INDECENT A PLAY BY PAULA VOGEL DIRECTED BY GARY GRIFFIN STUDY GUIDE CONTENTS GREETINGS FROM ROXANNA 3 ABOUT THE PLAY 4 ACTORS & CHARACTERS 5 INTERVIEW WITH THE PLAYWRIGHT 6 GLOSSARY OF TERMS 8 ABOUT YIDDISH 8 COMPARING HEBREW + YIDDISH 9 SHOLEM ASCH’S GOD OF VENGEANCE COMES TO LIFE 10 ABOUT GOD OF VENGEANCE 11 AN OPEN LETTER FROM SHOLEM ASCH 14 WORD SEARCH 17 1923 TIMELINE 18 WRITING PROMPTS 20 PUBLIC PROGRAMS 21 LINKS 22 JOIN VICTORY GARDENS THEATER’S TEEN ARTS COUNCIL 23 SUPPORT FOR VICTORY GARDENS EDUCATION DEPARTMENT PROVIDED BY ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY 2018/2019 SEASON SPONSORS THE HARVEY L. MILLER BILL & ORLI STALEY HELEN ZELL SUPPORTING FOUNDATION FOUNDATION SEASON SPONSOR PARTNERS JANE M. SAKS, CONANT FAMILY GEORGE A. MARCELLE McVAY JEFFREY RAPPIN NATHAN CUMMINGS FOUNDATION JOSEPH & DENNIS ZAČEK & PENNY BROWN FOUNDATION MAJOR PRODUCTION SPONSOR PRODUCTION SPONSORS PLAYWRIGHT’S SOCIETY SPONSORS JARED KAPLAN SONDRA SARAH HELEN ZELL & MARIDEE MERLE RESKIN BERMAN BEARDSLEY QUANBECK EPSTEIN ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY VICTORY GARDENS THEATER • INDECENT STUDY GUIDE 2 GREETINGS FROM ROXANNA CONNER Welcome to the 2018/19 Season! I’m thrilled to join Victory Gardens and look forward to continuing our tradition of excellence in Arts Education with students across the city. While researching for this study guide, I was struck by the number of issues that we continue to face that were prevalent in 1923. More than a century has passed since Sholem Asch wrote God of Vengeance and we still have so much to do in our society regarding equality, race, culture, religion and love. During the first rehearsal for Indecent, Artistic Director, Chay Yew stated, “This play is about the endurance and power of art.” I am hopeful this production will encourage all audiences to embrace not just the power of art, but the importance of history, and our capacity to connect and empathize with one another. This study guide will provide you and your students with an introduction to the world of the play, which spans 1906 to 1952. It should also challenge your students to think about the themes of the play from their point of view before and after you see the production. Throughout the guide you will find CHECKPOINTS, a new feature developed for further exploration and activation of the material as you move through it. Each checkpoint is on a single page, allowing you to make copies for your students as you see fit. The study guide still includes the ANTICIPATION SURVEY with statements that we would like students to consider pre and post performance, to determine if the play supports their opinions, or causes them to change. You will find these questions on pages 8 and 9 in this edition. The WRITING PROMPTS will challenge your students to make personal connections to the themes of the play. We believe the study guide should provide an opportunity for analysis, expression and reflection. In the future, we will continue to adapt their content. We look forward to seeing you at the matinee and hearing from your students during the post-show discussion immediately following the performance. Best, Roxanna Conner Director of Education Victory Gardens Theater VICTORY GARDENS THEATER • INDECENT STUDY GUIDE 3 ABOUT THE PLAY TIME & Warsaw, 1906, to Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1950s, SETTING: and everywhere in between. LANGUAGE: When characters speak their native language, they speak perfect English (when Sholem Asch, Madja Asch speak Yiddish, for example). When characters speak English as their second language, they speak in a dialect (Reine, Madja, Esther, and Asch, for example; Rudolph Schildkraut has the most intense dialect in America). RUN TIME: 100 minutes; no intermission. Sholem Asch’s play God of Vengeance tells the story of Yekel, who, though he owns a brothel and is married to a former sex worker, desperately wants to establish himself as a respectable man in his community. He’s focused and determined to find a proper husband for his daughter, Rifkele. Once a matchmaker finds a suitable candidate, Yekel commissions a sacred Torah scroll, which he plans to hang in Rifkele’s room in order to protect her. However, he’s blindsided when he discovers that she’s developed an intimate relationship with Manke, one of the brothel’s sex workers. Paula Vogel’s Indecent follows the original productions of God of Vengeance, from its 1907 premiere in Berlin, through its acclaimed European tour and performances in the United States. When the production makes its English language premiere on Broadway in 1923, the team of Jewish artists find themselves wading through legal trouble after a local prominent rabbi files complaints about the content of the play. God of Vengeance is temporarily shut down, while the producer, director and some of the actors are charged with obscenity. Inspired by