A bunch of British theater professionals – actors, stage directors, playwrights etc, published a protest letter (of course in The Guardian) regarding the invitation extended by the Globe to Israeli national theater Habima.
Interestingly enough, their demand to exclude Habima from the Globe to Globe festival is based on what they call "policies of exclusion practised by the Israeli state". Go figure...
As for the chief reason for excluding Habima, they say the following:
Last year, two large Israeli settlements established "halls of culture" and asked Israeli theatre groups to perform there. A number of Israeli theatre professionals – actors, stage directors, playwrights – declared they would not take part.Of course, in their righteous wrath, authors of the letter don't mention the way Habima deals with the issue (by allowing each person to decide on his/her own participation according to his/her beliefs). Oh well, this would be too much to expect, I guess.
Habima, however, accepted the invitation with alacrity, and promised the Israeli minister of culture that it would "deal with any problems hindering such performances".
A side question to the bunch of hypocrites: how many of them refuse to appear in the occupied Northern Ireland (to take one example)?
4 comments:
I notice a number of the usual suspects in this list: Caryl Churchill, Trevor Griffiths, Mike Leigh (whatever happened to the boy from Habonim, I wonder), Miriam Marogyles, Alexei Sayle. There are some disappointing names in the list as well: David Aukin. We knew him when he was Artistic Director of the Leicester Haymarket Theatre, when our children were of an age, growing up together and going to the locally Maccabi. Interesting to note that Mrs Aukin (the Director Nancy Meckler) isn't a signatory.
I knew, from his writings, that Richard Wilson was left-wing. I just didn't realise that he was that type of left-winger.
I suspect that for some of the signatories the principle of "no such thing as bad publicity" will be the guiding one. But who knows...
Blowing in the wind...barking dogs...there will always be some self hating Jews criticizing from the comfort of their armchairs. how many of them have ever been to israel? Culture here is flourishes and will continue to do so.
Some of them, even if you take them to Israel, will hardly change their minds.
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