The campaign against Caryl Churchill's play for Gaza, Seven Jewish Children sadly had success at the Liverpool City sponsored Writing on the Wall cultural festival. The sponsors refused to show the play unless a 'right to reply' - Richard Stirling's play Seven Other Children - was shown. The city authorities cut funding after the organisers of the cultural festival refused to comply. On a happier note, Caryl Churchill's play is to be shown in Tel Aviv. A controversial play, "Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza," written after Israel's Operation Cast Lead by British writer Caryl Churchill, will be staged for the first time in Israel in Tel Aviv's Kikar Rabin this evening, as part of Hebrew Book Week events. It is directed online via Skype and video by Samieh Jabbarin, who has been under house arrest for four months. Jabbarin, a Jaffa resident and director at the city's Arab-Hebrew Theater, was placed under arrest in his parents' Umm al-Fa...

I've got my tickets today for the Two Plays for Gaza show this Thursday at the Hackney Empire and confirm that show is almost sold out so ring the number below now if you want to see Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children and David Wilson's The Trainer. All funds raised are going towards the rebuilding of the Gaza Music School. For tickets (£15) call: the Hackney Empire box office on 020 8985 2424 or visit: www.hackneyempire.co. uk Two Plays for Gaza A benefit evening for the Gaza Music School & Stop the War Coalition Hackney Empire, Thursday 21 May @ 7.30 PM This exciting evening will include Caryl Churchill's powerful Seven Jewish Children , a 10-minute play about Gaza. The playwright Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon said of it " . . . dense, beautiful, elusive and intentionally indeterminate. It's disturbing, it's provocative, but appropriately so given the magnitude of the calamity it entails." Caryl will introduce her play which will include...

Seven Other Children has been penned by Richard Stirling (pictured) as a response to Caryl Churchill's Gaza play. Churchill has been accused of peddling anti-semitism with her play. The charge seems to revolve around an interpretation of the play sees all Jewish people as somehow being charged with, and responsible for the slaughter in Gaza earlier this year. But of course the play does no such thing. The problem, to the extent that there is one, arises from the fact that Israel itself describes itself as 'the Jewish state' when of course it is no such thing, given that there is a growing minority of Jewish people that have no truck with Israel and its oppression and warmongering. I haven't seen this new play or had the opportunity to read a transcript but a review of sorts appeared in one of my local papers here in north London and is reproduced in full below. In tonight's Evening Standard Stirling says that Cooke [Dominic Cooke, artistic director at the Royal Cour...

A PLAY that has been condemned by Jewish groups and some theatre critics as anti-Semitic will this month be performed at the State Library of Victoria. The cast of the eight-minute Seven Jewish Children, by English playwright Caryl Churchill, includes Sydney-based Anglo-Jewish actor Miriam Margolyes and Max Gillies, husband of high-profile Melbourne Jewish identity Louise Adler. It will be presented in a rehearsed reading on Monday, May 18, at 6.30pm by the lobby group Australians for Palestine. More at The Age Caryl Churchill's Gaza play is anti-war not anti-semitic

The play is approx 10mins long

The original cast of The Trainer, including Corin Redgrave and Tim Pigott-Smith, perform the play at Oxford House in east London in March. Some of the cast will also appear at the Two Plays for Gaza event (Pic: » Guy Smallman ) The playwrights David Wilson and Anne Aylor spoke to Socialist Worker about the Two Plays for Gaza event Some of Britain’s most celebrated playwrights and performers have joined together to put on an evening that will raise money and awareness for the people of Palestine and the anti-war movement. Two Plays for Gaza will take place on Thursday 21 May at the Hackney Empire in east London. It will feature Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children, a powerful ten minute play about Israel, the Palestinians and Gaza, and David Wilson and Ann Aylor’s The Trainer, a tale of love between a British Jew and a Palestinian woman. more

