Stories about Jews need to be told with sensitivity - The Jewish Chronicle

In 2019 a group of Jewish theatre makers and I signed a letter that centred around two main thoughts:

First, and more generally, was the question: are Jews included enough in the stories told about us onstage and onscreen?

Secondly was a case study about the 2019 Selladoor production of Falsettos, a musical about a Jewish family, which made it to a major London stage without a single Jewish cast or creative team member.

Among the thoughts in the carefully written letter were sentences about the damage that can be done if Jewish characters are caricatured, stereotyped and misrepresented.

We took great pains to ensure that we were absolutely not saying that only Jewish actors should play Jews.

We also made the point that as theatre engaged in much-needed discourse about minority inclusion that Jewish artists needed to be part of those conversations rather than held up as an exception. We asked that Jewish artists were allowed into discussions about their own stories.

Mostly we were pointing at this production of Falsettos and asking whether it was acceptable, whether an industry growing more interested in identity and inclusion was really going to stand by as a piece about Jewishness was presented with entirely no Jewish voices anywhere in the process?

But our point seemed too nuanced for many who immediately started propagating that we were saying that only Jews could play Jews. This is a straw man argument. What we were in fact saying was that Jewish stories should and indeed must include Jewish voices and artists to ensure they are told carefully and thoughtfully. Any other framing of our intention is and was at best a careless misread and at worst a highly damaging provocation likely to stoke infighting between Jews, and a sense that some Jews are acting as casting gatekeepers in the minds of the wider theatre community.

As you can imagine I was dismayed to read John Nathan’s article. Nathan based his argument on a false binary that seemed to suggest that the only options are ‘Only Jews play Jews’ or ‘Anyone can play Jews.’

I am here to say that these were never the options. The argument that we were making then is the same as we are making now; Jewish meaningful inclusion is important and it can be independent from the question of casting.

Theatre and television have been rightly interested in the question of power dynamics and who takes up space. I think it is every actor’s responsibility and prerogative to decide what space they want to take up and whether they think themselves capable of carefully and sensitively playing a role. But I would never outright dismiss an actor who isn’t Jewish playing a Jewish role. However I do think it is essential that Jewish stories have Jewish artists in the room.

If Tamsin Greig thinks years later that she was taking up space that was not hers to take then that is absolutely something I can respect. She is not devoid of opportunities and could have decided to leave that role for someone else. That said, Friday Night Dinner had Jewish creatives and actors throughout its team and the show emitted a profound aura of care for the subjects and stories it was telling.

In fact Friday Night Dinner was one of the key examples we used back in 2019 when discussing Falsettogate as a piece that clearly demonstrated that a cast of both jews and non jews could convincingly play a Jewish family if there was care, consideration and meaningful inclusion in the project overall. I fully respect Greig’s right to choose the roles she takes but I think Nathan using her comments to draw a journalistic hardline on this is a mistake.

Furthermore I think using this as a stick to beat the work of Jewish activists while also misframing their intention is a shame. It hurt when journalists misframed our long and well thought out letter back in 2019 and it hurts even more now to start 2022 with a Jewish journalist and paper misframing them in this way.

It has been a tiring few years for Jewish artists as we fight for a seat at the table of inclusion discourse. There have been instances of antisemitism that have resulted from a lack of Jewish lenses on projects that clearly should have had them. With theatres finally beginning to open their doors to conversations that should have started back in 2019 (or earlier) this year really felt like it was off to an optimistic start. That is until this article dropped.

If you’re reading this I would like you to consider that framing this important issue as a fight between Jewish artists is the real flaw here. All Jews care about their stories being accurately and sensitively told. There are many ways to do that. Let’s start talking about them.