Wow what a black eye for the Jewish tradition of free speech. (And more evidence for my view that the American Jewish revolution has given way to Establishment Jewish entitlement.) Below is a note said to be by Morgan Jenness, a dramaturg and agent for Deb Margolin, playwright, explaining why the two decided to withdraw Margolin's play from Theater J in Washington after a dispute over a character named or based on Elie Wiesel. The play is about Bernie Madoff by the way, who keeps his name in the play. Imagine the family of the late Roy Cohn going to Tony Kushner and saying, you know we don't like the portrayal of Cohn in your play Angels in America, you took some liberties... From a listserv...
"The issue also at play here is that Deb was willing to change the character (and it is mainly issues of the name and some details) out of respect, not because Prof Wiesel, being a public figure, really had the legal right to have any impact on the play so that when vetting became a condition for continuing, (and indeed when we heard that Weisel intimated he might not approve the play going forward even WITH changes) we found ourselves in the sticky situation of trying to maintain artistic rights and freedom, honor Prof Wiesel's wishes and not jeopardize Theater J - which started to feel like contradictory choices ...which is when we chose to withdraw the play since the situation really did seem like it could not be resolved in a way which could honor all those elements which we felt all did need to be honored.
"Happily, the production at Stageworks Hudson in New York, under the direction of Laura Margolis, is still happening in the summer so I do hope that everyone will be able to come see the play then and see what it really is. I happen to agree that the character has the same moral weight even without being named Elie Wiesel - perhaps even more.
"The name may change - the character is essentially the same...and was
always a metaphor..."
JTA today:
Jewish theater cancels play after Wiesel objects
May 20, 2010
(JTA) — A Jewish theater in Washington has cancelled a play scheduled for the coming season after objections by Elie Wiesel.
Theater J announced that it cancelled its first play of the season, “Imagining Madoff” by Deb Margolin, in which Wiesel is a character, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The play, which had been scheduled to begin at the end of August, would have been a world premiere, according to the newspaper.
The play portrays the convicted Ponzi scheme businessman sitting in his jail cell recalling a fictional, all-night discussion with Wiesel. The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost all of its assets, $15.2 million, invested with Madoff. Wiesel personally lost several million dollars as well.
Margolin withdrew the play after receiving a letter from Wiesel in which he describing the play as “obscene” and “defamatory” and threatened to stop the production through legal means, according to the Post.
The playwright told the newspaper that she used Wiesel in the play because “his name is synonymous with decency, morality, the struggle for human dignity and kindness, and in contrast to the most notorious financial criminal in the past 200 years. That’s why he was there, and I felt I had treated his character with great respect — the respect that I genuinely have felt for him.”
JTA today:
Jewish theater cancels play after Wiesel objects
May 20, 2010
(JTA) — A Jewish theater in Washington has cancelled a play scheduled for the coming season after objections by Elie Wiesel.
Theater J announced that it cancelled its first play of the season, “Imagining Madoff” by Deb Margolin, in which Wiesel is a character, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The play, which had been scheduled to begin at the end of August, would have been a world premiere, according to the newspaper.
The play portrays the convicted Ponzi scheme businessman sitting in his jail cell recalling a fictional, all-night discussion with Wiesel. The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost all of its assets, $15.2 million, invested with Madoff. Wiesel personally lost several million dollars as well.
Margolin withdrew the play after receiving a letter from Wiesel in which he describing the play as “obscene” and “defamatory” and threatened to stop the production through legal means, according to the Post.
The playwright told the newspaper that she used Wiesel in the play because “his name is synonymous with decency, morality, the struggle for human dignity and kindness, and in contrast to the most notorious financial criminal in the past 200 years. That’s why he was there, and I felt I had treated his character with great respect — the respect that I genuinely have felt for him.”
According to the Theatre J Blog:
Deb continues to work on the play. There will be at least one reading of the play (which version, I’m not certain) coming up next month in Manhattan. Maybe Phil or Adam can get in to see and hear it?
From what I read the playright used Wiesel as a metaphor for all that is good and elevating, so it’s intriguing to wonder why Wiesel found it so objectionable. I am guessing the script, perhaps inadvertently, informs how Bernie attracted Wiesel to invest with him in the first place.
Sorry for the double post; not sure how it happened.
From Parabasis blog:
MAY 20, 2010
Is “Imagining Madoff” DC’s “My Name Is Rachel Corrie”?
That’s my question after reading Deb Margolin’s comment here explaining why she pulled Imagining Madoff from Theater J’s season next year:
The play had a reading at Theater J in Washington DC, and pulled the audience into an important meditation on morality and issues of trust within the Jewish community, which is why Ari Roth, Artistic Director, expressed a desire to present the play in his theater. The collapse of this arrangement, precipitated first by Professor Wiesel’s frightening letter to me threatening litigation and secondarily by Roth’s promise to the Foundation that I would edit the play and submit it to the Wiesel Foundation for their assurances that they would not litigate, saddens me deeply. This sequence obliged me to pull the play from Theater J’s season. I was not averse to editing the play, to removing references to Wiesel’s fictionalized character; I could not, however, bring myself to submit a play for approval to a man who has for years stood for the struggle for human rights and freedoms, including the freedom of speech. (emphasis mine)
Does this sound familiar to anyone else? If anything, this sounds far, far worse than NYTW pulling the plug on Corrie. With Corrie, the reasons were always nebulous– Jim Nicola consulted unnamed Jewish friends of the theatre who voiced opposition to the play– whereas here, you have an artistic director telling a foundation that a playwright will submit their play for the foundations approval. Leave aside for a moment my admiration for Wiesel as a writer and this looks like rank intimidation by someone who doesn’t want any public acknowledgement of his past friendship with a reviled con man, even if the portrayal is positive.
