz reviewers are Jewish.
whoops, I made an anti-Semitic statement. Go to the back of the motherfucking class, Rowan.
Lisa read it beautifully, simply, and I started to cry. And that was my night.
cartharsis. forbidden. why?
You can always tell a witty post before you're done with the first line. It's fog concealing mud.
All art by definition is subjective, and so more or less objective.
The more subjective it gets, the more universal. That's the crux.
I have lost sight of neocon's handling or treatment of the arts. I have to admit it partly made me slightly suspicious. Irving Kristol wrote an essay on the sixties counterculture. The huge desire for the arts he saw there as a trace to the ultimate evil, I have never witnessed during the times I met all the leftists during the late sixties and early seventies. The vast majority then had a very narrow utility approach to the arts. Political indoctrination.
Witty, just answer my questions, then I will comment on your abstract cloud puff.
Citizen,
I don't remember if it was you, but MANY (including Phil, sadly), used the Churchill piece to describe a contempt of the straw dog Jewish sensitivity, rather than an insight that results in compassion for that sensitivity.
If you read my post (sorry for the bad grammar on the first line), your second question about Palestinian experience would be mute. YES, I regard the Palestinian evolution of attitude as a relevant and useful story.
Both REAL and important, rather than either unreal or unimportant.
Its easy to paint grandparents as "old and in the way", attitudes obsolete.
Teenagers do that. What do grandparents have to bring to moving into the future, through what is hip today.
Then, when you discover the value of someone that has actually lived, and lived through struggle, the grandparents are the MOST important voices, having seen much and over much time.
I hope the various quotes in the play were presented sensitively, authentically, so they could be appreciated, and not merely caricatured.
I can't help but note the gender specific choice of Zellnick's commentary, and wonder if he was also making a commentary on the differences in how issues are discussed with young boys and girls. This drop in of girls undoubtedly raises not just an age, but a gender specific point as well.
Witty: ClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrapClaptrap
@ Witty
"…used the Churchill piece to describe a contempt of the straw dog Jewish sensitivity, rather than an insight that results in compassion for that sensitivity."
It's a play by a major playwright. It might not be Shakespeare, but it's not agitprop despite Mr. Marks of WAPO calling it that. Good literature, including plays, is nuanced. The more you bring to it, the more you get out of it. Serious depictions of human life evoke both contempt and compassion–otherwise just
watch TV soap operas or read a chick book off the rack at the supermarket. Or, just get one of those IDF sniper T-shirts and strut to your heart's content.
I don't think the settler-types would allow the play to work its magic sensitivity upon themselves. I can imagine what they tell their kids.
GAZA happened, the Shoa happened, the play is a reach towards the whole and in a way the children
are no different than innocent adults afraid in the dark, needing some comfort.
For some reason I keep thinking of that old guy in Cabaret with the Greek sailors type cap and glasses–as slowly the people become enthused with the young Hitlerjugend singing of sacred home and Fatherland, Tomorrow Belongs To Me. The old guy's seen it all; we know he was young during WW1–he looks pretty grumpy sitting there while everyone else slowly rises to the sign of the times.
So enjoy the play.
Phil is the one describing it as a world-changing phenomena.
And you disagree–why? It's certainly not Exodus, staring Paul Newman, eh? Or Fiddler On The Roof, or even The Apprenticeship of Duddy Krawitz…
differences in how issues are discussed with young boys and girls.
No, you rest on surfaces. His partner's perception told me a lot. It is a very, very familiar experience to me. It must be to many no matter if boy or girl.
I read the whole "homosexual" in Palestine and how they would have no rights so many times. Always wanting centuries of progress made in First World states to happen in a short span of a decade in an occupied territory where people don't even have citizenship to speak of.
They also speak as if homosexuality is entirely accepted and that they are part of society. Sure they make movies about them except they don't cast them in the movies about homosexuals (Milk and Brokeback Mountain had three heterosexuals playing three groundbreaking homosexual figures in history.). Wasn't there a proposition overturned in California? Things aren't exactly hunky dory about homosexuality in the West either.
How many rights would a Palestinian have in Gaza, whether they be a child, an "adult" male or a woman?
Might be more important to have a home, a shelter, some food and water, a job, before dwelling on homosexuality, no? What's the employment rate for the Palestinians? How many homes have been demolished?
Now, "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" was a good novel. Richler wrote quite a few good novels. It's a pity people can't just leave it at that, but have to hype themselves or get hyped by their brethren in publishing, to godlike status.
whoops — 'brethren in publishing.' I did it again.
Yes, and a good movie too. I saw it in Skokie, Illinois a long time ago. The entire audience was packed with old kochers, many Auschwitz survivors, but many also born and bred in the USA–like black audiences in my experience, just less so–they talked all during the film, and even to the film. Very interesting to me all the comments, and the divergence remembering the respective groups. Had a similar
experience while watching Fiddler On The Roof…
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