{"id":101147,"date":"2024-01-27T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-27T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=101147"},"modified":"2024-01-27T10:35:52","modified_gmt":"2024-01-27T10:35:52","slug":"commentary-a-play-about-gaza-won-awards-in-israel-no-theater-would-dare-mount-it-now-los-angeles-times-bc-gaza-play-commentaryla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=101147","title":{"rendered":"Commentary:\u00a0A play about Gaza won awards in Israel. No theater would dare mount it now [Los Angeles Times :: BC-GAZA-PLAY-COMMENTARY:LA]"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2015, I directed the American premiere<\/a> of an Israeli play that grapples with Gaza \u2014 a play I could never direct today.<\/p>\n

Gilad Evron\u2019s \u201cUlysses on Bottles\u201d centers on Izakov, a Jewish Israeli lawyer representing two clients: a Palestinian teacher, nicknamed Ulysses, arrested by Israel for trying to reach Gaza on a raft made of plastic bottles in hopes of bringing Russian literature to the strip, and an Israeli defense official, Seinfeld, seeking advice about whether Israel\u2019s blockade of Gaza could implicate the country in crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n

The world premiere of the play in Israel in 2012 wasn\u2019t easy to produce. A Jewish actor declined the title role, fearing he\u2019d be blacklisted from commercial work. Eventually the role went to a Palestinian citizen of Israel. Still, the production ran for more than 80 performances and won Israel\u2019s top theater prize for best original play that year.<\/p>\n

When I directed \u201cUlysses\u201d three years later in Boston, in a translation by Evan Fallenberg, I knew it would shake up audiences. I too was challenged by what the play brought up: Israelis\u2019 daily indifference to the Gaza siege, which their government hoped would weaken Hamas\u2019 rule but instead became a cruel policy of collective punishment.<\/p>\n

My own discomfort is exactly why I wanted to do the play. Theater allows us to confront hard facts in a way that is provocative but ambiguous. It can make big issues intimate, and it doesn\u2019t force you to make up your mind, only to watch and wrestle.<\/p>\n

Reaction to the Boston production could be summed up in one comment: great art but unsettling.<\/em> Tickets sold out for the majority of the run, but my theater company, Israeli Stage, lost funders and audiences. The head of Boston\u2019s Jewish federation never came to another of our productions, and his organization reduced its sponsorship of our work. The consul general of Israel in Boston summoned me to his office and told me to put on other plays instead.<\/p>\n

The morning of Hamas\u2019 attack on Oct. 7, feeling helpless and scared, I reread the play.<\/p>\n

Here is an excerpt from the most difficult scene in the play, in which Seinfeld confesses his deepest fears to Izakov: that the population in Gaza will boom, diseases and misery will multiply and the blockade will explode in Israelis\u2019 faces:<\/p>\n

Seinfeld: Imagine 10 million people who can\u2019t get out, who can barely move, who are infected and starved and scorched. \u2026 The fear no longer stops anyone. To live or to die \u2014 they don\u2019t see the difference. And they come and overtake us. And then what, lawyer Izakov? I shoot them at the border and I shoot them as they continue to advance and rise up; they grow in numbers and I keep shooting. \u2026 Thousands? Millions? How many? Till when?<\/em><\/p>\n

The play seems prophetic today. Fear of death didn\u2019t stop Hamas from flooding into Israel and killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 people hostage. Now as nearly 2 million Palestinians are displaced inside Gaza, fleeing Israeli bombardment, disease is rampant and famine looms.<\/p>\n

And as Seinfeld predicts, we continue shooting. Gaza health officials say more than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel\u2019s military, 10,000 of whom are children. Who knows how many more will be killed.\u201cThousands? Millions? How many?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

As a director, I want to speak in the way I know best, to ask people to come to the theater and see what a play like \u201cUlysses on Bottles\u201d has to say. But where could it be staged today?<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t put it on in Germany. There, it would be attacked as antisemitic. A week into the Israel-Hamas war, Berlin\u2019s leading theater, the Maxim Gorki Theatre, postponed performances of \u201cThe Situation,\u201d a play by Israeli director-playwright Yael Ronen that explores the third generation of Germans, Israelis and Palestinians whose families survived the Holocaust and Nakba.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t put it on in the U.S. Theaters there would certainly fear the loss of support from Jewish audiences and benefactors. And for those who want to hear about Palestinian suffering, what an Israeli playwright has to say about Gaza would never do. In November, I asked a producer at a university theater company in Boston if he\u2019d put on a reading of the play. He said the university president had forbidden productions or statements about Gaza on stage.<\/p>\n

And Israel? No Israeli theater would dare put on this play now. I was texting with someone at the theater that originally produced it, and I asked whether they\u2019d mount it now. The conversation ended; there was no response.<\/p>\n

In fact, Gaza disappeared from the Israeli theater a long time ago. \u201cUlysses on Bottles\u201d was the last major Israeli play to reckon with Gaza, and that was 12 years ago. Israeli theater, attended by a staggering 40% of the population, is harnessed by the state: Many actors come up through the military\u2019s performing troupes, and all theaters rely on public funding. When theaters criticize Israeli policy, or explore taboo topics such as the occupation or the Nakba, their funding may be cut or conditioned by the ministry of culture.<\/p>\n

During the last two decades of Israel\u2019s rightward drift, theater professionals have self-censored to survive, a situation made worse now. I know an actress who was suspended from teaching at an acting studio because she posted about Palestinian suffering that predated Oct. 7. In November, Jerusalem\u2019s municipal theater dropped a play by an Afghan-British playwright about his family\u2019s exile from Afghanistan because he tweeted about the \u201cGaza genocide.\u201d \u201cWe cannot celebrate the work of this writer,\u201d the theater\u2019s manager said in a news release.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a scene in \u201cUlysses on Bottles\u201d where Izakov tries to convince Ulysses to sign an agreement that he won\u2019t set sail for Gaza ever again, in exchange for his freedom from jail:<\/p>\n

Izakov: Sign the agreement and that\u2019s that! \u2026 Enough throwing your life away on something so insubstantial, so completely groundless. \u2026Stop being some parody, some extinct species that nobody is interested in or knows anything about. Your anonymity is complete. The theater is empty. There are no protest movements, there\u2019s no echo, the square is empty. Go home!<\/em><\/p>\n

The squares in Israel do feel empty. Antiwar protests are made up of a hundred protesters at best. The theaters are full but with plays that serve as distractions from war. There\u2019s no place where an Israeli director can put Gaza center stage and ask audiences to come to terms with their inaction in the face of an endless cycle of violence. As things stand, Ulysses can\u2019t even dream of setting sail.<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

Guy Ben-Aharon is an Israeli American theater director who divides his time between Boston and Jaffa, Israel. For nine years, he ran Israeli Stage based in Boston. He is also the founder and executive director of<\/em> the Jar<\/em><\/a> in Boston, an organization that uses the arts to create diverse communities.<\/em><\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

\u00a92024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. <\/p>\n

KeyWords:: 71c9dcb7-ede4-41de-a2f9-b833820a0c9f
\n71c9dcb7 ede4 41de a2f9 b833820a0c9f
\nBC-GAZA-PLAY-COMMENTARY:LA
\nBC GAZA PLAY COMMENTARY LA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2015, I directed the American premiere of an Israeli play that grapples with Gaza \u2014 a play I could never direct today. Gilad Evron\u2019s \u201cUlysses on Bottles\u201d centers on Izakov, a Jewish Israeli lawyer representing two clients: a Palestinian teacher, nicknamed Ulysses, arrested by Israel for trying to reach Gaza on a raft made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101148,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101147\/revisions\/101148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}