research found in the archives at Yale University, Indecent merges historical information from the documents of producer Harry Weinberger and playwright Sholem Asch, with fiction. It was Rebecca Taichman’s thesis project The People vs. The The God of Vengeance at the Yale School of Drama that served as a catalyst for she and Paula Vogel to collaborate in the creation of Indecent. VICTORY GARDENS THEATER • INDECENT STUDY GUIDE 4 ACTORS & CHARACTERS The Victory Gardens production features a cast of seven actors, who between them play a total of forty-one characters. Two musicians will play live music throughout the performance. Indecent focuses on the spirit of a company of artists and the sacrifices they made for their art. BENJAMIN MAGNUSON KIAH STERN NOAH LaPOOK Stage Manager: Lemml The Ingenue: Chana The Ingenue: Avram Rifkele, Madje, Elsa, Immigrant, Ruth/ Asch, Immigrant, Morris Carnovsky, Reina, Virginia, Bagelman Sister Eugene O’Neill, John Rosen CATHERINE LeFRERE ANDREW WHITE CINDY GOLD The Middle: Halina The Middle: Mendel The Elder: Vera Manke, Immigrant, Freida, Dorothee/ Nakhmen, Immigrant, Harry Weinberger, Sarah, Mrs. Peretz, Immigrant, Esther Deine, Doctor, Bagelman Sister Officer Benjamin Bailie, Rabbi Joseph Stockton, Madje Silverman DAVID DARLOW ELLEON DOBIAS MATT DEITCHMAN The Elder: Otto Violin: Nelly Friedman Accordion: Moritz Godowsky Yekel, Peretz, Schildkraut, Immigrant, Bartender, Judge McIntyre, Asch VICTORY GARDENS THEATER • INDECENT STUDY GUIDE 5 INTERVIEW WITH THE PLAYWRIGHT PAULA VOGEL By Miriam Weiner, Vineyard Theatre From: https://www.vineyardtheatre.org/interview-playwright-paula-vogel-indecent/ What was the Can you think of a contemporary play seed of Indecent ? that has provoked similar outrage? I read Sholem Asch’s The plays that I admire, and the playwrights that I play God of Vengeance admire, are not shying away from the complexity of when I was 23 years old, racism, bias, sexism and the things that hurt us. I’d and I was astonished by point to An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. That it. In 1906, Sholem Asch is a play that has an insider/outsider perspective. A was brave enough to musical I thought was astonishing was The Scottsboro write that Jews are no Boys. It’s a brilliant, virulent show and I’m glad The different than Catholics Vineyard’s production succeeded in London but or Buddhists or people it tells me a lot that it wasn’t as well-received on of any religion, in Broadway. We are no different than the audiences terms of having people in the tribe who may sell who sat and watched God of Vengeance. religion for a profit, or who are hypocrites. That’s a very hard thing for a man to do, especially in a time Can you talk about your collaborative of burgeoning anti-Semitism. Then add in the play’s compassionate understanding of the powerlessness process with Rebecca Taichman? of women in that time and place — Asch is a young When Rebecca brought me into this project, I didn’t married man, in a very early work, writing the most see this as a play about the obscenity trial, as her astonishing love story between two women and it thesis project had been; as an older writer, there was makes a pretty compelling play to read and perform. a larger story that I engage in. About a fiery young playwright — not just Asch, but me, too — ignored Many years later, in 2000, I saw Rebecca Taichman’s for decades and then embraced by students. Rebecca MFA Thesis production at Yale, which interwove the was open and generous and allowed me to explore text of God of Vengeance with the transcript of the my ideas. I knew right from the beginning that I 1923 obscenity trial against the play in New York. I wanted music and a klezmer band, and Rebecca thought it was a fascinating idea. Flash forward to brought on composers, dancers and a choreographer. five years ago, when I got a phone call from Rebecca We talked over every page that I wrote; she showed asking me to be involved. It took me thirty seconds to me things in her staging that opened up the play say yes. for me and vice versa. She is an extraordinary, open- hearted collaborator. Why do you think God of Vengeance had such an impact in its time? God of Vengeance is set in a brothel run by a Jewish man who is attempting to raise his daughter piously, and it features a lesbian love story. When it was performed in New York in 1923, there was deep concern within the Jewish community about what Christians would think. “Do you dare to say this in public? Do you dare to show this in public?” It did exactly what plays should do — it provoked people into talking. God of Vengeance traveled all over the world, and then it was closed down on Broadway. Today, nearly 100 years after it was shut down, it needs to be produced and talked about still — playwrights and new plays should bite the hand that feeds them, and that is what this play did.