Theater Still Hopeful on 'Rachel Corrie'

The public war on the circumstances surrounding the cancellation (or indefinite postponement) of the New York run of My Name is Rachel Corrie wages on. After I reported here the comments of Katherine Viner, Guardian journalist and adaptor of Corrie’s words with director Alan Rickman, and New York Theatre Workshop artistic director James Nicola’s reply, the Royal Court itself has now replied even more trenchantly.

“We have been surprised to read recent assertions made by James Nicola, they say, and “there are many factual inaccuracies which we would like to address”.

Replying to Nicola’s assertion, “we asked a rather routine question, or so we thought, to our London colleagues about altering the time frame,” they have replied: “Plans for the production of My Name is Rachel Corrie were definite. Representatives of the Royal Court met with NYTW in New York to finalise arrangements seven days before learning that Mr Nicola wished to postpone the run indefinitely. The production schedule had already been laid out by the NYTW on January 31st, with the first preview scheduled for March 22nd and closing night for May 14th; a budget had been set; a press release had been mutually agreed; flights had been booked and paid for, all with the knowledge of New York Theatre Workshop. Furthermore, ticket information was already listed on the site of the US ticketing agency Telecharge on February 23rd, 2006 with the correct information about dates, times, original creative team and casting. Asking for a postponement at this stage in the planning can hardly be described as ‘a rather routine question, so we thought, of our colleagues’ as Mr Nicola says in his statement on the NYTW website.”

Again, in reply to Nicola’s assertion that the timetable for production had been driven by director Alan Rickman’s pre-existing film commitments that gave them “less than two months to consider mounting the production, the Court replies: “In fact, Alan Rickman first visited the New York Theatre Workshop to discuss the possibility of staging My Name is Rachel Corrie in November 2005. The dates of the production were determined by availability at the theatre, and Mr Rickman’s film schedule was to be ordered around this. He held back from making any film commitments until after the dates were offered and confirmed by NYTW.”

The Royal Court also reports a conversation between Nicola and their general manager, Diane Borger, in which it is said that he “would be willing to reassess the political climate in a year’s time and decide then if he could produce the piece with a companion work that would offer an alternative perspective.” This was not acceptable to the Court, as “he gave no commitment at this time to revised dates for the production at NYTW. The Royal Court and the Corrie Family have always believed that the play speaks for itself. In the words of Rachel’s father, Craig Corrie, “No one should have to take a poll to do this play; it is a work of art.”

And the Court concludes, “A postponement at any time, but especially at this late stage, is not the action of an organisation committed to producing My Name is Rachel Corrie. The Royal Court cannot be confident that the political climate will have changed in a year’s time, and we are deeply saddened that New York Theatre Workshop feels unable to let the play be seen now. However, the Royal Court remains committed to bringing My Name is Rachel Corrie to a US audience at the earliest opportunity.”

Expect the Royal Court, therefore, to be seeking a new producing partner for a US run.

http://www.thestage.co.uk/newsblog/2006/03/royal_court_counter_attack.php

I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions

-- Hamlet, 2.2, lines 566-569



“There is nothing political in American Literature.”

-- Laura Bush


I. Theatre as a Social Institution

(Let me here express my thanks to Christopher Shinn for reading this essay in drafts and discussing it with me.)

The purpose of serious theatre can be stated simply -- to challenge the audience to examine everything that they don’t want to face about themselves and their world. Theatre is that public space with a unique purpose: the public airing of secrets. Other public institutions (Churches, Political forums, the Media) are dedicated primarily to something else: the celebration and perpetuation of ideology, the programming of a mass audience with the beliefs, ideas, and feelings they need to internalize so that ideology will secure its grand function. That function: the creation within subjects of the conditions that make it impossible for them to understand their historical situation. Freedom, if there is such a thing, depends on overcoming the vast weight of ideological beliefs that have colonized one’s heart and mind.

