For reasons which now are mysterious to me, but which probably reside in a diabolical subconscious masochism, I decided to see three Adelaide Fringe shows yesterday, which also happened to be the day I arrived. I found myself scrambling from show to show, with barely time to draw breath between each one. It's not an ideal way to see theatre, at least not for me: I like to think about what I've seen before being flooded with yet more stimuli. But as a crash course in the theatrical variety on offer at the Adelaide Fringe, it was probably exemplary.

The first was a rather charming piece of audio-instructed theatre, En Route, by Melbourne group Bettybooke. This won the Best Live Art Award in last year's Melbourne Fringe, and is, as they say, a "pedestrian-based event", in which mobile phones, iPods, hidden letters, chalked signs and company members lead you on a kind of Easter Egg hunt through the Adelaide CBD, with the city itself as the prize. It's part of an international trend of headphone-centric theatre that seeks to put the audience in the middle of the performance: through its insistence that participants look out, as it were, through their skull, it generates a crowded solitude that is at the centre of urban experience. The stage is the city, the theatre is your imagination, and the presiding god is Ranier Maria Rilke, whose insistence on the gaze is one of its final meditations.

There are 17 tracks, each accompanying a different route, and each offering a different audio experience that features music by local Adelaide musicians. Some are simple instructions ("walk slowly, take your time, look..."); some are narratives, such as a saunter through a bizarrely empty shopping arcade to a detective story; some are meditations on the act of perception by people like Maurice Merleau Ponty; others generate a mood for a walk down a particular lane, or create a background to a short exhibition of artworks about Dante's Purgatorio, shown in a carpark stairwell. It's a complex show, because the perspectives are constantly changing, but it's fun because it's constantly surprising, and it generates a nice balance between the participant's freedom and its own structuring necessities. I thought it a little long - maybe the ideal length for a show of this sort is an hour - but it kept me constantly interested while, of course, giving me some healthful exercise.

In an illustration of the perils of making theatre in an uncontrolled environment, my En Route began with a couple of security guards taking violent exception to Bettybooke "conducting its business" on the verandah of the Adelaide GPO, backed by a chorus of outraged staff members. I can't imagine what they thought we were doing, as they warned me against the sinister man ("don't trust him!") who was fitting me up with an iPod; perhaps they thought we were dealing drugs. Who knows? Their hostility was in marked contrast to this show's essential innocence, which was maybe what I liked most about it.

After that, I had time for a G&T in the diverting environs of the Garden of Unearthly Delights before heading to The Hive - a tent with chairs - for Baba Brinkman's The Rap Guide to Evolution. Brinkman is a Vancouver rapper whose last work was, apparently, a rap version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. After a performance of that show, he was approached by a scientist who asked him if he could do the same for Darwin as he did for Chaucer, and thus was produced what Brinkman calls "the very first peer-reviewed hiphop show".

Anyone who thinks rap is just about gangstas and hos should take a look at this (as it is as instructive about the social origins of rap as it is about Darwin, it might equally have been named The Evolutionary Guide to Rap). After a fair bit of forceful campaigning from my kids, I've had to lower my prejudices: rap is the popular poetic form, it's as various as any art, and there's some classy stuff in there. This is probably one of its stranger manifestations, but Brinkman's Byronic wit and performative energy combine to make it an irresistible hour. Plus you get to learn a lot about mitochondria and the social behaviour of slime moulds. Wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Darwin (and the slogan "Very Gradual Change You Can Believe In"), Brinkman takes us through 10 chapters, in which he explores various aspects of Darwin's theory (and attacks the whole premise of Intelligent Design), ultimately to reveal the humanity and "grandeur" of Darwin's vision. Science is seldom this much fun.

My final destination was a performance of My Name is Rachel Corrie, at X Space at AC Arts. Edited from the writings of young activist Rachel Corrie by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner, it premiered at the Royal Court in London before running into controversy when the New York Theatre Workshop "indefinitely postponed" its performance in New York in 2006. Although I followed the various controversies with interest - this is a play that situates itself right on top of the Israel/Palestine political faultline, and generates as much seismic activity as one might expect - I haven't before now had a chance to see it.

