Joshua Sobol claims that his latest play, ‘The Last Act,’ was the subject of a political witch hunt
Joshua Sobol is one of Israel’s leading playwrights, having also achieved worldwide notoriety with his 1984 offering “Ghetto,” a poignant look at the Vilna Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania. A year later, his drama “Palestinian Girl”—which tells the story of a love affair between a Palestinian woman and an Israeli man—premiered at the Haifa Theater.
Over the years, Sobol’s politically-charged and often controversial plays have garnered international attention, with many of his works translated into dozens of languages. In 2009, he won the Israeli Theater Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Nevertheless, Sobol, 78, claims he cannot find a stage in Israel for his latest play, “The Last Act.”
“I offered the play to a few Israeli theaters,” he revealed to The Media Line, “but some were unwilling to perform it, and some were even unwilling to react.”
“The Last Act” is set in present-day Israel and describes how the relationship between an Israeli-Jewish actress, Gilly, and a Palestinian actor, Djul—who are collaborating on the adaptation of a 19th-century play by August Stringbeg named “Miss Julie”—devolves into tragedy. Sobol said he was inspired to write the play following the 2015-16 wave of violence in Israel known as the “Stabbing Intifada,” in which individuals unaffiliated with any terrorist group committed random knife attacks against Israelis.
“I wanted to share with the audience my sadness and gloom caused by the stalemate and the miasma of the Israeli-Palestinian hopeless mess,” he said.
Sobol pitched the play to several theaters in Israel, most notably the Cameri in Tel Aviv and the Haifa Theater. Unable to find any takers, however, he decided to offer it to the Israeli Stage, a theater in Boston that aims to “shar[e] the diversity and vitality of Israeli culture through theater.”
Sobol believes that Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev is directly to blame for his inability to find a theater in Israel to stage “The Last Act.”
“Regev’s threats to cut the budgets of theaters that will not follow the general official line has its impact on the management of our institutions,” he asserted. “It curbs them into practicing self-censorship, though nobody admits it.”
Guy Ben-Aharon, the artistic director at the Israeli Stage, echoed this sentiment. “Our world is so divisive that people don’t even want [to hear] an opinion that is not their own,” he told The Media Line. “The fact of the matter is, with Miri Regev in power and theaters in Israel being state-subsidized, [they] were afraid to touch ‘The Last Act,’ he affirmed.
By contrast, the Cameri Theater denied any such suspicions, issuing a statement to The Media Line contending that “there are others reasons behind the decision not to stage this play;” this, without elaborating any further.
The Media Line also reached out to the Haifa Theater, but received no response.
For its part, the Culture Ministry strongly rebuffed Sobol’s and Ben-Aharon’s claim. “The Culture Ministry carries out its functions based on the law,” Heli Samama-Fadida, a spokesperson for the Culture and Sports Ministry, stressed to The Media Line. While conceding that there is a law known as the Naqba Law—which prevents the allocation of state funds for cultural productions that commemorate as a “catastrophe” Israel’s rebirth in 1948 and the ensuing displacement of Palestinians during the Arab-initiated war—in all other cases, according to Samama-Fadida, “we don’t threaten [institutions] or get involved in politics.”
The controversial Nakba Law also gives the finance minister the power to withhold funds from government-sponsored groups that call for armed resistance against Israel or support terrorist organizations; deface the state flag or other national symbols; reject Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state; or incite to racism, violence, or terrorism.
Despite the Culture Ministry’s assertions, Regev—who previously worked as an Israeli army spokeswoman and military censor—has been an outspoken critic of films, exhibitions and performances deemed “anti-Israel,” at times going so far as to cut the budgets of such projects.
As a result, Ben-Aharon, Sobol and others say Israeli cultural institutions have now imposed a form of self-censorship, especially on controversial political material or works that examine the Palestinian perspective.
Still, Sobol remains hopeful his newest play will eventually make its way to Israel.
“I hope that the Boston performance of the play will convince some Israeli theaters to offer it to an Israeli audience, for whom this drama was written in the first place,” he concluded.
“The Last Act” premieres on May 18 at the Israeli Stage.