I’m writing because Mondoweiss has been following the Public Theater’s betrayal of The Freedom Theatre (TFT), first in an article under Philip Weiss’s by-line and several days later in a follow-up by Rob Bryan.
I was a financial supporter of the Freedom Theatre’s residency. On February 24, the Public refunded to me the substantial contribution that I made in summer 2015. Accompanying the check was a letter from Patrick Willingham, the Public’s executive director, in which he wrote that The Siege
“…was under consideration for a production at the Public Theater in May 2016. This production is no longer under consideration by the Public… The Freedom Theatre intends to bring The Siege to a New York audience at another venue in 2017, and we encourage you to reach out to the company directly…”
In fact, the original plan was to bring TFT to New York in September 2015. Then, on relatively short notice, it was announced that the project was being “postponed” until May of this year. Finally, several weeks ago, the “postponement” became a “termination.”
Contrary to the statement in Patrick Willingham’s letter to me, (and supported by the Public’s artistic director Oskar Eustis when he called me in February), it was never my understanding that the TFT residency was merely “under consideration”—it was planned! And, twice!
Not only had the Public committed to bring TFT to New York, it solicited contributions from people like me to do so! To pretend now that the Public was merely “considering” such a project either distorts the truth or admits that the Public (Eustis?) was not acting in good faith when it (he) dealt with TFT and financial sponsors like me. I have never written a check for projects that are merely “under consideration,” only for projects for which there is a firm commitment. What donor would do otherwise?
As the former manager of a theater myself, I know that lead times for projects like these are significant. It’s my guess that in light of the Public’s commitment (there’s that word, again!) to bring them to NYC in May, that TFT had long-ago stopped searching for alternative performance opportunities, possibly even turning down any that came their way, even.
For me, Willingham’s letter is blatantly disingenuous, and it in no way comports with what Oskar Eustis told me: that it was his (Eustis’s) decision to cancel the project in response to stakeholder pressure because “the damage that would be done to the Public Theater would exceed the benefit from bringing TFT to NY.” (If those were not his precise words, they are a very close paraphrase.)
As I write, several comments have appeared below Rob Bryan’s recent Mondoweiss piece. One comment cites the Public’s own statement that it, “…serves as an advocate for the theater as an essential cultural force in leading and framing dialogue on important issues of our day. These core democratic values, set in place by its visionary founder, Joseph Papp, inform all aspects of The Public’s activities.”
Significantly, another comment documents that 27 years ago the Public abruptly cancelled a week-long engagement by Jerusalem’s the Al Hakawati theater just one week before it was to begin.
So it would seem that the Public’s advocacy on important issues and the core democratic values it espouses are limited by an obscure, undisclosed “Palestinian exception” invoked as early as 1989 by its founder the late Joseph Papp and continuing in force today under Eustis.
Frankly, I think this all stinks, and it raises many questions about the current situation.
Did TFT know of the Public’s one-time policy? If so, was TFT really just “testing” the Public to see (1) if the policy was still in force and, if it was, whether it could be reversed? If not, was TFT led on by the Public’s staff, themselves unaware of the secret policy? Or when the Public realized that it would be unable to honor the commitments it had made continue to string TFT along, hoping that TFT itself would eventually withdraw before it became necessary for the Public to pull that plug?
One commenter questioned whether Gail Merrifield Papp, Papp’s widow and a current Board member, was involved in making last month’s TFT decision—something that seems particularly plausible given her late husband’s role in initiating the Public’s Palestinian theater boycott. What exactly was her role?
It’s my hope that Mondoweiss will continue to uncover and report more facts surrounding the Public Theater’s action so that all of us will learn not just the full story, but the names of those who convinced or coerced Eustis to cancel the residency.
I’m a proud native New Yorker. It’s a city that over a century ago welcomed my Jewish grandparents who fled Eastern European oppression in search of American opportunities. Yes, the national origins of New York’s more recent immigrants have changed since I was a little boy in the 1940s, but New York remains unique in the world, a city that opens its doors to people seeking better lives and willing to work hard to realize their dreams.
Of course, there will always be hateful impurities underneath the thick crust of New York’s welcome. My own parents experienced “mild” anti-Semitism as kids growing up in Corona, and a more virulent form limited my father’s college and employment opportunities. But that was nothing compared to today when the City’s police force is trained in Israel to profile, target, infiltrate and spy on Muslim New Yorkers and their institutions. Five years ago, Pamela Geller fueled Islamophobia in New York when she venomously opposed the Ground Zero mosque and expanded her hatred to other American cities. In the past twelve months, Donald Trump, a New York icon and one of its most famous sons, has been using his stature to legitimize crude Islamophobic expression and to recruit new bigots to that cause because he believes that it will help him win the Republican party’s nomination.
The suppression of Palestinian POV is so broad in the USA that it amazes me that TFT ever got a promise from The Public. Remember Al Hakawati (see above)? Remember Boston Symphony firing contracted-narrator Vanessa Redgrave? Same old, same old.
The more significant suppression in the USA (tho not usually of importance on this website) is the suppression of urgent advocacy w.r.t. minimizing damage from global warming/climate change. We do — thank God — hear a lot about GWCC, but hardly a peep about urgency of mitigation. SAME MECHANISM!
Ah, they all look so smug and happy standing in their too-preppy-for-words outfits in front of the repeated “Bank of America” logos. Is the Public Theater an institution that once had a social change agenda?
The kind of liberals that give liberals a bad name. One can be a deceitful propagandist by means of what one says and equally by what one prevents from being said. Cowards do it the second way and then make matters even worse by trying to worm out of it.
Those who made the calls are just as bad, your know, “This TFT thing is, well, quite concerning. Of course I support the Theater. How much did I give last year? Oh, it doesn’t matter, but I hadn’t thought it would be used to, well, in this way. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”