Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/807429
68 April 6 • 2017 jn t h e a t e r arts&life Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel discusses her newest play on Broadway, called one of the best plays of the year. P aula Vogel's powerful drama Indecent explores a controversial time in American theater and Jewish culture. The play with music cen- ters around events surrounding the 1923 Broadway production of Sholem Asch's provocative, groundbreaking play God of Vengeance. Written in 1906 in Yiddish and translated for the American stage, Asch's play follows a Jewish couple who run a brothel in their base- ment and whose daughter falls deeply in love with one of their female prostitutes. It also fea- tured the first lesbian kiss on Broadway. It caused an uproar when it debuted in New York, and the producer and cast were arrested and put on trial for obscenity. Indecent sheds a light on that scandal. The play, which has transferred from the Off- Broadway stage to Broadway, opened at the Cort Theater in New York City April 4. "The charges were initiated by Rabbi Silverman of Temple Emanuel in New York City," Vogel says. "During that time, there was a prevalence of anti- Semitism. In the news, Henry Ford was talking about Jewish conspiracies of taking over bank- ing, theater and music. It was the perfect storm for anti-Semitism and Rabbi Silverman feared the theme would promote more hatred against Jews." Asch had been an internation- ally renowned writer at the time of the trial and, because of his fame, he wasn't arrested with the rest of the team. But the scandal had an impact on his career. God of Vengeance was a story that captured the attention of Vogel when she was a graduate student at Cornell. "A professor looked at me the first week and said 'You should read God of Vengeance,'" Vogel recalls. "It was his way of saying I know that you are gay and I want you to know your history. I stood in the library turning the pages thinking how a young newlywed man wrote this play in 1906 — and it astonished me." As a playwright, Vogel always wanted to bring Asch's story to the stage. And then she met the perfect creative partner — direc- tor Rebecca Taichman, who is Jewish, has a grandfather who was a Yiddish poet and she her- self had written her master's the- sis at Yale about the trial. "Seven years ago, I got a call from Rebecca," Vogel says. "She said she'd always wanted to do a play about the obscenity trial but needed someone to write it. My name had been suggested. I told her I think there is an even larger story to tell and she agreed — then gave me the trial transcripts and all of her research." Asch had written a second act that clearly showed the two women in love, kissing and openly declaring their love. "The Yiddish theater embraced the play with Asch's original inten- tion. No one said it was obscene, but Harry Weinberger, the New York producer, felt they couldn't represent two women in love," Vogel says. ALICE BURDICK SCHWEIGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS Indecent details Indecent opened April 4 at The Cort Theater in New York City. (212) 239-6200. Indecentbroadway.com. ABOVE: Indecent explores events in 1923's God of Vengeance, which featured the first lesbian kiss on Broadway. RIGHT: The cast of Indecent. Playwright Paula Vogel CAROL ROSEGG CAROL ROSEGG