Skip the subject but look at the process. This is the purpose of live theater. To show the world to a specific place as it is and to constantly examine, explore and renew the social contract in all of its elements as the time and place changes. I especially liked the willingness of each group to defend the public arena where their children play. Putting the play back into the private sector meant that they all could participate in the dialogue while paying for it.
This is the private capitalist sector at its best in cultural matters. In this situation Socialism often fumbles the ball as it tries to over control and ends up destroying the rights of a minority, or the majority, for that matter. I would add that Socialism's little brother "Corporatism" suffers the same fate. The work of the Arts is to show the truth as the artist expert sees it. It is the job of the education to teach that this is the "Artist's" truth and not THE TRUTH for all time. As we see through the eyes of the Artist we negotiate with him or her to see something else as well. That changes and deepens the Artist's vision as well as helps us to imagine the reality of the world as the world of the "Stage" or the "Altar" (raised area or sacred Universe) shows us the world that is seen through this specialist's eyes and helps us to change it hopefully for the better. That is the "Mirror" purpose while the change is the "Beauty" or "Ideal" purpose of "Truth and Beauty." Movies don't do this and neither do CDs. They are done. Artifacts. Finished products that can only be seen like a Newspaper for the day. Live Theater and Concerts are evolving entities that are constantly evaluated and used by those who attend and those who perform to continue creating the "Sacredness" of theater and abstract music that we may appreciate who we are but also imagine change. Playwright O'Malley was caught up short by the Muslims which means that he needs to find a way to irritate both sides with his humanity to both. That he will probably do. Unfortunately Art that only touches one side is usually bad art bordering on propaganda. The Soviet and Nelson Rockefeller were relatives when they both couldn't stand the artistic vision of both sides and elected to destroy works of art that showed history the wholeness of their cultures. Art must show the humanity of all through the asking of serious questions about the human condition. It will always be biased because it is a product of its time and place but if it is more narrow and conservative than its time warrants it will be known simply as derivative entertainment for one group or the other at best. That is one of the rules of good Art. It often offends both sides but if it survives the aggression against it it will change the future. That is the best tradition of the West that I know and the reason that I feel hope when dealing with Europeans. Ray Evans Harrell February 3, 2003 A New Play Encounters Muslims' Ire in Cincinnati By MEL GUSSOW Paradise" has been fatwa'ed in Cincinnati, at least the playwright Glyn O'Malley says so. His latest play, "Paradise" deals with suicide bombers and the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. As a work in progress it was "killed before it was finished," he said. Commissioned by the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, that city's principal institutional theater, the 50-minute play was to tour high schools beginning in March, but the tour was canceled after a protest by local Muslims. (The executive director of the Ohio Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Jad Humeidan, said there are 15,000 Muslims in the area.) As a result there has been a windstorm of controversy in Cincinnati. In response the Cincinnati Playhouse has scheduled a free public reading of the play at its theater on Feb. 18. Ed Stern, the producing artistic director, announced that teachers, principals and leaders of the Jewish and Muslim groups would be invited. The play was inspired by the story of Ayat al-Akhras, an 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber who blew herself up last March in Jerusalem, killing three people, including herself and Rachel Levy, a 17-year-old Israeli. Both were high school seniors. Bert Goldstein, a director for the Cincinnati theater, had suggested the idea for the play to Mr. O'Malley, the author most recently of "Mama Love," presented last year in Manhattan. Last year after he submitted several scenes from "Paradise," he was awarded the $5,000 Lazarus New Play Prize for Young Audiences. In anticipation of possible criticism in dealing with such an incendiary subject, Mr. Stern presented an unrehearsed reading of the play on Dec. 16 for an invited audience: the playwright (who lives in New York); Mr. Stern and Mr. Goldstein, who was scheduled to direct the play; and several local people, Rabbi Robert B. Barr of Congregation Beth Adam; Elizabeth Frierson, a professor of Islamic history at the University of Cincinnati; and Majed Dabdoub, a structural engineer. To the playwright's surprise, he said, Mr. Dabdoub was accompanied by 10 other Muslims, and the discussion after the reading was filled with rancor. "It was hardly a debate," Mr. O'Malley said. "It was more like an attack, and I was the object of this fire. They said the play was worse than an F16 fighter-bomber in the damage that it would do and also that it was poison. The fact that I was called anti-Islam is very dangerous. People get killed for that." Mr. O'Malley continued, "There was one man who said - chillingly - that suicide bombing was `the same as "Give me liberty or give me death." ' To my mind there is nothing about adult men strapping bombs onto kids - male and female - and sending them off to kill themselves and murder others that resonates even remotely with Patrick Henry's now axiomatic saying about the American Revolution." Rabbi Barr said the play was called