The Decibel - Debate around Israel-Hamas war collides with Canadian theatre

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Online petitions. Angry in-person meetings. An ultimatum. These are just a few of the events that lead to a Canadian play being pulled from Victoria’s Belfry Theatre and Vancouver’s PuSh Festival.The Globe’s theatre critic, J. Kelly Nestruck, explains how this play – The Runner – wound up at the centre of a controversy about a war half a world away.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

What you see when the show begins is a man running in the dark. He's on a stage that's actually made up of a treadmill, and he's running and running and running, and trying to figure out where he is, what's going on, who he is. Jay Kelly-Nestrock is the Globe's theater critic. He's describing a play called The Runner. It's very thrilling because of the staging, this constant motion in the dark. There's these lights that come at him from either side. The treadmill is often going faster and faster when things get more anxious in a scene. And then sometimes it will stop suddenly and he'll fall over or he'll

be jerked backwards. It's a one-man play written by Canadian Christopher Morris. It debuted in 2018. It's a guy named Jacob, and he works for an organization in Israel called Zaka that is first on the scene of all sorts of tragedies from accidents to terror attacks. And he is part of a team that both attends to the wounded and performs a task of picking up the bodies of Jewish victims of various forms of violence and making sure that the entire body can be buried together according to Jewish law. Since the October 7th attack in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, this Canadian play has been drawn into controversy. So he's having a flashback to this moment where he arrived on a scene and there's an Israeli soldier who has been stabbed and is dead. And he sees what he describes as an Arab woman, an Arab girl lying on the ground, bleeding out, and she herself is wounded. And he makes the decision to go and save this Arab girl's life by performing CPR and other medical attention. And this is a decision that will

change the course of his life as we discover over the course of the rest of the play. Today, Kelly is on the show to explain how this play became a part of the tensions in Canada's arts community amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Kelly, welcome to the show. Thanks, Mainika. Nice to be here. Kelly, what is it then about this specific play, The Runner, that's landed it at kind of the center of a controversy, really, in Canada's theatre world? Well, this show has been around since 2018 and has been performed all over the country to great acclaim. And then the Israel-Hamas war began and suddenly people started to view the

play through a different lens. And that led first a theater company in Victoria called the Belfry to cancel a scheduled presentation of it. In January, it was supposed to go on at the Push Festival in Vancouver, a big international performing arts festival, an important one. And at first they stood behind it, said it's going ahead despite what the Belfry did. And then eventually they did cancel it themselves, which has led to a petition to boycott the festival. And a lot of people are upset about that. It's pretty unusual for a show to be canceled in the wake of sort of online petitions and threats of protests.

And there was even talk in Vancouver that people were buying tickets in order to go to the show and be disrupted in some way. Or maybe, I don't know. We don't actually know what they were intending to do. They may have been planning to stand up at the beginning and make a statement, or they may have been planning to stand up at the beginning and make a statement,

or they may have been planning to disrupt the actual performance of the show. And just to be clear, it was scheduled at both of these festivals before October. Yeah, well, usually theater companies plan their programming, you know, sometimes years in advance, but definitely this sort of BC tour of this show must be in the works since well before October 7th. And with this, I guess, specifically with the issue of Israel-Hamas, like, I guess, have we seen situations in Canada where it's kind of spilled over into Canada's theater world? Yeah, absolutely. Artists are very politically involved and people also see art events as an opportunity to make public statements and as a site for protest. So we saw that at the Scotiabank Giller Prize Gala this fall where protesters held up signs saying it was against the sponsor, Scotiabank, and their investments in an Israeli arms firm. Okay, so Kelly, let's dig into the specifics of the story around The Runner.

Let's start with the theater, The Belfry, which you talked about out in Victoria. What happened there? Well, a group of people, activists, artists, sort of put together a letter calling for the theater company to not present The Runner. Then there was a community meeting that was convened at the theater in order to discuss this. I don't really know what happened to that meeting because I wasn't there. And the folks who run the Belfry won't speak to me or any journalist since they canceled the play. But, you know, by other accounts, it was quite acrimonious. There were different views aired. And afterwards, the theater was spray painted with words free palestine

and also sort of covered in stickers um so in january it announced uh that it was canceling the runner and the reasons were given that doing so at this particular time does not ensure the well-being of all segments of our community and that it was a play that may further tensions among our community, given the current conflict in the Middle East. Okay, so then what happened at the Push Festival? Well, the Push Festival, when the Belfry canceled, initially came out and said, we don't necessarily agree with the way that the show is described. This show has no financial connection to Israel. And was that one of the criticisms then? Yeah, I think some people thought, you know, one of the misapprehensions was that this was an Israeli play

or that it was an Israeli company rather than it being a Canadian company about an Israeli character and other Israeli characters and indeed Palestinian characters as well. One of the challenges at this moment is there are people who ascribe to the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement. And so from that point of view, you wouldn't put on a play from Israel or a production from Israel right now because you want to boycott that sort of thing in order to put pressure on Israel to behave differently. But you said, sorry, this is not actually an Israeli play then, it sounds like?

