The Jewish theater company in the nation’s capital is struggling to find its footing in the face of increasing efforts by donors and funders to steer it away from dealing with controversies related to Israel.
Theater J, a nationally acclaimed group under the auspices of the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, has canceled its annual Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival. The theatrical festival, which in the past has included works critical of Israeli policy, was asked to accept a rigorous vetting process of artists this year to limit that criticism.
“Increasingly, Theater J is being kept from programming as freely, as fiercely, and expressing itself as fully as it needs,” the artistic director, Ari Roth, wrote to the company’s executive committee in September, in an internal document obtained by the Forward. “We find the culture of open discourse and dissent within our Jewish Community Center to be evaporating.”
Theater J and the DCJCC are not the only institutions caught between donors concerned about negative depictions of Israel and creators arguing for artistic freedom; New York City’s Metropolitan Opera is still reeling from the protests against its decision to produce “The Death of Klinghoffer”; the JCC in Manhattan came under fire in 2011 for partnering with progressive organizations, and in San Francisco, the Jewish film festival was the first, in 2009, to face pressure from donors to change its programming.
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