More Seven Jewish Children Coverage

This time from the Washington Post. Peter Marks certainly seems to have attended a provocative evening of theatre. I also find it interesting that Seven Jewish Children is apparently so (insert word here... powerful/hateful/dangerous/provocative/stupid/anti-semitic/reductive/brilliant/searing/terrible/controversial/whatever you want will do but whatever it it is so that) that it has to be surrounded by:

(A) A speech twice its length from the artistic director about his conflicts in putting on the piece

(B) THREE separate response plays written in a parody of its style expressing contrary viewpoints

(C) A professor who was saved from the Holocaust by fleeing to Palestine to rail against it

Does that seem a little extreme to anyone else? I don't think having other plays expressing another viewpoint is bad. I didn't even find the Corrie counter-programming bad on principal if it was handled well, as it seems to have been in this case. But when roughly one sixth of the performance is the title show and then five sixths of it are things arguing against it...that just seems a bit extreme to me. Clearly, conversation came out of it,  but 

I was also wondering, anyone who was there, or Peter Marks, if you're reading: Were the actual issues of Israel and Palestine discussed? Everything in the article is about the play, I'm just wondering if the whole conversation was about the play or not?

Comments

[marilyn]

Peter Marks should read this:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090413/kushner_solomon?rel=hp_picks

[Ian Thal]

What surprises me (and perhaps I don't appreciate Caryl Churchill's stature in British theatre) is not how such an intellectually facile script comes to be written, or that it has its defenders, but how such an intellectually facile script warrants so much attention from within the world of theatre and theatre journalism.

It's the attention that the theatres and journalists have accorded it that created the responses.