The Playgoer: About Katherine Viner...

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Monday, March 27, 2006

About Katherine Viner...

For what it's worth, I keep hearing, though I have not yet seen her say this...she's Jewish.

That's even cited here, even in an openly critical article about the play on the (not disinterested) website "All About Jewish Theatre."

I hope Brian Lehrer knows. She should know that pr-wise it's not bad to point that out.

Again, for what it's worth.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1741197,00.html

Anonymous said...

Do go to the link someone posted above: you can download an MP3 of Billy Bragg's new protest song: The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie.

The lyric of verse three:

The artistic director of a New York theatre
Cancelled a play based on Rachel's writings
But she wasn't a bomber or a killer or fighter
But one who acted in the spirit of the Freedom Riders
Is there no place for a voice in America
That doesn't conform to the Fox News agenda?
Who believes in non-violence instead of brute force
Who is willing to confront the might of an army
Whose passionate beliefs were matched by her bravery
The question she asked rings out round the world
If America is truly the beacon of freedom
Then how can it stand by while they bring down the curtain
And turn Rachel Corrie into a non-person?

parabasis said...

You know-- I remember reading an interview with Stephen Fry in The Onion (or some such) where they mentioned the controversy over his novel "Making History" in which he postulated that stopping Hitler from being born would've led to a worse world than the one we currently lived in. The book was (predictibly) charged with trivializing the holocaust and (perhaps) anti-semetism.

The interviewer asked him why he didn't publicly claim his Judaism, and noted that many epople were quite shocked to find out he was Jewish. Fry said that he thought that was cheap, using his Jewish-ness to inoculate himself from criticism, and that he didn't want to short-cut the intellectual argument.

I guess what I';m getting at is that Brits might have a somewhat different attitude towards Idenitiy Politics. Fry doesn't necessarily think that becuase he's a Jew therefore he COULDN'T POSSIBLY be trivializing the holocaust. Perhaps Viner feels the same way about her jewishness and this play.