racist and "a Zionist piece of propaganda." In an open letter he said that he had his own "issues with the play and was prepared to express them, but I was not prepared for the barrage of criticism that was heaped upon the author from the members of the Muslim community." He concluded: "Cincinnati's reputation as a community that tries to control the arts and allows bigots to dominate the discussion is accurate. Once again Cincinnati looks small, foolish and provincial." In 1990 Dennis Barrie, the director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati was charged with obscenity for an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs. The trial ended in Mr. Barrie's acquittal, but the city gained an image as a place that condoned censorship. When he heard the reading of the play, Mr. Dabdoub said, it was as if "someone was slapping me in the face." `He said the play was "one-sided, not balanced, not adequate to go to schools." One specific criticism was that before the Palestinian girl, named Fatima in the play, commits suicide, she put on a hijab, or headcovering. "The impression that leaves with the children is that when they see someone with a headcovering, then she is a terrorist," Mr. Dabdoub said. "I have two daughters, and they go to high school, and they wear headcoverings." On the broader issue, he said: "Everybody is against suicide bombing. I can't imagine somebody blowing themselves up. When I see it on TV, I turn it off. Who is interested in seeing body parts? Why are we focusing on this? What is the message? To promote hatred? Are we trying to scare people in this country? We need to promote peace and not to promote war." Mr. Humeidan, one of the other Muslims at the reading, said that it was a heated discussion. "People have very emotional ties to the Middle East," he said. "I felt that the concept of educating young people about the Middle East is very important. But the play had too many stereotypes and too many biases against the Palestinians in the version that was presented to us."' The intention, Mr. O'Malley said, was to create "fictional characters driven by psychological, physical, emotional factors, not by religion." Through many drafts, he said, "I've worked to show the hard-line point of view from both sides of the conflict without justifying or condoning suicide bombing." After the reading Muslim representatives contacted the Human Relations Commission of Cincinnati and asked for a public hearing. The Muslims' "Fact Sheet on Paradise" said the play was hateful, deceitful, vengeful, spineless and opportunistic: "It is based on a snapshot of history which does not tell the full story of crimes against Palestinians carried out by the Israeli government during the last 54 years of brutal occupation." The Human Relations Commission did not take any action and sent a message to Mr. Dabdoub saying, "We are not in the business of censorship." Mr. Stern, who did not stay for the discussion after the reading, praised the play for giving "a human face" to what could be seen as a melodramatic situation. "People want heroes and villains," he said in a telephone interview last week. "Glyn created a human drama, with flawed human beings." Expressing his regret, he canceled the school tour. Last week he said he was planning to have the public reading of the play "on our turf, under our control." He said the playhouse had never shied from controversy. After there were race riots in Cincinnati last year, the theater presented a high school tour of an abbreviated version of Anna Deavere Smith's "Fires in the Mirror" about race riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991. At other times, he said, he has presented plays about "homosexuality, incest, parental abuse and American foreign policy," and "we've withstood all criticism." "We want to take works with social consciousness and resonance to students," he said. "I was naïve enough to think if we can do `Fires in the Mirror,' we could do a play about the Palestinian situation." In official statements both the writers' group PEN and the Dramatists Guild of America deplored the cancellation of the play. Later when Mr. Stern said he would give the play a public reading at the theater, representatives of PEN sent him a letter commending his decision. In recent weeks Mr. O'Malley has finished a sixth draft of the play, trying to equalize the family relationships of the two women. To clarify his position, he said: "My play is about the extreme fundamentalist justifications on both sides for actions that are tearing up and killing people on both sides of the conflict in the Middle East. Real death. Real blood. Real loss. Real tragedy." In that draft the lives of the two girls (both 17 in this fictionalized version) are made parallel. Each has a dream of a career. Sarah, an Israeli who has spent the last three years in the United States, wants to be a photographer. Fatima is drawn to writing. There are three other characters: Sarah's mother, Fatima's cousin who wants her to join him in the United States and a Palestinian who helps strap the bomb on Fatima. "How many can I kill?" she asks, and adds, "I want you to put extra nails." She says she wants the maximum damage, "the most they have ever seen." Both Mr. Dabdoub and Mr. Humeidan said they would have no objection to the play having a public reading at the playhouse, and if that were the case they would plan to see it again. "I don't have a problem with doing it in a theater," Mr. Dabdoub said. "It's a free country. The problem I have is to take it to schools. I'm not censoring anything. If I'm defending the rights of my children, is that extremist?" Mr. O'Malley said that he planned to attend the reading this month and, awaiting the next step from Cincinnati, that he was thinking about turning "Paradise" into a full-length play. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
