By now you may be fed up with the controversy over Christopher Morris’ play The Runner. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Morris himself were pretty tired of it all. But it’s an important issue – a valuable Canadian play is under attack here – so I hope to add one more bit of info to the discussion: a look at the two open letters written by those who campaigned successfully to cancel two planned productions of the play.
It’s too late to do anything about those cancellations now, but it might be of interest, or of use, to look at how those letters misinterpreted the play and helped censor a valuable work of art. The play itself is too strong to be defeated by these two cancellations: further productions are slated for the future, in other venues. But those letters remain on the public record, and deserve to be refuted.
First, if you’re not acquainted with the story, here’s the background info. If you’re my Facebook friend, some of this will look familiar. And although at the suggestion of website designer Claire Grady-Smith, I’ve been limiting myself to around 750 words per blog, this one is considerably longer. I think the topic deserves it.
Facts About The Runner: The Runner is a 2018 play for one actor, written by Canadian Christopher Morris, who himself is not an Israeli, a Palestinian, an Arab or a Jew, but did spend many months in Israel and the Occupied Territories researching his subject. The play tells the story of Jacob, an Israeli Orthodox Jew whose job, as an employee of the non-governmental organization Z.A.K.A., is to gather up the body parts of dead Jews, but who pauses in his work to help a wounded Palestinian teenage girl, and gets into trouble for his decision.
Lin and I saw The Runner at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, Ont., in November, and have now purchased a copy and read it. Since then, groups which identify as supporting the Palestinian cause have campaigned successfully to cancel productions of the play at Victoria’s Belfry Theatre and Vancouver’s PuSh Festival. Reportedly, there were a number of factors contributing to these cancellations – the PuSh Festival hung on until Palestinian artist Basel Zaraa threatened to withdraw his installation from the Festival if they did not cancel The Runner – but the open letters certainly paved the way and set the tone.
My Position on Israel and Gaza: I’m what we call a secular Jew: one who does not believe in the religion, but identifies as Jewish in terms of my culture and ethnicity. Born in 1947, the same year as the State of Israel, I grew up believing that we Jews had one moral edge on most non-Jewish peoples: we had never oppressed, or made war on, any other people. I also believed that the post-Holocaust slogan “Never again” applied to all people: that we Jews would be vigilant in making sure not only that such oppression never happened again to us, but never happened to anyone.
However, subsequent events in and around Israel have indicated that, now that we’ve had our own country, our own military, and a couple of generations in which to get used to the idea, we can prove ourselves to be not all that different from the goyim after all. (“Goyim,” popularly – and not disrespectfully – used to mean “non-Jews,” is actually a Hebrew word meaning “nations.” Originally, they were different from us because, before 1947, we were not a nation.)
So, watching recent footage of both Hamas fanatics joyfully killing Jews, and Israeli soldiers who, astonishingly to me, behave no better than soldiers everywhere else – i.e., harassing and beating peaceful Palestinians, even before October 7 – I despair at both Hamas and the current Israeli government and military. My position is not pro- or anti- Israel or Palestine; it is pro-peace and anti-war. In my ideal world, the warmongers from both sides would be given a remote island and all the weapons they want, and sent off to play together until they’re all dead, leaving the peace-loving Israelis and Palestinians to get on with their lives.
It’s ironic that I find myself in opposition to people who purport to represent the Palestinian cause. Please understand that I dispute them, not as a Jewish anti-Palestinian Zionist, which I’m not, but as a playwright interested in free expression and honest criticism. And, of course, it’s a given that the horrific events of this war greatly overshadow the importance of a controversy over a Canadian play. But Canadian plays matter to me, and these letters make me angry, so here we go.
My Position on The Runner: I love it. I think it’s a beautiful work: an eloquent cry for peace and understanding. The Israeli hero (and only onstage character), Jacob, makes a decision which pits himself against the values of his family and co-workers. The play is, like the conflict itself, nuanced and complicated, and if it comes down on one side or another, it is arguably more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, as the hero’s moment of compassion opens his eyes to the attitudes of his associates.
The Open Letters: The first letter was read aloud at a couple of open-house meetings with the Belfry Theatre in December, after which the Belfry cancelled their production. (The theatre was also vandalized.) The second letter was sent to the PuSh Festival, late in December or early in January.