As is well known, Rachel Corrie was killed in Gaza in 2003, when she was crushed by a bulldozer while defending a Palestinian home from being demolished. At the time, she was part of a band of non-violent international activists who sought to protect the homes, properties and lives of the Palestinians by interpolating their bodies between them and the IDF, on the assumption that killing a foreign national would cause more trouble than a Palestinian. The play is taken from her emails and diary entries, and follows the trajectory of a bright, idealistic young woman with enormous personal courage. It is also - and this is where the controversy stepped in - a bald statement about the daily persecution of ordinary Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

In this rather beautiful production directed by Daniel Clarke, Hannah Norris gives a passionate and accurately observed performance of Corrie. As the play opens, she stands amid a pile of cardboard boxes in the mess of her chaotic bedroom. The first half consists of recollections from Corrie's school and college years, and her early activism. This, the most engaging part of the play, is staged with effective simplicity, with Norris bit by bit packing away her belongings as she speaks. She's funny, innocent, smart, ironically aware of the pitfalls of being a "progressive", and remarkably intelligent. In the second half, when Corrie journeys to Palestine, the boxes become the walls and houses of Palestine: some open up to reveal miniatures of houses, or spill out a rubble of children's shoes and stones. This section's staging was much fussier, with actions that seemed merely decorative - the arranging of the children's shoes in the shape of a heart, for instance.

The production's conscious theatricality heightened the problem with using this kind of verbatim script: criticising it is a little like attacking a memorial service for using bad grammar. Here the play is presented as theatre, but it carries with it a weight of authenticity that closes down responses. It's like being in church: its polemic is unforgiving and earnest, with the constant reminder that behind this theatrical illusion is a dead woman. One is supposed to be moved, or one is heartlessly dismissing this awful death.

I wasn't moved, but it wasn't because Norris's remarkable performance lacked any skill or feeling: it was the set-up of the whole play, which left me no room to respond, either emotionally or politically. What if you already know about the IDF demolitions of houses, gardens and olive groves, or the daily harassment of civilians in the Occupied Territories? Is your task in this theatre, then, simply to nod in agreement (or, alternatively, to rage in disagreement?) And does either response really lead to thought?

I prefer, for example, Brecht's approach, which understood the power of Verfremdungseffekt, the "making-strange" which permits - rather, which insists on - active thinking as a response, in order to get beyond the singular focus of empathy (which Brecht thought fatally bourgeois). There's a Zizekian argument to be unpacked here, which I have neither the time nor the energy to follow through: but Howard Barker says it all quite well from the aesthetic side of the equation. Uncomplicated empathy is what drives this show; it's a well-realised production done in complete good faith, but it demonstrates that empathy is not enough for either political or artistic radicalism. Which is not at all the same as saying that it ought not to be there.

En Route, concept by Julian Rickert, created by Bettybooke - Suzanne Kersten, Claire Korobacz, Paul Moir and Julian Rickert. Adelaide Fringe, until March 14.

The Rap Guide to Evolution, Baba Brinkman and SPL Productions. The Hive, The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide Fringe, until March 13.

My Name is Rachel Corrie, from writings by Rachel Corrie, edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, directed by Daniel Clarke. Design by Cassandra Backler, lighting and sound design by Ben Flett, video by Annemarie Kohn. Performed by Hannah Norris. X Space at AC Arts, Adelaide Fringe, until March 14.

The debate continues unabated in the blogosphere, accompanied by a strange silence elsewhere...

Garrett Eisler at the indispensible Playgoer and George Hunka at Superfluities are leading the debate: check out George Hunka's blood-and-thunder editorialising in this podcast in which he characterises the eerie silence as "careerist". And worth reprinting in full are a couple of responses to Playgoer from NY playwright Christopher Shinn:

I was so surprised by the silence after the Times article came out on Monday that I felt I must be missing something, that there must be a rational reason for the lack of response from my community. I remembered protesting with my colleagues outside of Manhattan Theatre Club when they pulled "Corpus Christi," and expected a similar if not identical response here -- as you point out, the circumstances are in some ways different. But the basic principle is the same.

I decided to speak out on Thursday when I played the following imagined scenario out in my head: I am a young playwright, just finishing up with school and getting ready to write plays I hope will get produced. I consider myself a political playwright with aspirations to speak to the mainstream. New York Theatre Workshop, having produced Kushner and Churchill and many others, is a theatre I dream about one day being produced at.

Monday morning I open up the New York Times. I read that "James C. Nicola, the artistic director of the workshop, said he had decided to postpone [My Name is Rachel Corrie] after polling local Jewish religious and community leaders as to their feelings about the work."

