WEB EXCLUSIVE: No Outcry Seen For Controversial Play 'Seven Jewish Children'

by Eric Herschthal
Staff Writer

The public outcry that subsumed the New York Theatre Workshop leading it to cancel "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," a play highly critical of Israel, in 2006, seems to have been averted this time. Last night, the same theater began a three-night run of another inflammatory play, "Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza," by the prominent British playwright Caryl Churchill.

The 10-minute work, written as a response to the Israel-Gaza war this winter, has incited a heated public debate in England ever since it was first staged at the Royal Court in February. The BBC announced last week it would not air a filmed version of the play, while several mainstream British newspapers have lambasted the work for being grossly one-sided, and perhaps even anti-Semitic.

"Tell her we killed the babies by mistake," one Jewish character says about Palestinians killed in war. Another remarks: "Tell her they're filth."

The play depicts Jewish parents debating how to explain to their children Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. It begins with a conversation of how to explain the Holocaust, then progresses to events like the founding of Israel and the recent war in Gaza.

The New York Theatre Workshop, which has performed Churchill's work in the past, has created three nights of performances, from March 25 to 27, built around the 10-minute play. Each night includes the play's performance, followed by a panel discussion with speakers such as playwright Tony Kushner, and concludes with one last staged reading by big-ticket names, including Wallace Shawn and Kathleen Chalfant. Tickets are free, but Churchill has requested that audiences donate money to Medical Aid for Palestinians, as she did for the London performances last month.

The directors at the New York Theatre Workshop declined interviews, but they agreed to post a critical letter by the American Jewish Committee on their Web site. In it, Kenneth Stern, the director on anti-Semitism and extremism, writes that while he "strongly supports the right of the New York Theatre Workshop to have a reading of Caryl Churchill's play," he is concerned that parts of the text "implicate historic anti-Semitic canards, such as the reference to 'chosen people' and gleeful mention of the pain of others."

In an interview with The Jewish Week, Stern said that directors invited him to the East Village theater to speak with them after he received angry calls from Israel supporters. "My preference was for them not to do it," Stern said. "But it's not the role of anyone to tell theaters what they can put on or not."

While he was grateful that the theater allowed him to post his misgivings online, he said he was still disappointed that the speakers on each night's panel seemed too slanted against Israel. (In addition to Kushner, journalists Alisa Solomon and Laura Flanders will speak, as will NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller.) Stern said he asked more vocal Israel supporters to be on a panel - with the theater's support - but each one he asked told him they already had other commitments.

On the first performance Wednesday night, which was sold out, there were none of the protests that met "Rachel Corrie" when it was staged in 2006 at the Minetta Lane Theatre, which ended up staging that controversial play after the New York Theatre Workshop canceled it.

Instead, this time only one person, a Jewish woman named Emily Schiff, could be seen quietly handing out pro-Palestinian postcards outside the theater's entrance. She told The Jewish Week that she had recently come back from Gaza on a humanitarian mission, and that her efforts that night - giving away cards with four small maps showing Palestine virtually disappearing after 1946 - were her way of supporting Churchill's cause. "They were forced out; I understand what happened to the Jews," said Schiff, referring to Europe's Jews during the Holocaust. "But it doesn't mean you can just do it to somebody else."

At least one audience member, Edward Einhorn, was disturbed by the play but thought it was still important to see. "I think it has spread negative stereotypes of Jews that amount to anti-Semitism," said Einhorn, who is Jewish. "But I think it's a well-written piece."

While the play has drawn strong criticism in England - in a lengthy essay for The Independent, Howard Jacobson called it "Jew-hating pure and simple," for instance - others have praised the work. Churchill, whose work is often politically barbed, like her iconic feminist play "Top Girls" (1982), revived last year on Broadway, has vehemently denied charges of anti-Semitism.

This week she posted an online correspondence with Ari Roth, director of Theatre J in Washington, D.C., which also staged "Seven Jewish Children" last night, March 25, and did so again this weekend. On the post Churchill writes that charges of anti-Semitism are "an attempt to distract attention from criticism of Israel." But she acknowledges that portrait of Jews is brusque: "Yes, I would say that the play overall puts it in the context of people who are aggressive because they not surprisingly feel defensive."

Roth told The Jewish Week that his decision to stage her play did not mean that he agreed with Churchill's views. "It's not a fair play, but not every 10-minute play needs to be fair," he said. "Staging it is not an endorsement of the play. It's an inquiry into the play. It's constructive engagement." He said his theater, part of the JCC in Washington, D.C., will perform two plays by Jewish playwrights who wrote short works in response to Churchill's.

Other theaters in Chicago and Los Angeles have also begun performing "Seven Jewish Children," and this is not the first time it will be performed in New York. On March 16, the Brecht Forum in the West Village had a one-night reading, which also starred Kathleen Chalfant among others.

Still, Stern, of the American Jewish Committee, said he did not think Churchill's play would create the same kind of intense reaction it has in Britain, nor the kind response "Rachel Corrie" drew here. "I don't see this as something that's going to be ubiquitous," Stern said. The play is "less significant than 'Rachel Corrie'," he continued. "It's only 10 minutes."

Signup for our weekly email newsletter here.

Check out the Jewish Week's Facebook page and become a fan! And follow the Jewish Week on Twitter: start here.