The artist is the bad conscience of a society who calls ideology into question by representing all the ways in which it poisons our lives. 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 ways before a play eradicated one’s defenses and shattered one’s identity.

To get the full brunt of this argument the category of the political with respect to drama should not be conceived narrowly. Serious drama since Aeschylus has focused primarily on the family because the family is that social institution in which the contradictions of a society are lived out as the psychological conflicts tearing apart the relationships of those who should love one another. The family is the primary agent of ideological transmission, the process whereby it becomes an internalized psyche. It is also where all the contradictions and conflicts rise to the surface. To dramatize the truth of the family is to reveal the truth of a world. And thus among the classics of political theatre: The Oresteia, Hamlet, King Lear, Ghosts, Three Sisters, Death of a Salesman, Buried Child.

I have developed this theory of drama at length elsewhere. [1] It serves here as prelude to what I want to say about the recent actions of the New York Theatre Workshop in canceling (or “postponing” as is now claimed) plans to produce the play My Name is Rachel Corrie and what this event reveals about our historical situation. As an actor, playwright, and cultural critic I am particularly concerned about this event. But I also hope to show that it reveals -- with uncommon clarity -- the new ideological situation that defines post 9-11 Amerika.

II. The Only Thing We Have to Fear

Just the facts. The play My Name is Rachel Corrie was developed in the U.K. by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner. Every word of it is derived from writings and tape recordings of the late peace activist Rachel Corrie who was killed on March 16, 2003 when crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to prevent the destruction of the home of a Palestinian doctor in the Al-Salaam neighborhood of Rafah city in the south portion of the Gaza strip. Ms. Corrie was clearly visible to the driver of the bulldozer who ran over her and then backed up over her body. She was 23 years old. (For some readers the above sentences identify me as a foe of the State of Israel, an Anti-Semite, and even a supporter of terrorism. On which see section IV below.)

The play based on Rachel Corrie’s life had an extremely successful run last year at London’s Royal Court Theatre. Plans for a production of the work at the NYTW beginning March 22 were well advanced when the Artistic Director of that Theatre, James Nicola, announced on Feb. 27 that he had decided to “postpone” the production indefinitely. Mr. Nicola’s reasons for this decision -- which have evolved over the past few days from naïve frankness to semantic obfuscation -- are well worth examining because of all that they reveal both about the state of supposedly serious theatre today and the impact of ideological and religious pressures, which no longer have to be spoken in order to be heard and obeyed.

As always contextualization is essential to understanding. The NYTW is an Off Broadway Theatre that prides itself on producing challenging and controversial material. Here is what it says about its special interests in the latest issue of Dramatists Sourcebook, the publication playwrights consult to determine where to submit their work. “Special interests: exploration of political and historical events and institutions that shape contemporary life.” [2] NYTW in short is atypical. Indeed, it proudly identifies itself as one of the few places left where radical, challenging works will gain a hearing. It thus claims independence from those factors that force theatres on Broadway and throughout the U.S. to eschew controversial and challenging material. Three reasons inform the a priori decision that consigns most American theatres to mediocrity and conformity. First, the general ideological assumption that any play one attends should be easier to digest than the fancy diner one ate an hour before. Talk to most people today about theatre or film and the first thing they want to be assured about is that the work won’t contain anything troubling. Art can only have one purpose -- Entertainment, the relieving of life’s cares and woes. Second, any theatre that consistently produces challenging material soon finds that corporate sponsorship and season ticket sales have dried up. The powers that be insist that theatre is another one of the things that they own, an institution that must support and celebrate ideological beliefs, especially about the irrelevance of art to anything but entertainment. Third, we in the theatre have ourselves forgotten what serious theatre is. Much written and produced under that label is no such thing. The reputation of NYTW as a cutting edge theatre is a case in point. A study of their Seasons from 1995 to the present provides a good index of how little is radical or challenging in theatres that try to carve out that identity for themselves as their part of the theatrical pie. NYTW has given us some of Caryl Churchill’s fine work, but it has also given us Rent, Dirty Blonde and a number of other plays that are hardly radical or controversial. This third factor is the most revealing aspect of the NYTW fiasco. Mr. Nicola is, supposedly, a serious director with his finger on the pulse of controversial, radical theatre. That is why the explanations he offers for his decision are so revealing not just as signs of bad judgment in this case but of systemic problems facing the possibility of serious theatre in America today.