In the same section of the paper, I read a review of another play about terrorism [Martin McDonagh's Lieutenant of Inishmore]. The play gets a rave review but also alerts me, "Don't expect deep psychological portraiture or specific political insights."

In the following days, I scour the internet, waiting to see how the theatre community responds to Nicola's decision to postpone "Rachel Corrie" because of its political content. But I find nothing. Instead I read that the play about terrorism sans "deep psychological portraiture or specific political insights" is moving to Broadway, and that "Rachel Corrie" will not be seen either on the Lower East Side or anywhere in New York.

I have not seen or read Martin McDonagh's play, but the point is this: if I were a young playwright, I would get the message loud and clear -- don't write political plays if you want to get them produced. And if you write a play that gets scheduled, and then pulled for political reasons, don't expect the theatre community to come out and support your freedom of expression. This is a ghastly message to send.

The kinds of plays our future playwrights produce will in part be a result of what values we are willing to support and defend in public forums. Plays do not happen in a vacuum; we have to speak out.

And earlier:

This is very sad. I was hoping this was all due to a miscommunication but clearly that is not the case. I've been produced by the Royal Court, and I'm a usual supect at NYTW, and I've been desperately hoping for some kind of reconciliation or clarification. It's clear now that it's not coming.

I respect Jim Nicola and his theatre but his statement is incoherent. It's paternalistic and preposterous. Make no mistake: a play has been censored in America because of its political content.

By attempting to avoid offending a few people, New York Theatre Workshop has offended everyone. Its decision sends a terrible message to playwrights in America and citizens worldwide. This decision must be denounced as powerfully and vocally as possible.

Finally, thank you, Playgoer, for being one of the few places in the country to recognize the gravity of this decision. Your blog has been indispensable over the last few days.

As a sidenote, the Electronic Intifada is calling for, among other things, a "staged theatrical reading" of the play in New York on the anniversary of Corrie's death to protest the NYTW decision. Details here.

Update: Our Man in Paris Ben Ellis updates the story with an excellent post that summarises for us blockhead monolinguists some of the admirably complex arguments happening in the French public sphere. And Ben makes some good points himself. Most interesting is an article in Le Monde asserting that despite much private noise, a public silence surrounds the decision. Superfluities and Playgoer follow up.

____________________________

Despite much interest (here and here) in the banning of Peter Handke's Voyage to the Sonorous Land or the Art of Asking by the Comédie Française, it's hard to follow what's going on. Here I plead mea culpa: if I had studied French instead of Latin in high school, I'd be able to read the newspapers...

Despite speculation that the decision might have been reversed, it appears that M. Bonzonnet, defender of the purity of French theatre, has stuck to his guns. My spies tell me that competing petitions - one, originating from within the Comédie Française, supporting Bozonnet and the other defending Handke - are currently battling it out in the fora of public opinion. The Literary Salon also has some interesting details on the article that sparked M. Bozonnet's displeasure, which has the Nouvel Observateur apologising for regrettable "factual errors" after threats of legal action from Handke. And Literary Salon also has some links. In French. Merde.

As a side note: on Playgoer, a poster in the comments draws a further parallel between the Handke bingle and the Rachel Corrie controversy. Brian Souter, a fellow Australian, claims that Slobodan Milosevic is, like Rachel Corrie, a "victim". "If Rachel Corrie has been demonised for the defence of Palestinians," he writes, "even more has Milosevic been a victim of the media-spun lies of the western power elites".

This kind of sticks in my craw. Whatever the merits of her actions, Corrie was a genuine innocent. Milosevic is not. I've no doubt that Milosevic was the victim of sustained and politically motivated media spin, and that ought to be acknowledged and debated. But no side on the Balkans war has clean hands - one cliche which demonstrates its truth again and again is that the complexities of the Balkan conflicts are labyrinthine. To side with Milosevic in the interests of justice seems to me a profound mistake.

For some balanced views of the demonisation of Serbia and the culpabilities of Milosevic in the run-up to the NATO bombing campaign, see here and here. Also, for an interesting and complicating take on the manipulation of the media by all sides, and a re-framing of the idea of Balkans nationalism, check out Sylvia Poggioli's fascinating 1993 article in Harvard's Nieman Reports.

