Dramatizing the Middle East

When Israel entered Gaza ear­li­er this year, Caryl Churchill, whom Tony Kush­n­er calls “one of the most impor­tant and influ­en­tial play­wrights liv­ing,” wrote a nine minute play enti­tle “Sev­en Jew­ish Chil­dren: A Play for Gaza.” In Feb­ru­ary, it had a brief run at Lon­don’s Roy­al Court The­atre and elicit­ed very dif­fer­ent reac­tions. Some cel­e­brat­ed the play, call­ing it “dense, beau­ti­ful, elu­sive and inten­tion­al­ly inde­ter­mi­nate” but also appro­pri­ate­ly “dis­turb­ing” and “provoca­tive;” oth­ers labeled it  a blood libel and essen­tial­ly anti-semit­ic. Although con­tro­ver­sial, the Guardian felt that it was impor­tant for peo­ple to see the play and form their own views. So they com­mis­sioned a per­for­mance and had it dis­trib­uted online. You can watch it above, draw you own con­clu­sions, and, if you want, read more about the project over at the Guardian.

This piece of video was sent to us by rkcli­brary over Twit­ter. Thanks for think­ing of us.


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  • Hanoch says:

    This is ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­da, which is bla­tant­ly obvi­ous to any­one who knows their his­to­ry regard­ing this part of the world. What a shame that intel­li­gent peo­ple use non­sense like this to form opin­ions of cur­rent events rather than doing the heavy lift­ing of learn­ing and under­stand­ing his­to­ry. It is sym­bol­ic of the intel­lec­tu­al lax­ness of our times.

  • Sara Raftenberg says:

    Would you dare — dare — offer a hood­ed KKK argu­ment for racism in the name of let­ting your read­ers make their own deci­sions about pos­si­ble racism? Why are the Jew­ish peo­ple open to that?

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