My graduate school directing thesis project, way back in 2012, was a play called Vilna’s Got A Golem by Ernest Joselovits. The play is about a Yiddish family theater company in Vilna 1899 producing a controversial new play, a violent revenge fantasy about a Golem. The author of the play within the play is their brother, who is deeply traumatized by the murder his wife and child. Everyone in the family wants to support their brother, however, but, the company is split between factions with opposing responses to cycles of violence, revenge. and trauma.
One week before the opening night, there was a flare up of violence in Israel/Palestine. Immediately the metaphor of the play took on an entirely different meaning.
It was “unfortunately relevant”.
I do not know exactly what the meaning of THE BANALITY OF EVIL will be in March 2024 when it reaches the stage. The project might be “unfortunately relevant” in ways I didn’t anticipate, or perhaps in ways I did not anticipate. For example, in rehearsals I shared how THE BANALITY OF EVIL is about the Jewish suffering is “instrumentalised”. Today, we are reflecting on the “weaponization” of Jewish suffering, as the death toll in Gaza approaches 20,000.
I also fear that the project could be completely out of touch with moment.
I believe that a theater artist should reflect long and deeply on their place in history.
This is very different from “responding to the news”. Artistic reflections on the longer arc of history risk being out of step with the current moment or even just wrong. We can’t know which way history will turn, or how fast it will accelerate.