Excellent article by Antony Lerman at the Guardian this morning on Caryl Churchill's Gaza play, Seven Jewish Children , which has seen its most recent international performance in Montreal, Canada, hosted by Independent Jewish Voices Montreal . Lerman is the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and draws this powerful conclusion about why those that level the charge of anti-semitism at the play are so wrong: How should we explain why they get this play so wrong? I suggest two reasons. First, they're trapped in a self-generated atmosphere of extreme defensiveness. They genuinely believe that antisemitism is at such a high level, fuelled largely by anti-Zionism, which they regard as mostly antisemitism, that any critical discourse about Jews sets alarm bells ringing. Second, the continued insistence on unmasking anti-Zionist antisemites leads to fatal confusion about what antisemitism is. I sympathise with those who watch the exchanges over this play'...

Photograph: Tristram Kenton On Sunday, May 3, Independent Jewish Voices Montreal (IJVM) is organizing the Canadian premiere of the play. It will be read in both English and French and followed by a discussion that organizers hope will help to initiate dialogue between the communities affected in Montreal. “This play is likely to spark conversation,” says director Rose Plotek, on the phone from Toronto. The piece provoked a flurry of response when it was staged at the Royal Court in London less than three weeks after Israel pulled out of Gaza. Comments ranged from predictable charges of anti-Semitism in the New Atlantic to ardent praise from figures like American playwright Tony Kushner. But Plotek insists the play is kosher. “It’s about the human struggle of parents struggling with how to communicate violence to children, how communication passes from generation to generation,” she says. SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN AT THE GEORDIE SPACE (4001 BERRI, SUITE 103) ON SUNDAY, MAY 3, 3 P.M. AND...

Caryl Churchill's play, Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza is coming to New York. Excellent news. It's an outrage the BBC doesn't feel it can air the play on Radio 4 because it might damage its 'impartiality', but it had a sell-out run at the Royal Court. The Israeli war on the people of Gaza has produced a crop of plays of which Go to Gaza , Drink the Sea is a stunner, but has also attracted criticism from the pro-Israel crowd. See our answer to these critics in our post Why Gaza plays take a stand for justice , and our earlier report on Churchill's play, and the Zionist attack dog Melanie Phillips, here The New York Theater Workshop and two theaters in Washington will hold staged readings this month of Caryl Churchill’s provocative new play, “Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza,” along with talk-back sessions with audiences about the piece’s controversial portrayal of some Israelis, leaders of the theaters said Sunday. The play, which runs just 8 to...

[UPDATE - The Guardian reported on 16 March that BBC Radio 4 is refusing to broadcast the play Seven Jewish Children claiming it might damage the BBC's impartiality. The BBC is caving in to the zionists again. In the footsteps of the refusal to show the Gaza humanitarian appeal this is truly unbelievable and outrageous. They'll probably refuse to report the next Israeli war against the Palestinians on the pretext it might create sympathy for Palestinians. Protest to the BBC using the online complaints form here ] Photograph: Tristram Kenton Some critics - yes Melanie Phillips is among the zionist attack dogs - have claimed the 10-minute play, Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza , by British playwright Caryl Churchill, is anti-Semitic. See Jeffrey Goldberg's 'critique' here The Royal Court Theatre's Blood Libel . Churchill’s play is currently being performed at London’s Royal Court Theatre as a benefit for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. You can d...

Andrew Haydon has written an amazingly foolish piece at the Guardian Theatre blog on the recent crop of Gaza plays showing in the UK. The 10-minute Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill and now Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea by Justin Butcher and Ahmed Masoud (described as a multimedia verbatim testimony) both make no bones about highlighting the injustices - and death - being heaped on the people of Gaza by the Israelis. But Haydon thinks it is 'worrying' that Churchill's play portrays 'the Jews (at least in part) as victim-turned-persecutor' and castigates Go to Gaza for presenting a 'parade of blameless innocents'. He concludes that both plays risk 'demonising a whole country - if not every single Jew on the planet'. The problem with people like Haydon, who is quick to criticise the lack of social context in the plays, is there ignorance and reluctance to face the truth and the social context. So he finds the description of Hamas as the resistance...