Both letters are anonymous, in that neither letter is attributed specifically to any one person or group of people as its author or authors. However, the PuSh letter is signed (electronically, on line) by at least 388 people, last time I looked. The authors write, “We spent a great deal of time engaging with the work directly, from a thorough reading of the script to extensive conversations,” but also boast that “376 signatures (and counting) were collected in just over 24 hours.” If anyone can send me signed affidavits, or other proof, that all the 388 signatories actually saw or read The Runner even once – let alone spent time on thorough readings and extensive conversations – I will send you $388.00 of my own money. (Of course, even if they had all seen or read it, cancelling the production would still have been an inappropriate response, as I will argue below. But they might have had a little more credibility – or, I strongly suspect, fewer of them would have signed.)
These letters have had an emotional impact on me. In my youth, in the 1970s, I briefly belonged to a couple of groups of Vancouver socialists, some of whose rhetoric I soon came to perceive as extremist, inflammatory, ideologically bound and not particularly interested in the truth, so – though I’ve continued to identify as a leftist – I quit those groups. My memories of those days have been “triggered,” as they say, by reading these two letters.
They have much in common with the writings of those 1970s zealots, including tendencies
to stretch, shrink, or just plain ignore the truth; to go on at length about issues only marginally relevant to the discussion at hand; to criticize the object of their criticism for not saying or doing things that it was never intended to say or do; and to split microscopic hairs – all delivered with (in my opinion) an aggrieved, superior tone, and the implied assumption that nobody else truly understands the issues and the letter-writers alone are operating from a position of moral integrity, while those who disagree with them are dishonest and self-serving, or, at best, kidding themselves.
(The two letters also contain similarities to each other, which is fair enough, as the authors of the PuSh letter acknowledge that “some of the content of this letter is in fact borrowed, with consent, from the work of our cultural and political comrades in Victoria whose thoughtful and diligent labour resulted in the Belfry’s decision [to cancel the production].”)
So, now, point by point – and please note that for the most part, examples that I cite here of the letter’s flaws are selected from larger numbers of potential examples:
The letters contain outright misstatements and distortions of the truth. The PuSh letter claims that “we are … experiencing a virulent chilling of public discourse on Palestine, and erasure of the catastrophic facts on the ground from public record.” There is little or no evidence of this. A few days before writing this blog, I attended a screening of the American documentary Israelism, which chronicles in detail the oppression of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, the attempts by many Jews to expose this oppression, and the unsuccessful attempts by other Jews to suppress that exposure. The film is being watched at multiple screenings all over the world. And the CBC National News and other reputable news outlets offer regular, extensive and balanced coverage of the war and the history behind it.
Ironically, the PuSh letter continues: “countless educators and artists around the world and here on Turtle Island are being reprimanded and/or removed from their positions for voicing criticism and concern. Numerous cultural and educational events in support of Palestine have been cancelled due to venues and presenters fearing and receiving backlash.” This, in a letter calling for the cancellation of a cultural event for voicing criticism and concern – and succeeding due to venues and presenters fearing and receiving backlash.
The Belfry letter states flatly that “Morris gives no indication that he ever sought out a single Palestinian over 9 years of work.” False. In the acknowledgements included in the published version of his play, he thanks, among others, Robert Massoud, Palestinian-Canadian entrepreneur and author of Advocating for Palestine in Canada. The inclusion of Massoud’s name alone gives the lie to this allegation, but in fact, in the course of writing the play, Morris made over 20 trips into the Occupied Territories, where he spoke with a great many Palestinians, including a Fatah terrorist who had just been released from prison for murder and (on two occasions) the Al-Akhras family, whose 16-year-old daughter had blown herself up in Jerusalem. This is not mentioned in the published play, but really, all the letter-writers had to do was ask.
The letters criticize the play for allegedly saying things that, in fact, it does not say. The Belfry letter claims that “several of the violent acts by the Arab characters are described in detail (such as the gratuitous stabbing scene).” The “gratuitous stabbing scene” does not exist. On the contrary, Jacob says, “I don’t know, it was never proven, they couldn’t prove it, I don’t know if she stabbed that soldier” – to make the point that her subsequent incarceration by the Israeli authorities may have been unjust.
The Belfry letter also accuses the play of not saying things that, in fact, it says. It complains that the play “neglects to critique Zionism and its inherent overarching violence,” and that “the whole context of a brutal decades-long occupation is left out of the narrative.” If this were true, it might go under my category of their complaints that this is not the play they think he should have written; but it is false. For one example, one passage in the play reads, in part, “It’s not normal to live like this… Nobody wants us here, all this violence, all the humiliation we inflict to carve out this tiny strip of land, to push back all of our neighbours who want to annihilate us, it’s not normal.” Another passage in the play reads, “Z.A.K.A.’s official line is that they collect the remains of terrorists to give them back to their families, but we don’t give them back to their families we give them to the Israeli authorities to be buried in shallow graves with no religious rites, no dignity, to be dug up later and used as barter in exchanges like these – it’s inhumane what we’re doing, it’s not Jewish!”