That’s pretty scandalous in my book. And I don’t think it’s totally of character for Theater J. After all, although they did readings of both My Name is Rachel Corrie and Seven Jewish Children, in the latter’s case they’d only present it with a speech denouncing it, an after-show discussion with a holocaust survivor railing against it and three different “Response” plays taking either pro-Zionist or anti-Palestinian views (one of them, ironically enough, written by Deb Margolin). Not only that, according to Playgoer, Theatre J’s artistic director Ari Roth was NYTW’s “main defender” at a panel discussion about Corrie back in 2006.
I really want to hear Ari Roth’s side of this, and I hope the recent theatre journalism competition between City Paper and the WaPo over Joy Zinoman’s retirement at Studio will start a war between the two of them to get to the bottom of this story.
Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth said the Wiesel Foundation was uncomfortable with having its founder’s name used in the play, but early on Wiesel had not objected. “It wasn’t until Wiesel read the play and found it to be exactly as Deb purported, a work of fiction . . . [that] Wiesel didn’t consent to it,” Roth says.
More on Elie Wiesel…
link to counterpunch.org
What’s with all those physical science noble laureates signing Wiesel’s call for a war on Iran?
More on Elie Wiesel:
link to savethemales.ca
This is reminiscent of the attempt to shut down the play “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” in New York. It was to be staged at the New York Theater Workshop in 2006, but the theater was intimidated into silence and censorship by pro-Israel extremists. Many condemned the censorship, and the show went on at the Minetta Lane Theatre.
Now that the Wiesel character is being written out of the play I suggest he be replaced with Bozo the Clown — no rewrite for that character anyway.
Wiesel says he thought Bernie was a savior, God himself; he first invested his own personal money with the savior. Wiesel also says Bernie was not engaged in an (ethnic) affinity crime:
link to portfolio.com
It’s strange to think of anyone objecting to being introduced into a work of fiction as a moral paragon – unless Deb Margolin’s references to him as a paragon had a tinge of irony, as I bet they will in future. I wonder what portrait of the Madoff investors and of their illusions she paints? They were intelligent enough to see that steadily high returns, no serious auditing and an atmosphere of secrecy was an indication of danger. Did they convince themselves, or did Madoff convince them by nods and winks, that their money was safe as houses because Madoff was really offering them a kind of Israeli government bond?
Methinks so, MHughes976. Although Wiesel denied it’s a huge case of (Jewish) affinity fraud, it seems like it was exactly that, at least in the main:
link to thejc.com
Thanks for the reference, Citizen. Very thought-provoking.
Mr.LeBor portrays Madoff as acting out of the spite cherished by Jewish people of underprivileged background for the Jewish upper crust, a kind of class feeling. But isn’t this just the sort of thing about which the groups concerned are very sensitive and very wary? We British are supposed to be able to read the signals of class and class feeling, at least among each other, at about 200 paces.
I keep thinking that the victims are as puzzling as the swindler and that there must be some connection between this major financial event and the bloody conflict in the ME, which draws in so many people and drives so many mad. On one dark night I caught myself wondering whether Madoff, behind his mask of utter uninterest in politics, was a Palestinian secret agent. I’d better go and have a drink.
I’d be the first one on line to buy tickets to this play on “morality” since the author takes such an integretous stance regarding her art, you know morally.
Yep, would be interesting to read the original script or see it acted out, to see why Wiesel didn’t want to be portrayed as the ultimate man of moral virtue. Seems he saw something in it that the author herself didn’t notice. Now what could that be? Obscene, defamatory, Wiesel calls it, whatever it is. Very intriguing.
I mean what kind of writer puts her time and energy into a peice of art just to withdraw it for some dubious request. She made a peice of what I would assume she thinks is art, and then, Elie Wiesel said he doesn’t like it? Where’s the shredder dear,
Instead of this play (in which EW is a bit player), how about a play ABOUT EW
which quotes him on Holocaust, on human-rights for THESE and THOSE and then quotes him on human-rights for Palestinians (with whatever quotes are available, or — as I imagine — with 1 minute of silence, while GAZA YouTube plays on a screen behind him).
Or this could be a teaching play about US official Jewry, and show the Museum of Tolerance and other artful dodges.
Play might be called, “Why saying ‘Never again’ is easy to say but hard for some people to mean.”
(Well, I’m no playwright, that’s for sure!)
Bernie Madoff – a secret Palestinian agent. What a mitzvah that would be!
The author has already given the Wiesel character a new name; and the play will go on this summer in NY–perhaps Wiesel simply does not want anyone to think he actually knew Madoff, rather than being a simple arms-length transactional victim like everyone else. Anyway, even a threadbare claim ban be costly to defend against; there’s a few legal ideas he could base a claim on:
link to npr.org
oops-ban = can
You can see why Margolin might back down. Having Wiesel as a character would seem to generate interest in the play. You can also see why Wiesel might be concerned. One doesn’t really want to be reminded too publicly about what a gullible and irresponsible investor you’ve been . . . with other people’s money. It’s interesting to contemplate who the victims were of Wiesel’s negligent (?) investment decision to put all his eggs in the Madoff basket. Might someone be interested to sue Wiesel’s fund for mismanegement of funds? The publicity associated with the play might be a bit scary as well as embarrassing for Wiesel.