Robert Fisk - one of the few journalists whom I wholeheartedly respect - weighs in on the Rachel Corrie issue in The Independent, with an article called The Erosion of Free Speech:

You've got to fight. It's the only conclusion I can draw as I see the renewed erosion of our freedom to discuss the Middle East. The most recent example - and the most shameful - is the cowardly decision of the New York Theatre Workshop to cancel the Royal Court's splendid production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie.

It's the story - in her own words and emails - of the brave young American woman who travelled to Gaza to protect innocent Palestinians and who stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer in an attempt to prevent the driver from destroying a Palestinian home. The bulldozer drove over her and then reversed and crushed her a second time. "My back is broken," she said before she died.

An American heroine, Rachel earned no brownie points from the Bush administration which bangs on about courage and freedom from oppression every few minutes. Rachel's was the wrong sort of courage and she was defending the freedom of the wrong people. But when I read that James Nicola, the New York Theatre Workshop's "artistic director" - his title really should be in quotation marks - had decided to "postpone" the play "indefinitely" because (reader, hold your breath) "in our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening in our communities (sic) in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas. ...we had a very edgy situation", I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Fisk contextualises the NYTW decision with some other examples of attempted censorship of debate about Israel and Palestine - including, shamefully, a local Australian campaign against Jewish academic and journalist Anthony Loewenstein's forthcoming book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, due out later this year from Melbourne University Press.

For his journalistic mission of "monitoring the centres of power", as he puts it in his recent book The Great War for Civilisation, Fisk has been often smeared and reviled himself. But he is an intellectual in that rather 19th century and honourable sense: "one who will say the truth, no matter what the price". I'm all for old-fashioned values like that.

Maybe for me he exemplifies qualities which you also see in the great journalism of George Orwell or Ryszard Kapuscinski: an excoriating honesty which does not spare himself; a commitment to compassion and justice; a tough and resilient sense of humour; a resolute fairness towards even those with whom he disagrees; an attention always to the mundane yet significant details that make up our lives; a continual sense of outrage at how casually and brutally these fragile human realities can be utterly smashed by those with power.

It adds up to what Orwell called "decency".

_____________

Latest: Via Playgoer, a letter from British playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker defending the play is published in the New York Times plus a letter from the president of the NYTW Board defending the theatre from "shrill" criticism - Isaac Butler at Parabasis has the letter in full and a robust response.

Superfluities picks up Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter's comments that the NYTW's decision is a "a clear case of self-censorship". The full transcript of his Turin conversation with Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington is here, and worth reading for many reasons, but the pertinent quote is: "[My Name is Rachel Corrie] has now been withdrawn by the producing theatre in New York and that is, I think, typical of what is happening more and more in Britain and America: suppression of dissent and the truth."

Update: James Nicola, stung by criticisms of censorship, has issued yet another statement. Playgoer and Superfluities are giving his third different explanation in as many days short shrift...Also worth noting is the apparent lack of reaction within the press and the NY theatre community. The bloggers are making the running on this one.

__________

The theatrical blogosphere is abuzz with the New York Theatre Workshop's recent decision to cancel or postpone - it's unclear which - the Royal Court's production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play based on the diaries and emails of the young American activist who was crushed to death by Israeli bulldozers as she attempted to stop Palestinian homes from being razed by the IDF.

The play, devised by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, was first produced in 2005 at London's Royal Court, and the Royal Court production was preparing to take it to the New York stage later this month when NYTW artistic director Jim Nicola pulled the plug. As Katherine Viner comments in an article in the LA Times:

Last week the New York Theatre Workshop canceled the production — or, in its words, "postponed it indefinitely." The political climate, we were told, had changed dramatically since the play was booked. As James Nicola, the theater's 's artistic director, said Monday, "Listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that after Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections, we had a very edgy situation." Three years after being silenced for good, Rachel was to be censored for political reasons.

I'd heard from American friends that life for dissenters had been getting worse — wiretapping scandals, arrests for wearing antiwar T-shirts, Muslim professors denied visas. But it's hard to tell from afar how bad things really are. Here was personal proof that the political climate is continuing to shift disturbingly, narrowing the scope of free debate and artistic expression, in only a matter of weeks. By its own admission the theater's management had caved in to political pressure. Rickman, who also directed the show in London, called it "censorship born out of fear, and the New York Theatre Workshop, the Royal Court, New York audiences — all of us are the losers."

Check out George Hunka's Superfluities and Garrett Eisler at Playgoer for more.

