Drama Class Discussion

THE PLAY

Synopsis When Sholem Asch wrote his play The God of Vengeance in 1906, he was twenty-six years old. Dedicated, like many other Jewish authors of his time, to preserving and fostering the Yiddish language, his first stop when trying to give the play life was a salon at the home of I.L. Peretz, a Yiddish writer and scholar. Peretz famously told the young Asch to destroy it, “Burn it, Asch, burn it.” Asch’s play tells the story of Yekel, a brothel owner who lives with his wife (a former member of the brothel) above the brothel. Yekel’s life’s desire is to preserve his daughter, Rifkele, from any harm; to mold her into the perfect maiden, a spotless candidate for marriage to a scholar (“A sweetheart, — a golden one. A

wonderful student, of a fine family.” Sarah, The God of Vengeance). To that end, he commissions the writing of a Torah scroll – a sacred and expensive task – so that he can hang it in his daughter’s room for protection. What Yekel doesn’t count on is the developing love between Rifkele and Manke, one of the prostitutes in his brothel.

Paula Vogel’s Indecent tells the story of the original productions of The God of Vengeance, ranging from its premiere at the respected Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1907, through celebrated European productions and finally a staging in the United States. It is only with a production in English in 1923 on Broadway that the trouble begins.

After complaints filed by a local respected rabbi, the play is shut down and the producer, director and some of the actors are charged with obscenity. Indecent merges fact and fiction around a theater company, their personal stories, and ultimately their sacrifice for the art they hold so dear. A play with music, Indecent combines the high entertainment of Yiddish theater with the heartbreak of the loss of art and culture for an entire people.

Photo: Ben Cherry as Lemml (Dan Norman)

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THE PLAYWRIGHT

Theatre, Dallas Theatre Berkeley Repertory, and Alley Theatres to name a few. Harrogate Theatre and the Donmar Theatre have produced her work in England.

Her plays have been produced in Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand as well as translated and produced in Italy, Germany, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia, Romania, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Poland Slovenia, Canada, Portugal, France, Greece, Japanese, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Brazil and other countries. John Simon once remarked that Paula Vogel had more awards than a “black sofa collects lint.” Some of these include Induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame, Thornton Wilder Award, Lifetime Achievement from the Dramatists Guild, the William Inge Award, the Elliott Norton Award, two Obies, a Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the PEN/Laura Pels Award, a TCG residency award, a

Paula Vogel has written How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize, New York Drama Critics Award, Obie Award, Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and many more.) Other plays include A Civil War Christmas, The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, Hot ‘n’ Throbbin, The Baltimore Waltz, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven and The Oldest Profession.

Her plays have been produced by Second Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, the Vineyard Theatre, Roundabout, and Circle Repertory Company. Her plays have been produced regionally all over the country at the Center Stage, Intiman, Trinity Repertory, Woolly Mammoth, Huntington Theatre, Magic Theatre, The Goodman Theatre, American Repertory

On Paula Vogel

Guggenheim, a Pew Charitable Trust Award, and fellowships and residencies at Sundance Theatre Lab, Hedgebrook, The Rockefeller Center’s Bellagio Center, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Bunting. But she is particularly proud of her Thirtini Award from 13P, and honored by three Awards in her name: the Paula Vogel Award for playwrights given by the Vineyard Theatre, the Paula Vogel Award from the American College Theatre Festival, and the Paula Vogel mentorship program, curated by Quiara Hudes and Young Playwrights of Philadelphia.

Official biography:

http://paulavogelplaywright.com/about/

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Paula Vogel on Indecent

THE PLAYWRIGHT

I don’t think of this as a grim play; I think about it as a love story in terrible times. If we love music and theatre and the arts, if we take solace in people sitting beside us in the theatre, if we do what is in our hearts, I think there is light for us. I think the power of us being together in a community gives us light through the darkness. I’m writing this play because, regardless of what I’ve witnessed in my life, I’ve never been sorry that I’ve spent my life in the theatre. I think the power of art is the power to wound our memory. I think the power of art is a way for us to change our world view. I think art is our spiritual bread that we break together.

“An Interview with the Playwright: Paula Vogel on Indecent,”

Vineyard Theatre, 2016

Paula Vogel, whose father was Jewish, says she first decided to write Indecent, part of which depicts a theatre troupe during the Holocaust, when she realized that young people today may never meet a survivor. Those young people, she explains, represent “a generation that is now growing up that doesn’t have that direct access to memory.” Yet over the

course of the show’s mountings so far, beginning in 2015 in a co-production at Connecticut’s Yale Repertory Theatre and California’s La Jolla Playhouse and followed by a 2016 Off-Broadway run prior to its Broadway bow last year, she has seen audiences’ relationship to the piece change.

