Reflections on modern Jewish identity that are full of future promise

In this timely project curated and produced by Dan Wolff and Sam Thorpe-Spinks, six short plays received their first outing at London’s Kiln Theatre this month (8-9 August). This is an interesting location considering the Kiln’s history in its former incarnation as the Tricycle, both positively as the original home of The Muju Crew, a Muslim-Jewish theatre group, and contentiously with its choice to boycott a production linked to Israel. Recent debates about Jews onstage – from whether Falsettos the musical was more likely to read as antisemitic without Jewish actors cast, to the recent furore over the naming of a money-grubbing character called Hershel Fink at the Royal Court – have raised questions about how Jewish identity is portrayed in British Theatre and whether it’s essential to involve Jewish voices in productions to ensure accurate representation.

In response, writers – from the established to those more newly emerging – were given the ‘provocation’ to reflect on modern Jewish identity. The majority of the actors – including the co-producers, nimbly slipping between a number of roles – and directors (Hannah Hauer-King, Oscar Toeman, Emma Jude Harris and Zoe Templeman-Young) also identified as Jewish or had a personal connection to Jewishness. The results were full of future promise.

Emanate opened with Daniel Goldman’s The Jew, juxtaposing the relationship between eighteenth-century Jewish boxing champion Daniel Mendoza and his wife with that of a contemporary couple. The cleverly framed jump cuts drew a parallel between Mendoza’s bout against Sam Martin (aka West Country fighter The Bath Butcher), which was emblematic of his struggles as ‘The Jew’ in a suspicious gentile society, and modern-day battles against antisemitism on Twitter, asking what is personally sacrificed in the fight.

Both the Twitter wars and deliberately ambiguous ending signalled what was to come throughout the night. Antisemitism proved to be the dominating theme inflecting almost every play, many also making self-aware meta comments about social media and – reflecting the textbook approach to short plays as well as the Jewish approach to narrative – most exited on a question.

YID by Alexis Zegerman (translated by Mark Edel-Hunt), was a two-hander that, again, juxtaposed the experience of two couples, this time cleaning antisemitic graffiti off their homes, performed by the same actors switching between time periods and languages (with surtitles projected on the screen behind). It relocated the historical comparison to Berlin in the 1930s, both play and performers coming alive as the same scenes transposed from the modern British to the German context, playing out almost identically word for word.

Richard Katz looked towards the future with 46 Jews, considering the ways robotics and AI can be programmed to define identity. The only play to have two extracts showcased, it combined several short pieces, not always coherently. The initial scene was the smartest, as a woman wrestled with completing an equalities form: dithering over how to fill in the box accompanying ‘white, other’ – an experience clearly received with recognition by the overwhelmingly Jewish audience. Like several of the other plays, the dramatic climax revolved around a pregnancy, the prospect of new life awakening questions of inherited identity.

0.43% by writer-director Ryan Craig was conceptually more original: the kind of genetic testing done by 23andme or Ancestry.com proving a bone of contention between his couple, who had known each other from childhood. As their preconceptions were challenged by their test results, quickfire humorous repartee over questions of halachic (legal) status versus lived experience made the characters’ understanding of what it meant to be Jewish feel more rounded than in some of the other plays, although both the test results and their responses to the situation felt more extreme (and therefore shallow) than the complex reactions of real people.

Nick Cassenbaum’s comedic touch and joie-de-vivre made After the Lavoiya a tour-de-force. Providing a hilarious romp across British Jewry, it took us from cemeteries to cafes to warehouses, from the eponymous lavoiya (funeral) to encounters with Mossad and MI5. It too had recent antisemitism on the left as its major concern, culminating in a ridiculous plot to kidnap Corbyn. With flyby cameos from a woman rabbi, a successful frum female entrepreneur from Stamford Hill and a Holocaust survivor-cum-wide boy, this was the only play to choose brother and sister as the central relationship and to explore different identities and classes within the community rather than the standard bourgeoise middle-class couple. It was also the least theatrical in its current form, although I’d love to see whether it could work dramatically with the narration reframed as dialogue and the story fleshed out as a fully realised play. Special mention must be made of actors Dylan Corbett-Bader and Gemma Barnett who, while remaining seated throughout, essentially narrating a short story from their chairs, conjured numerous voices and worlds with their skilled performances.

In contrast, A Quiet Voice by Amy Rosenthal, beautifully directed by Templeman-Young, was the most theatrically fully realised. Clever use of simple props – a child’s trainers, low chairs, a cardboard box – created a school classroom. Here, we found ourselves at a parents’ evening that raised all the same questions about antisemitism, social media and identity, asking how wise it is to raise one’s head above a (literal, pink feather-adorned) parapet. Rosenthal’s skilful writing, realistic characters and wry humour gave us a fresh take on the issues that pervaded the evening: her own quiet voice as a writer proving that sometimes strength comes from the drawing out of nuance, and that the role of the theatre is to embody these debates through use of craft and dramatic art, giving us a fully rounded portrayal that’s the opposite of crude polemics in 140 characters.

What Emanate Productions did was revelatory – showcasing the depth of the talent pool in all facets of theatre and challenging the community to support our own. I hope there will be further outings of these shows and others, although I would add two provocations of my own.

Firstly, I want more. More of Mendoza (a complicated rogue whose problematic life and character are full of theatrical potential), more Jews doing DIY (the reversal of YID), more artificial intelligence wrestling with the quirks of ethnic and religious human identity or explorations of Jews and genetics (give us the Tay-Sachs play, the ‘which sperm to choose for your IVF’ play) and, most of all, a richer response to the question of contemporary British Jewishness than the self-conscious calling out of antisemitism on Twitter.

Secondly, several of these plays were about young, fairly secular, straight couples, whose inspiration to reflect on their identity was having children. While this is important, it’s not fresh. I’d welcome seeing a range of ages, sexualities, types of families, levels of religiosity and political attitudes portrayed, as well as the experiences of Jews from outside London. And, craft-wise, give us more imaginative leaps and a more comprehensive range of theatrical styles from the avant-garde to the kitchen-sink. Be ambitious, be bold, be complex and be as diverse as the reality of the British Jewish community today.

By Aviva Dautch

Photos by Matt Mella

To find out more about Emanate Productions, head to twitter.com/EmanateProds.