Yeah. So the truth is that this is a Canadian play. Christopher Morris is Canadian. He went to Israel a number of times to research, including into the occupied territories. And while he was there, he was told by the Canadian embassy to reach out to a theater company called Nefesh Theater that's run by a Canadian Israeli or an Israeli Canadian. So he met up with the person who runs Nefesh and they helped him in terms of, you know, putting him in contact with people to talk to, telling him where to stay, that sort of thing. But there's no financial investment from that company there. However, because he had worked with this guy there and got advice from him, Christopher Morris decided to credit him in terms of saying it was a collaboration with Nefesh Theater. So that's, I think, where the misapprehension began, that it was an Israeli production. Okay.

Okay, so earlier in January, the Belfry says we're not going to show The Runner. Push Festival initially says we're still going to show this show. But what happened after that, you know, they feel like the relationship to Israel has been downplayed. And the other argument is about the fact that the Palestinian characters in the play don't have any names. There's violence perpetuated by Palestinian people in the show that's depicted or referenced rather, because it's really a stream of consciousness monologue. And that this is sort of dehumanizing. You know, there's a valid element to that critique, which is, you know, there's a long history of Western writers writing about Arab characters and not giving them names. When you think of Albert Camus' L'Etranger, like that would be

sort of the text that people reference all the time. And it's sort of a continual thing, you know, like Arab people don't have names. And then, you know, other the Westerners or the Israeli characters do have names. And there's sort of, you know, an argument that that others, Palestinian people and other Arab people. We'll be back in a moment. So what exactly did Push do in response to that? So it sounds like they'd originally said, well, we're still going to run this show. But then they were starting to get this feedback, essentially, from different people in the artistic community. So what do they do in response? Yeah, so there's pressure going on behind the scenes for different, you know, one of the things to understand about Push is it organizes all of its productions with different companies in Vancouver. So there's a lot of pressure points.

And activists were approaching not just Push, but individual co-producers of the festival, telling them, we think you should pull out of this festival. Push on its own is responding and saying, you know, we are a festival. We have a lot of different voices. They write a blog post about generative friction through programming plurality, which is basically saying, you know, like, maybe there are some arguments that The Runner is not the absolute best show to go on at this time. But there are other shows that sort of illuminate other aspects of life around the world, including that of Palestinians. And they point to a show called Dear Layla by a British-based Palestinian artist named Basil Zahra. It's an art installation, sort of one-on-one interaction. You go into

a room behind a curtain and you see a maquette, like a little model of his childhood home where he grew up in a refugee camp in Syria. And so that's what the Push Festival says is why they're keeping this show around. I guess then what happens as a result of that? There continues to be pressure to pull the runner. And then Basil Zahra talks to them and says, you know, this is the Palestinian artist who has that Dear Layla show. Exactly. So he says, you know, Israel's genocide in Gaza continues. He characterizes it as a genocide. He says, I cannot agree for Dear Layla to be shown alongside the runner because it reinforces dehumanizing narratives about Palestinians.

So, he feels that it doesn't give enough context for what's going on. He talks about Israel's occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. So, he's saying, I don't want my art installation to be in the festival if the runner is in it at this time, given what's going on in the world. So it's one or the others is basically what he was saying. Yeah, essentially. And so they decided to pull the play saying that at this moment in time, it makes more sense to given this situation, show something that reflects the lived experience of that part of the world where the war is going on, rather than The Runner, which is written by a guy who has no

connections to the region whatsoever. You know, he researched the show in Israel. He spent a lot of time working on this show, but he has no religious or cultural ties to the region. So, given that, we should highlight this Palestinian voice right now. But, you know, they do say they would, you know, they tried to do all they could to keep both in the festival. So it sounds like, I mean, the festival kind of had pressure from the artistic community, still said they were going to run the show. But when this Palestinian artist, Basil Zahra, essentially said it's either my show or The Runner, the Push Festival said, OK, we're going to have to drop the runner. Yeah. Now, I haven't been able to talk to Mr. Zara, but some of the people who were involved in co-presenting that show, Boca del Lupo is one of the companies, Pandemic Theater is the other. My impression from conversations with them is that part of the reason why he felt this urge to pull out was that he had been brought into the conversation in direct