“As every day goes by into the Trump administration, the parallels—which seemed at first perhaps a little pat, a little convenient—between the Weimar Republic and what’s happening to our democracy don’t seem as metaphorical anymore,” Vogel says. “The rise in hate speech, the white nationalism that we’re witnessing now, is something no one is ignoring.” These developments, Vogel says, mean the play affects younger theatregoers more than she anticipated, in particular “how much it resonates with current first-generation Americans, who may be Latino/Latina, Asian—in other words, audiences who really are the first generation to be called American.”

Russell M. Dembin, “Outsiders of Long Standing,” American Theatre,

March, 2018.

Photo: the cast of Indecent (Dan Norman)

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What was the seed of Indecent ? I read Sholem Asch’s play God of Vengeance when I was 23 years old, and I was astonished by it. In 1906, Sholem Asch was brave enough to write that Jews are no different than Catholics or Buddhists or people of any religion, in

terms of having people in the tribe who may sell religion for a profit, or who are hypocrites. That’s a very hard thing for a man to do, especially in a time of burgeoning anti-Semitism. Then add in the play’s compassionate understanding of the powerlessness of women in that time and place — Asch is a young married man, in a very early work, writing the most astonishing love story between two women and it makes a pretty compelling play to read and perform.

Many years later, in 2000, I saw Rebecca Taichman’s MFA Thesis production at Yale, which interwove the text of God of Vengeance with the transcript of the 1923 obscenity trial against the play in New York. I thought it was a fascinating idea. Flash forward to five years ago, when I got a phone call from Rebecca asking me to be involved. It took me thirty seconds to say yes.

Why do you think God of Vengeance had such an impact in its time? God of Vengeance is set in a brothel run by a Jewish man who is attempting to raise his daughter piously, and it features a lesbian love story. When it was performed in New York in 1923, there was deep concern within the Jewish community about what Christians would think. “Do you dare to say this in public? Do you dare to show this in public?” It did exactly what plays should do — it provoked people into talking. God of Vengeance traveled all over the world, and then it was closed down on Broadway. Today, nearly 100 years after it was shut down, it needs to be produced and talked about still — playwrights and new plays should bite the hand that feeds them, and that is what this play did.

Can you think of a contemporary play that has provoked similar outrage? The plays that I admire, and the playwrights that I admire, are not shying away from the complexity of racism, bias, sexism and the things that hurt us. I’d point to An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. That is a play that has an insider/outsider perspective. A musical I thought was astonishing was The Scottsboro Boys. It’s a brilliant, virulent show and I’m glad The Vineyard’s production succeeded in London but it tells me a lot that it wasn’t as well-received on Broadway. We are no different than the audiences who sat and watched God of Vengeance.

Can you talk about your collaborative process with Rebecca Taichman? When Rebecca brought me into this project, I didn’t see this as a play about the obscenity trial, as her thesis project had been; as an older writer, there was a larger story that I engage in. About a fiery young playwright — not just Asch, but me, too — ignored for decades and then embraced by students. Rebecca was open and generous and allowed me to explore my ideas. I knew right from the beginning that I wanted music and a klezmer band, and Rebecca brought on composers, dancers and a choreographer. We talked over every page that I wrote; she showed me things in her staging that opened up the play for me and vice versa. She is an extraordinary, open- hearted collaborator.

INTERVIEW WITH THE PLAYWRIGHT

PAULA VOGEL By Miriam Weiner, Vineyard Theatre From: https://www.vineyardtheatre.org/interview-playwright-paula-vogel-indecent/

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You mentioned music, which plays an important role in this play. Did you know from the beginning how important music would be to the piece? Every piece I write starts with music. I can’t write until I have a specific soundtrack that correlates to the emotional journey of the play. Even plays like Baltimore Waltz and How I Learned to Drive have a complete score to them. So, right from the beginning, I had songs selected to write to, though not every song on my writing soundtrack makes it onto the page; sometimes, as the play changes, I spend hours finding a new song to match. As a writer, I don’t think that anything I can write has the power that music does. I’m happiest in the rehearsal room when beautiful voices start singing.

What do you think Sholem Asch would make of Indecent ? I’m not sure what he’d think. I think Indecent respects him and respects his work and, most of all, feels a great empathy with the kind of pain he felt as a Jewish, Yiddish writer born at the beginning of the 20th century and going through the hideous events of that time. Indecent asks, how do you write in a hideous time? How do you stay true to yourself? What happens if you censor the work that is telling the truth?