Put this together with ongoing intimidatory campaigns in the US against Arabic or left wing academics, the fuss about Stephen Spielberg's Munich and now Israeli agitation to get the film Paradise Now disqualified from contention for the Oscars, and a pattern begins to emerge... some things, it seems, are not to be discussed. At all. Anywhere.

The implicit equation of bringing Rachel Corrie's story to the stage with support for fundamentalist terrorism is, frankly, absurd. And the kind of absolutism that such an equation expresses is absolutely hostile to the freedoms that art represents.

Now, as regular readers of this blog will know, documentary theatre isn't my cup of tea. But I will defend to the death its right to exist. The disturbing thing is that, were the Royal Court to bring their production here, it quite possibly could be prosecuted under our shiny new sedition laws. Freedom of expression certainly looks under threat in the States, but my suspicion is that it might be insidiously worse here.

The peripatetic Chris Boyd is posting some lively reviews of the Adelaide festival over at The Morning After, with mucho lush pictures. Wish I was there...and check out his interview too with David Freeman, director of the Opera Factory, where he speaks about Dionysian desires in theatre. The energy of Freeman's work lies in a very Australian and wholly admirable theatrical vulgarity, but sometimes I fear it is merely vulgar. Or maybe I've just never been able to get Madonna.

News from France is of a culture fighting for its life. The right-wing Chirac government's recent devolution of cultural funding from national to regional bodies has resulted in widespread and ongoing funding cuts. There are stories everywhere of theatre companies unable to produce planned programs of work because of unexpected budget cuts, in some cases approaching 20 per cent. The full extent of these cuts is still unknown. Perhaps Chirac's plan is to emulate the Australian model...

And words continue to spill over the Rachel Corrie controversy in New York. John Heilpern, the fine critic for the New York Observer, has an excellent opinion piece which backgrounds what he calls this "craven" decision a little more. We look to [Jim Nicola's] theater—and all great theaters—to be our forum, pulpit, truth-teller and witness to a world that has lost its reason, writes Mr Heilpern. Plays written in blood are not meant to be “acceptable” or “reach consensus.” That is for weaselly politicians. Give us plays of consequence, for heaven’s sake—not caution, compliance and fear.

Hear, hear. Wish I could read that in The Age...

Meanwhile in London, the new Practicum Theatre is accepting play submissions that "reflect the thoughts behind the recent ban of My Name is Rachel Corrie from the New York Theatre Workshop ... The plays should be 10 minutes or less and 8 - 12 pieces will be chosen for a central London showcase in May. Possible themes include: censorship, America, protest, racism, freedom of speech, democracy, Rachel Corrie, Israel and Palestine, propaganda, media control, invasion of privacy or fear. They say New York said nothing. Let's say something in London."

More information at www.practicumtheatre.com.

Well, some people in New York are saying quite a lot. But judging by the uncomfortable silence that this issue elicited last night in NY from a distinguished panel gathered to opine on - yes - the importance of political theatre (an inarticulacy surely up there with the amnesiac politicians so beloved of Australian Government inquiries), some kinds of politics are still off-limits.

Surely it's the first time a theatre stoush has inspired a song - in any case, British singer Billy Bragg has written a song protesting the NYTW cancellation of My Name Is Rachel Corrie. The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie is downloadable here at The Guardian.

Those who believe Bragg is passe, by the way, might reflect on the fact that he is currently the hip songster of choice among Melbourne's young music fans. The times they are a-changing...

The New York Times has at last broken its silence on the controversy over the New York Theatre Workshop's cancellation of the Royal Court production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, with an opinion piece by Edward Rothstein defending the decision, and suggesting that it is "heretical" because it defies "aesthetic orthodoxy". Hmmm. Good responses, as always, on both Superfluities and Playgoer. An electronic petition protesting the decision is gathering signatures here, and plans for protest readings and other actions gather apace here.

Those who wonder what all this fuss might have to do with theatre in Melbourne could do worse than to contemplate the excellent essay Theater, Ideology and the Censorship of "My Name is Rachel Corrie" by the playwright Walter A. Davis in Counterpunch. It's by far the most searching response yet, thoughtfully contextualising the issues at hand in our post 9/11 world; and in doing so, Davis speaks eloquently of the role of theatre:

The role of serious drama is to represent the disorders of its time, not in order to relieve or "cathart" our dilemmas but to make it impossible for us to any longer ignore them. Rilke's "You must change your life" is the "message" that any great drama delivers as a blow to the psyche of its audience. To appropriate a phrase from Albee, the purpose of serious drama is to "get the guests." And not I add primarily by getting them to change their ideas about some current political and social situation. Serious drama strikes much deeper. It is an attempt to assault and astonish the heart, to get at the deepest disorders and springs of our psychological being, in order to affect a change in the very way we feel about ourselves - and consequently about everything else. Going to the theatre can be a dangerous act. One risks discovering things one doesn't want to know about oneself in a way that makes it impossible to remain the person one was before a play eradicated one's defenses and shattered one's identity.