contrast to the runner, and he was uncomfortable with that through that blog post about generative friction. That is something that actually the director of programming at Push told me that she regretted doing. But, you know, Basil Zara lives over in the UK, and she said she tried to get in touch with him for a period of time and didn't get in touch with him until after the blog post. Anyway, it's hard to get everyone on the same page in a festival where you've got hundreds of artists from all around the world. Yeah. Kelly, let's talk a little bit more about the runner and Christopher Morris, who wrote this show. Do we know why he decided to look at this

topic of Israelis and Palestinians? I mean, especially from this perspective of a volunteer who, as you said, recovers body parts after violent incidents. Why did he want to write about that? Christopher Morris told me that he's always, he's for a long time had an interest in this group, Zaka. And he did this very unusual and interesting organization and controversial organization. Most of his plays have some sort of Canadian component, the sort of intercultural production. You know, he did one about the war in Afghanistan called Dust and involved sort of a perspective from Petawawa and then also perspectives from Afghans and also from Pakistani actress in that show as well. He was always interested in Zaka,

but then he found the focus for his play when they changed their triage procedures so that when they arrived at the scene of a terrorist attack, they would no longer treat casualties based on the severity of their wounds, but focus on the victims or who they perceived to be the victims of the attack before treating anyone who had been involved in the attack, the perpetrators of the attack. So instead of treating whoever needed the most help,

it's basically they would treat the victims first was the policy. Exactly. And that's not the usual triage code. And the Israel Medical Association told them, no, you have to do it this way. And they said, no, we're going to do it this way. And that was very controversial. So that's kind of what's at the heart of the show is a character who's been a longtime volunteer. And then he's faced with this situation

where he responds in a human way and treats a Palestinian girl first, despite his own biases. Like he sort of wrestles with it through the rest of the play. And do we know, what has Christopher Morris said about Push Festival's choice to cancel his show? Well, he said, you know, he sort of ultimately kind of understood what was, why they made the decision that they did and felt that he had been cared for by the people there.

But he did say it's unsettling when Canadian theaters cannot be a space for the public to engage in a dynamic exchange of ideas. I believe theater must be a place where contrasting perspectives are programmed and celebrated. Just on the subject of this show and its connection to Israel. He said, not a penny of money from Israel or an Israeli has ever gone to me or my company for this show or anything else that Human Cargo, that's his theater company, has ever done, full stop. You were actually at the festival. You had a chance to see Basil Zara's installation at Push, Kelly. Can you just tell me, what was that experience of that installation called Dear Layla? What was that experience like for you? It's a beautiful little piece of art that involves sort of an interactive element.

So you walk into this room behind a curtain, there's a desk and this dollhouse version of where he grew up. He was born in a refugee camp in Syria, a Palestinian refugee camp. And he grew up there and And you sort of turn over these little cards. It's addressed to his daughter, who is five years old, named Layla. And he's talking to the individual audience member as if he's talking to his daughter and saying, you've been asking about where I grew up, where I'm from, and why I can't show you. And then he goes on to talk about where his family was from before and then growing up in this refugee camp. And then this house that slowly went from one

floor to three floors, the pigeons that were raised on the roof, the time that he and a couple of his siblings got their own room and his attachment to the space. And you also open up a drawer, you see a family photo album of sort of life being lived in a refugee camp. And it's quite beautiful and sort of challenges your idea of displacement. You know, we're living in a time where there's unprecedented displacement of peoples all around the world due to all sorts of conflicts, including the one in Gaza right now. And to sort of like reflect on the place within displacement for me was quite quite illuminating at this time and I thought it was quite a moving piece but the reception of it is challenging when you when you think about what he said before about not wanting to show

in the festival that I think if he saw it and he saw it in production, he might not feel the same way about, though, you know, who knows. Just to end here, Kelly, of course, as the Globe's longtime theater critic, I guess I'm just wondering what you make of all this. Like, what do you make of this controversy in terms of, I guess, the role of art in these big global conflicts? Yeah, it's a big question. You know, I think a lot of people are concerned about something that they call cancel culture. And I think this sort of fits into the idea of that, which is that we're becoming a society

where ideas can't be expressed everywhere all the time as we would like them to. And I think there's an element of that here for sure. It's, for me, I see a real challenge facing arts organizations in general as they face these calls from different communities and different perspectives to reflect them. And for me, a lot of it is like the online world versus the in-person world.

A lot of what I've read online does not relate to my experience of this play, The Runner, which for me was quite a dark portrait of Israeli society. And indeed introduced me to the Zaka organization, which is now in the news all the time because they were first responders

on October 7th. So it's an informative play. It's a bracing play. And ultimately, it's sort of a thrilling play. Kelly, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Thank you very much. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms.

Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.