The letters contain historical and current details which, however compelling, are irrelevant to the question of whether to produce the play. This is an old trick. Much ink is spent on admittedly heartbreaking facts of the oppression of the Palestinian people by Israeli governments and military leaderships. These facts may understandably feed the anger felt by the authors and signatories of the letters, but they are not Christopher Morris’ fault, and have little to do with whether the play should be seen, except insofar as the play condemns such deeds.
Both letters also, rather oddly, invite us to imagine Canadian and South African plays which would depict the experiences of indigenous people in those countries from the points of view of the white settlers. Some such plays do exist – Wendy Lill’s The Occupation of Heather Rose, an acclaimed Canadian play about a white nurse living among First Nations people, comes to mind – but the letter-writers describe their made-up examples as committing the multiple sins of which they accuse The Runner, and then ask if we can imagine such plays being produced. No, I can’t. But nor can I imagine a version of The Runner being produced if it actually did commit the sins of which they accuse it.
The letters criticize the artist for not creating some other artwork which the critics would have preferred. This is another common critical fallacy: both letters wish he had written a different play, and criticize him for not doing so.
Z.A.K.A., the organization that protagonist Jacob works for, gathering the body parts of dead Israelis, is accused in the PuSh letter of having a “central role in propagating…disinformation” about alleged atrocities committed against children by Palestinian soldiers during this war. And, in fact, Z.A.K.A. leaders have acknowledged that individual errors have sometimes been made. The letter-writers seem to think that therefore Morris was under some obligation to include those false allegations in his play so that Z.A.K.A. would look even more compromised than they do. But of course he wrote the play in 2018, some years before the war began, and even Morris can’t predict the future.
The PuSh letter protests the omission of other stuff that Morris has not written: “no mentions of missile strikes, chemical weapons, indefinite imprisonment or the use of torture… The context of a brutal decades-long occupation is completely left out…There is no mention of the brutal events which enabled the founding of the state of Israel,” etc. No, that’s quite true: this hour-long play does not spend an extra hour on a lecture covering the last 77 years of Israeli-Palestinian history. The only possible response to this complaint is to invite the letter-writers to write their own play.
The letters split some very tiny hairs. Given that so many of the signatories identify themselves as artists, writers and theatre creators, it is surprising to find them making so many mistakes common to people who don’t read enough fiction – including seeming, or pretending, to think that every opinion expressed by every character in the play is a directly expressed opinion of the author. But the play is about the traumatic education of an Israeli who, raised in ignorance and mistrust of Palestinians, comes to understand that they are human too; so it shows us the racist attitudes he starts out with, in order to show us the change that comes over him.
It is true that, as the letters complain, the word “Arab” is used repeatedly and the word “Palestinian” only once. That’s the point. This is a bewildered young man brought up in a world with no meaningful contact with Palestinians. In a moving passage describing his confused, mixed feelings, Jacob repeats opinions he has learned from his community, mingled with his own evolving beliefs: “I don’t dislike Arabs… I just don’t know any outside of work, okay I won’t say ‘Arabs,’ Arabs, Arabs, they’re Arabs I can’t won’t call them Palestinians, they’re stateless they don’t have a country, it’s not bad to call them Arabs, they’re ‘Arabs’ – okay okay okay I won’t say it, I won’t call them that anymore, I won’t. I won’t do it. I won’t do it.” Yes, this is contradictory (and, deliberately, ungrammatical). It is the desperate mental churning of a confused, traumatized, disoriented young man living in a nightmare. (By the way, I agree with the letter-writers that the correct term would be “Palestinian girl,” but the name of the character in the play is “the Arab girl,” so in this blog I’m going with that.)
Both letters complain that the Palestinian characters do not get to speak much, do not have names, and are less fully fleshed-out than the Israeli characters. Yes, and the Israeli characters are less fleshed-out than Jacob. Some Israelis do get to speak a bit, but those are Jacob’s relatives and co-workers, while the Palestinians are strangers to him: again, that’s the point. So it’s true that some characters are less fully fleshed-out than others. I can’t think of a play in which that’s not the case. Francisco, a soldier who appears in the first minutes of Hamlet and then exits, never to be seen again, is less fleshed-out than Prince Hamlet. That’s show biz.