III. Thus Spake Nicola

Mr. Nicola now insists that the whole thing is the result of a semantic confusion (and the intemperate response of Mr. Rickman who did not appreciate what he termed “censorship”.) Moreover, in hopes everything will blow away efforts are now underway to patch things up with the Royal Court Theatre in London so that NYTW can secure the chance to produce My Name is Rachel Corrie at a later date. (After all why waste all the free publicity on what now promises to be a sellout.) Money is always a factor in such negotiations, but the ethical responsibility of the Royal Court in this matter is clear. Namely, to refuse to allow the play to be produced in America by NYTW! By the same token, our responsibility is to see that this play is produced here as soon as possible. March 16 is the third anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie. On that day a public reading of the play should be held in New York at the most appropriate (i.e., controversial) place by those artist’s willing to stand up and be counted. [3] The worst thing that could happen would be for this all to be swept under the rug and a face saving compromise reached. Actions should have consequences. And once an issue is out in the open it should be discussed with the thoroughness it demands. If we do anything less here we should all go to work for Mr. Bush. After all he is now desperately in need of something we understand better than most. That language was invented so that we could lie.

But to the heart of the ulcer. Mr. Nicola’s explanations of his actions rest on two assumptions, both erroneous and destructive of the very possibility of serious theatre. One is that time was needed to prepare the community for the work. The other is that in the current climate the work could not be appreciated as “art” but would be seen in political terms. [4]

(A) With respect to the first. A work of art is its own preparation. How does one prepare an audience for a work? By calming its fears? By telling it that the work isn’t really a threat? By persuading the “community” that they can appreciate it as “art” and should not see it in political terms? Through such efforts one prepares the audience by depriving the work of everything that might make its performance truly daring. Preparing people for a work of art is and can be nothing but an attempt to blunt the work’s power. Preparation is, in short, the construction of defense mechanisms and thus itself a form of censorship.

Moreover, there is only one way that a work of art prepares its audience for it: by being that provocation that the audience cannot resist or deny. If a work is truly radical the community will never be prepared for it. The work will be a scandal to them -- a shock and a wound that produces afterthought and forethought. (If the audience had to be prepared first we would not have Greek drama, the tragedies of Shakespeare, the plays of Ibsen and Strindberg, the work of Beckett and Brecht and O’Neill and Shepard.)

The hidden assumption in Nicola’s position is that the community has a right to insist on what amounts to veto power. His view that the beliefs and values of the community must be served inverts the very relationship that makes art the conscience of its community. Mr. Nicola states that he made his decision after polling local Jewish religious and community leaders as to their feelings about the work. Why was this done? The first thing any serious theatre must do is proclaim its autonomy -- especially from religious and political leaders. There is a simple way one does so: one does not poll anyone. Moreover, the minute one feels the temptation to do so one knows one thing for sure: the play one is thinking of producing is something that the community needs.

There is of course something disingenuous here. One can imagine the travails of running a theatre in Peoria, Illinois or Columbia, South Carolina. But here the community is no less than The Big Apple itself -- one of the three major theatre centers in the World. Or is it? Mr. Nicola says he was less worried about those who would see the show than by those who would not. This is a fascinating development. Shows now are and will be cancelled not because the people who come to the theatre don’t like them but because the people who don’t attend won’t.