How do you see those questions in terms of the theatre today? So many times we reach for the “classics” to produce; and meanwhile, there are brilliant Americans of color, women and political writers who, by and large, are kept off stage or out of the spotlight. This can only mean that our discourse will continue to break down. The isolation that America experienced before our world wars was very detrimental and we are at a point right now where we have politicians endorsing the same sort of isolation. I see it as a very dangerous time, the most divisive moment in politics in my lifetime.

I do think we have an astonishing generation of voices right now. In terms of younger artists, this is the best time to write, act, and direct. It’s never been more important. Hopefully I’ve encouraged fellow writers and younger writers who will make people feel differently about the world we all inhabit.

Ultimately, what do you hope the audience will take away from Indecent ? I don’t think of this as a grim play; I think about it as a love story in terrible times. If we love music and theatre and the arts, if we take solace in people sitting beside us in the theatre, if we do what is in our hearts, I think there is light for us. I think the power of us being together in a community gives us light through the darkness. I’m writing this play because, regardless of what I’ve witnessed in my life, I’ve never been sorry that I’ve spent my life in the theatre. I think the power of art is the power to wound our memory. I think the power of art is a way for us to change our world view. I think art is our spiritual bread that we break together.

DID YOU KNOW? • 1907 was the busiest

year in the history of Ellis Island, with 1.1 million immigrants entering the U.S. from the island.

• 109 years after Sholem Asch wrote God of Vengeance, same sex marriages were legalized in all 50 states by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on June 26, 2015.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Prejudice specifically against Jewish people.

COSSACK Refers to one from southern Russia or the Ukraine.

EUGENE O’NEILL Famous Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright.

FARSHTINKENEH Yiddish word for “stinking”; a rotten person.

GELT Yiddish word for “money” (often associated with chocolate coins given at Hanukkah).

GOD OF VENGEANCE 1907 play by Sholem Asch. The American mounting of which is the subject of Indecent. Marked as obscene for its portrayal of a lesbian romance.

GOYIM A Hebrew word used in the Jewish community for Non-Jewish people.

CHUPPAH Canopy under which a Jewish couple stands during their wedding.

KETUBAH A Jewish prenuptial agreement setting the responsibilities of the groom to the bride.

MESSIAH The prophesied savior of the Jewish people.

MINYAN The group of ten Jewish adults required to perform certain religious practices and prayers. Historically it must consist of men, ages 13 and over. Some modern synagogues accept women as members of a minyan.

RABBI A Jewish scholar/expert on Jewish law; often the leader of a Jewish congregation.

RUDOLPH SCHILDKRAUT Famous Austrian actor and member of the original 1923 American cast of God of Vengeance.

SHOLEM ASCH Polish-Jewish playwright and novelist; writer of God of Vengeance.

SHTETL Yiddish term for a small Jewish village or town in Central and Eastern Europe.

TORAH The holy text of the Jewish faith.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

For help with the pronunciation of some of the glossary words visit: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/

ABOUT YIDDISH Yiddish was first used by the Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. At that time they were forced to live in segregated communities, were not permitted to own property and worked menial jobs. It was in these segregated neighborhoods that Yiddish was created. It was originally a German dialect with words from Hebrew and several modern languages and is today spoken mainly in the US, Israel, and Russia.

TRUE OR FALSE? Q. Yiddish is the nickname for Hebrew, which is the official language of

Jewish people.

A. ________

Q. Individuals immigrating into the United States in 2018 face different issues from immigrants in the 1900s.

A. ________

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ABOUT GOD OF VENGEANCE Young playwrights committed to preserving the Yiddish language often had their plays read at salon (a cultural gathering) at the home of Yiddish writer and scholar, I.L. Perets.

In 1906, 26-year-old writer Sholem Asch followed that tradition when he wrote Got fun nekome (God of Vengeance). After the reading, Peretz instructed the young playwright to destroy the play. Ironically, God of Vengeance was the first Yiddish language play to be translated and staged across Europe. Asch’s play was translated into Russian, Polish, Hebrew, English, Italian, French, Dutch, Czech, Swedish, and Norwegian.

In 1912, the Moscow branch of cinema firm, Pathé Frères, released a silent film of Got fun nekome (The God of Vengeance) with Russian subtitles. Unfortunately, the film is presumed lost.

The original Broadway cast of God of Vengeance

Original photo from 1907 production at The Deutches Theatre in Berlin. The People vs. The God of Vengeance, from Yale School of Drama by Rebecca Taichman.

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AN OPEN LETTER FROM

SHOLEM ASCH From: https://yiddishstage.org/an-open-letter-by-sholom-asch-author-of-got-fun-nekome

Because of the wrong interpretation of my play, God of Vengeance, now running at the Apollo Theatre, I wish to make the following statement:

I wrote this play when I was twenty-one years of age. I was not concerned whether I wrote a moral or immoral play. What I wanted to write was an artistic play and a true one. In the seventeen years it has been before the public, this is the first time I have had to defend it.

