Shakespeare play that challenges hatred ignites firestorm
U.K. director ‘shocked’ Toronto school’s version slammed as ‘anti-Semitic’
An all-girls private school scandal involving an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of
Venice has many wondering how a well-intentioned production could have gone so horribly awry. A group of parents say the show is blatantly anti-Semitic; the director disagrees and says he’s “dismayed and shocked” at the outcry; and a prestigious school has fired its head and apologized.
Bishop Strachan School (BSS) says it’s now doing an internal review. But one thing is already clear: It’s important to tackle controversial material in schools, perhaps more so than ever, but educators need to proceed with great care.
“I’m afraid that, for some people, the reaction will be ‘Let’s just not touch that’… because of a fear that it could blow up in their face,” said Allen MacInnis, artistic director of Young People’s Theatre, Canada’s largest not-for-profit theatre for young audiences, who was not involved in the play at BSS. “That would be a terrible shame, because we’re robbing our young people of opportunities while they’re in this learning mode.
“I would love for (educators) to come away from it thinking instead, ‘Right, let’s enter into the conversations about the difficult subjects — and do a better job of it.’ ”
Controversy followed the Oct. 17 staging by U.K. theatre company Box Clever, despite the director’s “extensive engagement” with students over two weeks at BSS, where he ran workshops and rehearsals.
According to director Iqbal Khan, who has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, said students, including an intern who identified as Jewish, were involved in discussing the ambitions of the show, which delved into “the obscenity of the Holocaust and the centuries of mistreatment of Jewish People.”
The show was staged in front of 200 Grade 11 and 12 students, adults and BSS board members. Both performances received a “standing ovation from all who attended,” according to Khan. Each show was followed by a “rich and enthusiastic” Q&A session. “There were no negative reactions.”
The one-man show was first produced in 1998 and described by Box Clever as a “poignant reimagining of Shakespeare’s most controversial play.” It begins with a man walking on stage with a suitcase, and telling the audience about both The Merchant of Venice and the story contained within his suitcase, which belonged to his grandfather who lived through fascist Italy and the horrors of the Holocaust.
“The rhetoric of hatred is explored through the centuries; from the time of the play’s writing to our modern age,” Khan said. “From the shockingly hateful sermons of Martin Luther, the smashing of his grandfather’s shop windows in 1942, to modern hateful chants in the football stands and against foreigners.”
According to MacInnis, who attended the evening show, the actor in the play adopted different characters and used various techniques. In one scene, he employed a kind of game show format; in another, he re-enacts scenes from The Merchant of Venice while using audience members as stand-ins for other characters.
Box Clever says the play aims to challenge hatred and remind audiences of the dangers of unchecked discrimination. But days after the show, 24 unnamed parents, who didn’t see the play, wrote to the school, saying the production left their Jewish daughters feeling “extremely uncomfortable and alienated.” They say the play “introduced the Holocaust in a humorous light that minimized its impact,” that students were urged to respond to statements such as “Burn the Jews” with “Hallelujah,” and that BSS failed to adequately prepare its teenage audience for what it saw on stage.
In the wake of the uproar, the school’s head, Judith Carlisle, was fired and BSS said it was an error to present this adaptation, for which appropriate context was never provided.
Khan is stunned by the outcry and says he has no plans to change the play. And, given the horrific killing of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, he says “The play has never felt more urgent.”
“Hate expressed in any form, against any section of society is abhorrent,” he said. “This is precisely what the play tackles.”
But there are now questions over why, for some, the play’s intended message was missed.
MacInnis recalls the actor donning a mask, a caricature of a stereotypical Jewish villain, with a large nose. He suspects the point was to highlight antiSemitism in Shakespeare’s time, when this was how Jewish characters might have been depicted and audiences likely would have laughed.
But would a teenager have understood this? “I don’t know if a group of 15-year-olds would say, ‘Oh, I see the stereotypes you’re doing there,’ ” he said. “The intention’s very clear, to an adult of my age. But is that going to land correctly on a teen audience?”
MacInnis sees educational value in producing classical works that explore difficult themes.
But the key, he believes, is to stay mindful of the fact that audiences are diverse and, in an adaption of The Merchant of Venice, the play will feel differently for students who are Jewish versus those who aren’t.
MacInnis says kids and teachers need to be willing to have conversations about difficult subjects, “but do it with eyes wide open, and many, many people at the table to help construct the conversation.
“It is a lot of work, more than you think, and sometimes exhausting,” he said. “But I think it can be the best work you’ll ever do.”