The Belfry letter, in its shaky analogy to their imaginary play set in South Africa, describes the indigenous characters as “described in lascivious terms that exoticize and Other them.” The PuSh letter complains that “the work is rife with astonishing Orientalization, sexualization and othering of Palestinians.” “Orientalization” means the frequently erotic stereotyping of “exotic” Easterners (of all kinds, including middle-Eastern Jews) by Europeans in the 19th century, and simply doesn’t apply here. “Othering” may make some kind of sense, but only in that the language and culture of the Palestinians is foreign to Jacob himself. It is true that the Arab girl does not have a name, but that’s because Jacob never gets to find out her name. One more time: that’s the point. But there are also pages of text in the play describing his feelings of deep compassion for this suffering fellow-human.
And “sexualization”? Okay, let’s go there: in reference to the Arab girl, the Belfry letter remarks that “the sexualizing… of Palestinians is astonishing.” Yes, it is, because it exists only in the minds of the letter-writers. In fact, Jacob is gay. At one point in the play he goes clubbing in Tel Aviv and gets involved in all-male (and, presumably, all-Jewish) group sex. There is not a syllable in this play that suggests that he has any sexual interest in any women whatsoever, including the Arab girl.
The PuSh letter does acknowledge a scene where the Arab girl shows kindness to Jacob, when he goes to find her, months after the incident. That scene is made all the more theatrically powerful by its brevity and uniqueness, but the letter-writers don’t get that: they’re too busy counting the number of words the characters speak, to make the point that the Arab girl speaks only a few. But those few words are very telling. Jacob has fallen to his knees, weeping, at seeing her alive, healthy, and fully human. Seeing his tears, and not recognizing him as the man who saved her life – seeing only that he is a Jew, her enemy – she nevertheless puts her hand on his shoulder and says, “Are you all right?” Reflecting on this later, he says, “Her hand on my shoulder. Are you all right. That’s all that matters. Kindness. An act of kindness.”
But the writers of both letters are instead preoccupied with counting up and comparing their tallies of repetitions of words, as if the more frequently a word is spoken, the more important that word becomes in the text. If that were the case, the word “the” would leap out at us from the stage with ferocious emotional power.
Sometimes the parsing simply defies truth and logic: “The protagonist is questioned for saving her life. His only justification is ‘we swore an oath to do no harm.’ It is notable that her life is framed in this way, and not because of any inherent value she may have as a human being.” Firstly, the quote is taken out of context: what Jacob actually says is, “The only thing that came to mind…was that we swore an oath,” etc. Secondly, earlier in the play, he says, “What was I supposed to do? She was a person, a teenager, a girl.” The letter-writers seem to be complaining that Jacob is not a calm, even-handed historical authority. Well, he’s not. Again: he’s a young guy in a nightmare, whose values have been turned upside-down, and he’s desperately trying to sort it all out.
If you’re still with me, thank you for hanging in, and you’ll be glad to know that I’m about to wrap up. Writing this blog has been difficult. As you can tell, I’ve found myself getting angry. I may have fallen into a couple of the traps of which I accuse the letter-writers: getting excessively punctilious and picking apart sentences and phrases point by point. But I hope I’ve avoided twisting the truth.
However, allow me one more point: let’s pretend, for a moment, that every accusation made in these letters is accurate. If Christopher Morris’s play were truly guilty of the offenses of which it accused, then his punishment should have been the traditional punishment meted out to bad plays: negative reviews, small houses, and few, or zero, future productions – not because of political pressure, but because nobody’d want to see it. (For the record, it has received several productions so far – with rave reviews and large, enthusiastic audiences – and several awards, including the 2019 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play.)
God knows, I’ve seen and read plenty of material that I’ve found offensive and/or that has contradicted my political and moral beliefs. My reaction has been to write and talk about them more. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now, as a reaction to these letters. My response to being offended by them is not to demand that they be suppressed; it is to expose them even more fully, so that you can make up your own mind.
So: here are the links to the two letters, and to the publisher of The Runner, who will be happy to sell you your own copy. (The fact that that publisher is J. Gordon Shillingford, who have also put out my new book, is a coincidence. Or maybe not: maybe it’s just that Shillingford enjoys publishing sane writing by grown-up Canadians.)
So don’t take my word for it. Read these documents yourself. Make up your own mind – as we’re all supposed to be able to do in a free and enlightened society. And thanks again for reading this.
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Letter to the Belfry Theatre: https://sumud1948.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-belfry-on-december?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web
Letter to the PuSh Festival: https://bcartists4pal.substack.com/p/e27ae58f-059b-48be-957d-00b44d0e93b3
The Runner, by Christopher Morris: https://www.jgshillingford.com/product/the-runner/
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