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.