An axe, as Kafka said of writing, to break the ice within...

It's often hard to run down the arts angle on Federal Budgets. But in today's Australian, Corrie Perkin chases up arts reaction to Treasurer Wayne Swann's first Budget, handed down on Tuesday night. It's pretty much as expected: business as usual, with some small winners - Indigenous arts, young artists - and few big losers aside from regional Australia, where funding was - shortsightedly, in my opinion - cut. I think it's pretty much wait and see: I'd agree with those who think that next year's Budget will be the one to watch as far as the arts are concerned. (Update: The Pickard Pen has been scratching out more commentary, and more detail, at Arts Journalist).

I haven't spotted any coverage in the Age, though there might have been a par or two in the print edition. But I did stumble across Robin Usher's shameless regurgitation of a press release I received this week from the MTC, which I note for the record. (Update a day later: a budget report by Jo Roberts is in today's edition).

Meanwhile, long-time readers of this blog might recall the controversy when the New York Theatre Workshop permanently postponed a Royal Court production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner drawn from the diaries of a young American activist who was killed in Palestine by an Israeli bulldozer. While I personally wished the controversy was around a better artistic object, it did highlight some bitter running sores in public debate around the Middle East. And some interesting issues in relation to theatre itself.

Two years later, it's premiering in Sydney, courtesy of young director Shannon Murphy, and as Nick Pickard reports, is causing some pre-emptively emotive reactions, which were republished in the Australian on the day the show was to open. The audience is, says Cynthia Ozick of the Zionist ezine Israel News, "at a show trial. And there are Jews in the dock". Picket lines in Sydney? I wonder. To be honest, I would be surprised: but one never knows.

And don't forget the Next Wave Festival, which opens today to showcase the talents of Melbourne's young artists. The program boasts some fascinating-looking performance, and I'm kind of wincing, because I'm going to miss all of it. But that doesn't mean that you should: I'd be checking out North Melbourne Arts House 180 Seconds in Heaven or Hell, for instance, or Eddie Sharp's The Tent or, actually, any of those intriguing-looking shows. Tell me how it went.

Which leads me to the personal. After two weeks battling mediaeval levels of pain - nothing serious, just problems with teeth - Ms TN is taking it easy theatre-wise for a couple of weeks. I've had it, guys. I'll be here and there, but mostly at home threatening the kids. My apologies to those I've mucked around recently, but a woman's got to know her limitations, and at the moment my face is shoved into mine. I'll surge back when I get a new head.

Update: George Hunka on British playwrights, responding to David Cote's Time Out blog, is a must-read. And see Andrew Haydon in the Guardian on the banning of a play by Anthony Neilson in Malta. Godwot, it's been a busy week in Britannia...

______

Caryl Churchill's new play, Seven Jewish Children, is presently stirring up a huge brouhaha (or is it a furore? Anyway, one of those words that you never read outside articles like this one).

Billed as a "ten-minute history of Israel, ending with the bombing of Gaza", it is being staged as a free event at London's Royal Court, after performances of Marius von Mayenburg's play The Stone, which is about German attempts to deal with its Nazi past. Predictably, given its implied critique of the State of Israel, Churchill's play has been accused of being anti-Semitic, and even of bringing up the blood libel. This stems from a line that reads: "tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her." Which is a tough line, yes, but is also plainly a response to the kind of commentary which also sparked articles like this one from Gideon Levy in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

You can read Churchill's text for yourself here. The dingdong argument at the Guardian theatre blog continues here, Andrew Haydon has a review and discussion here and George Hunka has more here. George intriguingly reports that the New York Theatre Workshop - which caused another furore when it first booked, then cancelled, a NY production of My Name is Rachel Corrie (TN background here) - is putting out feelers about putting on Churchill's play.