When the play was first produced, the critics in Germany, Russia, and other countries, said that it was too artistically moral. They said that for a man like “Yekel Shepshovitch,” keeper of a brothel, to idealize his daughter, to accept no compromise with her respectability, and for girls like Basha and Raizel, filles de joie, to dream about their dead mother, their home, and to revel in the spring rain, was unnatural. About two years ago I was approached by New York producers for permission to present the play in English. I refused, since I did not believe the American public was either sufficiently interested or adequately instructed to accept God of Vengeance.

I don’t know whether I can explain the real feeling I wanted to put into this play. It is difficult for an author to comment on his own work. As to the scenes between Manka and Rifkele, on every European stage, especially the Russian, they were the most poetic of all, and the critics of those countries appreciated this poetic view. This love between the two girls is not only an erotic one. It is the unconscious mother love of which they are deprived. The action portrays the love of the woman-mother, who is Manka, for the woman-child, who is Rifkele, rather than the sensuous, inverted love of one woman for another. In this particular scene, I also wanted to bring out the innocent, longing for sin, and the sinful, dreaming of purity. Manka, overweighed with sin, loves the clean soul of Rifkele, and Rifkele, the innocent young girl, longs to stay near the door of such a woman as Manka, and listen within.

As to the comment that the play is a reflection on the Jewish race, I want to say that I resent the statement that God of Vengeance is a play against the Jews. No Jew until now has considered it harmful to the Jew. It is included in the repertoire of every Jewish stage in the world and has been presented more frequently than any other play.

God of Vengeance is not a typical “Jewish play.” A “Jewish play” is a play where Jews are specially characterized for the benefit of the Gentiles. I am not such a “Jewish” writer. I write, and incidentally my types are Jewish for of all peoples they are the ones I know best. God of Vengeance is not a milieu play — it is a play with an idea. Call “Yekel” John, and instead of the Holy Scroll place in his hand the crucifix, and the play will be then as much Christian, as it is now Jewish.

The fact that it has been played in countries where there are few Jews, Italy for instance, and that there the Gentiles understood it for what it is, proves that it is not local in character, but universal. The most marked Jewish reaction in the play is the longing of “Yekel Shepshovitch” for a cleaner and purer life. This is characteristically Jewish. I don’t believe a man of any other race placed in “Yekel’s” position would have acted as he did in the tragedy that has befallen his daughter.

Jews do not need to clear themselves before any one. They are as good and as bad as any race. I see no reason why a Jewish writer should not bring out the bad or good traits. I think that the apologetic writer, who tries to place Jews in a false, even though white light, does them more harm than good in the eyes of the Gentiles. I have written so many Jewish characters who are good and noble, that I can not now, when writing of a “bad” one, make an exception and say that he is a Gentile.

—Sholem Asch

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

For Further Reading and Understanding

Adelson, Alan, Lodz Ghetto: a community history told in diaries, journals and documents, Viking Press, 1989.

Asch, Sholem, The God of Vengeance, Nabu Press, 2014.

Asch, The Nazarene: a Novel based on the Life of Christ, Carrol and Graf, 1996.

Curtin, Kaier, We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians: the Emergence of Lesbians and Gay Men on the American Stage, Alyson Books, 1987.

Dobroszycki, Dr. Lucjan, The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, 1941- 1944, Yale University Press, 1984.

Eisenstein, Bernice, Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2015.

Flam, Gila, Singing for Survival: The Songs of the Lodz Ghetto, 1940-45, University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Hertz, Alexander, The Jews in Polish Culture, Northwestern University Press, 1988.

Hoffman, Warren, The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture, Syracuse University Press, 2009.

Houchin, John H., Censorship of the American Theatre in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Hunter, Marcella, Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2007.

Johnson, Katie N., Sisters in Sin: Brothel Drama in America, 1900- 1920, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Nahshon, Edna, New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway, Columbia University Press, 2016.

Raphael, Marc Lee, Judaism in America, Columbia University Press; 2003.

Sandrow, Nahma, Vagabond Stars: a world of Yiddish Theater Syracuse University Press, 1996.

Siegel, Ben, The Controversial Sholem Asch: an introduction to his fiction, Popular Press, 1976.

Weber, Ilse, Dancing on a Powderkeg: The Intimate Voice of a Young Mother and Author, Her Letters Composed in The Lengthening Shadow of Hitler’s Third Reich, Her Poems from the Theresienstadt Ghetto, Bunim & Bannigan Ltd. in association with Yad Vashem, 2017.

Vogel, Paula, Indecent, Theatre Communications Group, 2017.

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