(B) With respect to the second. The deeper error derives from Mr. Nicola’s second assumption, the belief that some way must be found to separate art and politics. By his own account his initial assumption that NYTW could present this play “simply as a work of art without appearing to take a position was a fantasy.” But the separation of art and politics is a bogus one, especially for a theatre with the stated mission of NYTW. Mr. Nicola bewails the fact that he didn’t have time to create an environment “where the art could be heard independent of the political issues associated with it.” It is hard to imagine a clearer case of wanting to have one’s cake and eat it too; i.e., of wanting to proclaim that one’s theatre is politically daring while assuring oneself that one will never face a situation where this daring isn’t safe and acceptable to the community.

For Nicola presenting the work “with the integrity it deserves” requires removing it from the political context that is essential to it. This play, after all, is about how and why Rachel Corrie lived her life and died the way she did. By falling back on an aesthetics of preserving art qua art as a defense Nicola has allowed a bulldozer to be dragged back and forth across his theatre, but he is too blinded by an archaic aesthetic to realize it; or at least to admit that separating art and politics is antithetical to a theatre dedicated to exploring the “political and historical events and institutions that shape contemporary life.” At the very least NYTW should remove this statement from the next edition of Dramatists Sourcebook.

I’m sure that Rachel Corrie would be glad to hear that the artistic quality of her words is being preserved from the taint of politics and that the beauty of her prose transcends the political context in which she penned her impassioned commitment to an ethic of human responsibility.

In fairness to Nicola we must include reference to the particular events that he cites as the reasons why production of this play was deemed inappropriate at this time. Those events: the electoral victory of Hamas and the illness of Ariel Sharon. One can, of course, always find the current event that warrants postponing or canceling a production but the ones cited by Nicola are especially significant. Let me see if I have this right: My Name is Rachel Corrie must be postponed because the Palestinian people exercised their democratic right in a way that “we” find repugnant and coincidentally at about the same time that the career of one of the primary architects of the apartheid conditions under which they live ended. If this is the wrong time for a play to reexamine the issues here one wonders when the right time will be.

Whether he knows it or not Nicola has defended his decision by embracing a theory of art and its relationship to politics that has been refuted by virtually every literary theorist since the demise of the new criticism in the early ‘60s. The split between art and politics is, in fact, the primary gesture whereby ideology tries to impose limitations on art. Fortunately, since religion is behind this whole fiasco the best example of this fallacy comes to us from religious quarters. Many College and University English Departments feature a course called The Bible as Literature. Such courses -- and the textbooks such as Alter and Kermode’s The Literary Guide to the Bible (Harvard UP, 1987) that provide their theoretical rationale -- rest on an impossible dichotomy. The idea, you see, is that it is one thing to believe that the Bible is the revealed word of God and to read it in that spirit. But one can also supposedly read the Bible in a purely literary fashion, paying attention to all the aesthetic qualities found in the great march of Biblical prose. Belief has nothing to do with this “reading.” In fact, belief is precisely what must be bracketed or put aside in order to perform this operation. Contra right-wing pundits, we thus need have no fear that such courses will undermine the faith of our children nor that those who teach such courses will be deluged with in class proclamations of student’s religious dogmas or (perish the thought) their desire to question what they’ve been forced to believe. All that is conveniently put aside as out of place when we discuss the Bible as Literature. The larger ideological purpose is thereby served. The Bible can never be discussed in the way it should be -- as a work full of psychological disorders that need to be confronted as such.

IV. The Cartoons Made Me Do It

Religion is, of course, what the suppression of My Name is Rachel Corrie is all about. Nicola’s decision can in fact be seen as the first fallout from the recent cartoon fiasco. The failure then to do the right thing and publish the cartoons in all our newspapers and other media now reverberates in the suppression of a far more substantial work of art. As Art Spiegelman (the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Maus, the cartoon narrative about the holocaust) noted in the latest issue of The Nation (March 6, 2006), the cartoons should have been published widely or, failing that, our media should have admitted their cowardice. Moreover, Spiegelman takes the correct position in anticipation of the forthcoming anti-semitic cartoons: “There has to be a right to insult. You can’t always have polite discourse. I am insulted (by anti-Semitic cartoons). But so what?”

Read More
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar06/Davis07.htm