The accusations of anti-Semitism made against Churchill are very depressing. They are part of a political strategy to undermine critique by conflating legitimate criticism of a state with the ugliest racism. What is worse is that the bombing of Gaza has prompted some of the vilest anti-Semitism I have seen recently, which seems - erroneously - to legitimise this stance. However, confusing Churchill's play with anti-Semitism helps nobody, and worst of all, trivialises what anti-Semitism actually is.

Coincidentally, an email from the distinguished US poet Adrienne Rich recently landed in my inbox, in which she explains, not without anguish, her reasons for joining an academic and cultural boycott against Israel. She also outlines this particular mechanism of repressing political critique as clearly as anyone I've seen:

As an American Jew, over almost 30 years, I’ve joined with other concerned Jews in various kinds of coalition-building and anti-Occupation work. I’ve seen the kinds of organized efforts to stifle — in the US and elsewhere -- critiques of Israel’s policies -- the Occupation’s denial of Palestinian humanity, destruction of Palestinian lives and livelihoods, the “settlements,” the state’s physical and psychological walls against dialogue—and the efforts to condemn any critiques as anti-Semitism. Along with other activists and writers I’ve been named on right-wing “shit-lists” as “Israel-hating” or “Jew-hating.” I have also seen attacks within American academia and media on Arab American, Muslim, Jewish scholars and teachers whose work critically explores the foundations and practices of Israeli state and society.

Me, I'll just point out that libelling artists of conscience as anti-Semites in order to stifle debate and criticism is as wrong as racism itself.

I've just updated my Blogroll (scroll down the side panel) to add some great theatre blogs that have swum over my screen recently. So do check them out. And a few pointers - some belated - to what's been swirling in the blogosphere the past couple of weeks.

Mr Hunka over on Superfluities is a one-man Renaissance. Hurry over for a fascinating three part interview with musician Marilyn Nonken (available in full here); more thoughts on radical theatre from provocateur and necessary thinker Walter A Davis; a long and fascinating post on Peter Weiss; quotes from that stern old modernist Adorno, and more. Much more. The man makes me feel lazy.

Meanwhile over in Parabasis land, Isaac Butler has thoughts on directorial process which have sparked off various discussions (see Lucas Krech and Ian. W. Hill for some further thoughts). And over at the indispensible Playgoer, Garrett Eisler, indefatigable champion of free speech, is nose-down on the censorship trail with posts about Tony Kushner's controversial employment as a speech maker, the fall-out from the Rachel Corrie fuss (depressing), the ins and outs of theatre awards, and much else. Also, check out the comments on Theatre Notes' posting on Peter Handke's removal from a Comedie Francaise season for more on the censorship issue.

PS Doh! Almost forgot (perhaps because my recent pout makes me super aware, ahem, that this is close to home) that our very own Chris Boyd has posted Part Two of his interview with Daniel Keene.

Update here

Our Man in Paris Ben Ellis reports that the Comédie-Française has effectively banned Peter Handke's plays from its repertoire, after it was reported that he assisted with Slobodan Milosevic's funeral arrangements. Ben translates the Le Monde article:

"I am happy to be close to Slobodan Milosevic, who defended his people," the author is reported telling the Nouvel Observateur for its April 6 edition.

The decision to pull a production scheduled for the first half of next year was taken by Marcel Bozonnet, the general administrator of the company, saying that his blood ran cold when he read the article and that Handke's pro-Serbian politics remain "an outrage to the victims".

Handke's politics have literally caused riots since the early 1990s. In 1997 he released A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia, a short, hallucinatory book which argued that the Srebrenica massacres never happened, and in 1999 he gave back the 10,000-mark Georg Büchner literature prize money he had won in 1973 - and left the Catholic church - because of his opposition to the NATO attacks on Belgrade.

Unlike the My Name is Rachel Corrie controversy, the Comédie-Française is up-front about its decision - no shilly-shallying here. "Even if the work isn't a piece of propaganda," says Bozonnet, "it offers the author a public visibility. I don't feel like giving it to him... I understand the position of those who differentiate the work from the author, but for the moment, I just can't resolve that myself."

The question remains: is it right to ban artistic works - in this case works of unarguable artistic merit - because its author holds distasteful political views? Bozonnet, to his credit, puts his finger on the dilemma, and takes responsibility for his subsequent decision, but the decision still makes me profoundly uneasy. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Playwright and critic Walter A. Davis has a brilliant and thought-provoking essay just up at MCW News which takes apart the tired old left/right binaries which infect discussions of political theatre. It's a must-read for anyone interested in (or depressed about) the possibilities of theatrical art. And it's absolutely applicable to ideologies at work in Australian theatre.

