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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Contentious 15-minute play draws applause, thoughtful discussion

Posted: 01/25/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

A smart production of a controversial short play received a thoughtful and restrained reaction Sunday evening from a packed house at the Gas Station Theatre.

If anyone was expecting conflict to erupt either before or after the lone presentation of British playwright Caryl Churchill's 15-minute work Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, they would have been disappointed.

Premièred in England a year ago in the wake of the Israeli bombing of Gaza, the piece has been decried by many Jews as simplistic, one-sided and anti-Semitic.

Among its lines of dialogue, all spoken by Jews about their Arab enemies, are, "Tell her they don't understand anything except violence" and "tell her I wouldn't care if we wiped them out."

But the Winnipeg audience of 240 people sat in hushed silence through the presentation of an ad hoc company called Eggshell Theatre, part of this year's Manitoba Theatre Centre Master Playwright Festival.

Admission was free, but on Churchill's instruction, a collection was taken with all proceedings going to a British medical aid charity for Palestinians.

Afterward, the production's director, University of Manitoba theatre professor Bill Kerr, moderated an hour-long discussion in which the majority of speakers supported the play being staged.

Churchill's script consists of seven scenes that follow the political history of modern Jewry from the Holocaust through the Gaza conflict.

Each scene is a series of short imperative sentences, ("Tell her it's a game. Tell her it's serious") agonizing over how to inform a child about unfolding events.

The Eggshell production employed 12 actors, six men and six women, all of whom appeared to be in their late teens and early 20s.

Dressed in street clothes, they arranged themselves onstage in a wide semicircle, stepping forward in groups to perform each scene.

They spoke clearly and solemnly, sometimes pausing for effect between lines and occasionally repeating closing refrains.

Their only props, used sparingly, were a few chairs and a table. A two-dimensional frame of a house was painted on a backdrop behind them.

When the performance ended, following sustained applause, the performers took seats onstage, where Kerr introduced them by first name only.

One audience member, who identified himself as the editor of Winnipeg's Jewish newspaper, said he was "disappointed at the restraint of the discussion."

"I'm here to tell you the Jewish community has been torn apart by this (the Gaza bombing)."

But another man, also Jewish, said he "resented" the work, arguing that it presented a "very limited and narrow scope of Jewish experience."

Kerr said the reason for the single performance was logistical. Because Churchill's instructions forbade charging admission or paying cast or crew, they could not afford to restage it.

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

Churchill Fest 2010

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 25, 2010 d3

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