January barely started and we already have the first cancellation
The Belfry theatre in Victoria, BC decided to withdraw The Runner, a play told by an Orthodox Israeli war relief volunteer, rather than continue to incur online wrath (and in-person disruption, and graffiti) by a pro-Palestinian activist group. It all started with a petition by “Lekwungen 2 Palestine”, an anonymous Instagram account that has no verifiable names associated with it, urging the removal of the play and using a quote by a callous character in it as evidence of the play’s harmfulness. More than one thousand people signed, but Change dot org does not display names of the signees as one list and you can’t really see, unless they leave a comment with a full name, who supported the call to ban. A counter-petition in favour of the play emerged, with double the number of signatures. It’s still impossible to see the list of names but among the comments you could actually identify a number of Canadian artists and writers.
The theatre decided to “reflect” on the issue, make the copies of the play available to anyone interested and a town hall was held too, which a group of this alleged pro-Pal gang left in a huff. None of this was enough. Protests continued and the theatre leadership caved. Christopher Morris’ The Runner, performed many times and on many stages since it premiered in Toronto a few years ago, a multiple Dora-winner, highly critically acclaimed, will not be seen at the Belfry in the spring.
Throughout all this, neither the artistic leadership of the theatre, nor the writer himself, said a word about it publicly. (I emailed Christopher myself, but no luck.) The play was not defended publicly or to the media or through socials by the people who’ve programmed it, and the playwright I presume thought that speaking out would have added fuel to the fire. Only a local paper in Victoria picked up the story; no national paper drew attention to it until it was too late and the play was removed. This is… not ideal. This is one of the many reasons we need strong arts sections in papers and magazines and online hubs; a group of people who’ve covered the beat, know the players, have been around the block, and will run towards, because that is their job, and not away from the heat, the hard questions, the controversy. And crucially, can identify bullying when it’s taking place. Equally important, artists and artistic directors need to start defending their choices. They are bound to lose the battle of ideas otherwise. Although the petition in favour of programming the play was longer and its supporters in Canadian arts more numerous, the vacuum left by the key actors remaining silent was filled by the activist drone about harm and genocide.
As many other people have pointed out, in the past it tended to be the anti-Israel and the perceived anti-Israel content that would face calls for removal and de-platforming in the arts sector. British theatre in particular has a long history of anti-Israeli criticism and “anti-Zionist” allegiances, with one of the best known early examples the Academy Awards acceptance speech by Vanessa Redgrave, in which she referred to the “Zionist hoodlums”. In 2005, the actor Alan Rickman with journalist Katharine Viner adopted the diaries of the American activist Rachel Corrie who was killed in Gaza. Whenever theatres program My Name is Rachel Corrie, there’s usually fuss; Palestinian activists insist she was killed intentionally, whereas the Israeli courts and the IDF claim otherwise. Another Royal Court effort, Caryl Churchill’s 2009 Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, has been described, alternately, as antisemitic blood-libel drivel and as “dense, beautiful and elusive”.
There was a time, many lifetimes ago, when Koffler Centre almost unprogrammed the artist Reena Katz after discovering her anti-Israeli activism. Art funders got involved (I used to work at Toronto Arts Council at the time and remember this crisis well) as it appeared that the artist’s constitutionally guaranteed right to express a legal political opinion had been tampered with. The two sides eventually found a way through and the Koffler returned Katz to its programming.
Back when Pride used to take free speech seriously, there was a bit of a thing for a couple of summers about “Queers against Israeli apartheid” marching in Pride parades. Ah, the innocent, pre-ACAB, pre-BLM, pre-decolonization times. Looking back on Pride: June 2022
Something radically changed in the last five years, though. The protests are more ferocious now (online and off), heckler’s veto i.e. violent disruptions are normalized, arts institutions are not sure free expression is among their top values any longer, and creators and administrators often choose to remain silent instead of defending their work and the soundness of their judgment.
“The cultural world has allowed itself to be hijacked by political factions”, wrote recently the Times’ chief arts columnist Richard Morrison in his piece “The Israel-Hamas war is tearing the arts world apart”. He mentions the cases in Europe which we wouldn’t have heard of: a film festival in Bristol deprogramming a film about a Palestinian teenager set in 1948 (otherwise available on Netflix); a London gallery cancelling an Ai Weiwei exhibition over his volunteered analysis on social media of “the Jewish community’s alleged influence on culture, media and finance”; the awarding of the Peter Weiss prize in Germany postponed because its British winner had, it turned out, signed a petition nine years ago calling for a cultural boycott of Israel; British Airways removing Hapless, a sitcom about Jewish characters living in London, from its in-flight entertainment (they have since reinstated it). In what must be one of the most bizarre cases, the Berlin-based RIAS Chamber Choir, one of the best known in Europe, cancelled the performance of Handel’s 1739 oratorio Israel in Egypt, fearing that the Old Testament story of Israelite triumphalism would be a bit too much for the current situation.
War in Ukraine, by contrast, did not divide the arts world to this degree - which also, NB, continues to be indifferent to most other international conflicts taking place today. Valery Gergiev is definitely gone from the orchestral podiums in the west, but soprano Anna Netrebko, while still not welcome at her former home opera house the Met, has resumed her career in Europe, including in Milan’s La Scala. It was iffy there for a while in Toronto too right after Russia invaded, but Russian pianists are back in town, notably the brilliant and eccentric Daniil Trifonov with the TSO on Jan 10, 11 and 13 in Brahms’ Concerto 1. Playwright Andrew Kushnir’s odd j’accuse from February last year, Why is Canadian Theatre So Russian Right Now, objecting to the presence of Chekhov, Bulgakov and Dostoyevsky on Canadian stages, was, here’s hoping, a one-off.
Latest Developments in Art Speak
I receive all kinds of press releases in my mailbox, but one stood out recently because the descriptions of the new dance work being promoted obviously came from the young artist herself (themself?), and not the PR.
Anybody know what any of this means? The artist is of course “Tkaronto-based millennial” using they/them pronouns - and based on videos and pictures, a young woman. How does one pretend to be non-sexed in the most physical of all the arts, dance? This description of quote/unquote Face Rider is so confusing, I find myself intrigued. I’ll get a ticket for it in February and see what all that could possibly be about. Will report back.
“[The new artistic director of Toronto Dance Theatre] has brought a really vibrant energy, welcoming in a broad range of styles and aesthetics – openings often feel like really thrilling club nights over there – and the palette of artists and the dance traditions they bring into the space is wildly varied and feels like a bold challenge to the Eurocentric legacies of modern dance.”
Can’t wait.