Jumping off the My Name Is Rachel Corrie controversy, which is virally spreading through the US media, Davis inspects the actual play, which he predicts will be clutched to the bosoms of all those wishing to tattoo "progressive" on their ideological foreheads, and isolates the conservative gene which resides fatally inside all documentary theatre - its refusal, finally, of aesthetic and political imagination. Davis' argument reflects Howard Barker's stentorian criticisms of what he calls "the theatre of journalism":

On those rare occasions when a play succeeds in preserving the conditions of genuine art, it offers its community a challenge that goes far deeper than controversial comments on a given political topic.  For such works cleanse the doors of perception, thereby transforming our relationship to ourselves and the world.  We feel and experience everything in new ways, ways fraught with anxiety but also with the pulse of transgressive discovery.  Ideology no longer retains its habitual and automatic control over our minds. It is in this sense that Hamlet and Marat/Sade and Three Sisters are political in a way far more radical than The Permanent Way to Victoria Britain or Guantanamo or, to strike closer to home, the confused Messianic (and non Benjaminian) aesthetic of Angels in America or the self-congratulatory sexual posturing of The Vagina Monologues.

In transforming the very terms of our experience radical works of art exposes their audience to the pervasive ways in which we are prisoners of ideologies that severely limit our possibilities of thinking and feeling.  Plays that perform such a function need never directly address a political topic in order to be political in the deepest sense by making it impossible for us to experience the world the way we previously did.   The popular concept and practice of political theatre, in contrast, severely truncates this possibility.  It offers us no more than a quick ideological fix on some current issue.  As a result we are more the slave of ideology—be it liberal or conservative, religious or secular, or whatever—than we were before.  All such dramas do is incite the faithful so that we’ll fall into line the next time we’re polled on some issue or asked to contribute cash to some politician campaign.

Thanks to Superfluities for the heads up.

Poet and translator Pierre Joris today posts an illuminating comment on his Nomadics blog that illustrates some of the ugliness of debate around the Rachel Corrie issue. (In particular, some of the ugliness that occurred when I posted information on the controversy to the American poetry discussion list, Buffalo Poetics.)

He goes on to point to a well-researched London Review of Books article by John Mearscheimer, Professor of Political Science at Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard, which traces the deleterious influence of the "Israel lobby" on US foreign policy. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the larger pressures which touch on this issue.

Closer to home, playwright Ben Ellis points to Freedom of Expression, an excellent blog which updates news on the amendments to the Sedition Laws rushed through Parliament here in December. The Australian Law Reform Commission is currently conducting a review of these disgraceful, repressive and unnecessary laws.

The Sedition Laws are of grave concern to artists and media organisations: as they stand, under the vagueness of the criminal definition of "recklessness" and the wobbly defence of "good faith" (which reverses the onus of proof: the accused has to prove his or her innocence) you could be sent to prison for seven years if you invented a fictional character who advocated the overthrow of the government, or reported the statements of an organisation considered to be an enemy by the State. Government statements that "of course" the laws wouldn't be used in that way are, oddly, not very reassuring. Interestingly, of the 294 Senate submissions on the legislation, only two were in favour of the amendments - the Attorney General's Department and the Australian Federal Police. Go figure...

And with good reason, if this press release posted in full by Playgoer is indeed their side of the increasingly intriguing New York Theatre Workshop scandal. Superfluities has asked the Royal Court for confirmation on its authenticity, so watch that space...aside from all other issues, Alan Rickman may be forgiven a little ire if he was arranging film commitments around the NYTW dates, since these shenanigans could have cost him real money, especially when Jim Nicola then used those same film commitments as an excuse to postpone the play.

Unconfirmed whispers are that behind-the-scenes negotiations involving prominent NYTW board members are working towards a NY season, and that, according to Jason Grote, the Royal Court is now refusing the NYTW the rights to the play.

UPDATE: Playgoer has confirmed that the press release is authentic. All the same, there is much more going on here, we ought to remember, than a spat between two theatre companies. We still don't know what pressures were brought to bear upon NYTW. Perhaps some clues might be found in the comments under this post, where composer Philip Munger tells of the extreme harrassment, resulting in his cancellation of the premiere performance, that was sparked by his cantata about - guess who? - Rachel Corrie.