The following was sent to the Victoria Belfry Theatre’s artistic director Michael Shamata and executive director Isaac Thomas regarding the cancellation of The Runner play, and filed with the Driftwood.
By HANNAH BROWN
I knew that you would make this decision and I am very sad that a bullying and violent part of our community can have this kind of power. The content of this play did not take a position on what is happening in the Middle East. It presents what happens between people when they are responding to their higher self . . . the part of them that asks them to behave ethically and morally.
The people who have defaced your building with anti-Israel stickers and paint and who are threatening, yelling and protesting in a violent way are not accessing the moral and higher part of their spiritual being. They are committing a crime and not participating in democratic dialogue. They are simply intimidating us. What topic will be next?
I have no answers, at this point in time, only a specific answer for you, which I have outlined below. I feel that there will be more and more hijacking of our democratic institutions and rituals by an unlearned minority that believes that might is right and gets away with it.
Throughout history, “art” has always been a place in which we dialogue and consider a variety of opinions and perspectives. Therefore, since we are deviating from this, we need to state clearly why we are not presenting a play that actually makes no statement about the Israel/Gaza conflict but is Jewish in content only by its affiliation with Zaka, a non-governmental rescue and recovery organization in Israel, staffed by volunteers. It responds to any emergency in Israel for Bedouins, Christians, Jews or Muslims, and Israel’s population of 9 million people has over 2 million who are not Jewish. We need to clearly state that it is anti-Semitism that has caused this reaction, not the present conflict in the Middle East. We need to say that it is anti-Semitic people who will harm you all and those of us who will attend. Anything other than that is untrue and means we are not speaking clear to this situation . . . at our peril.
My strong request is that you do not put on anything else in The Runner’s place. Let it be a time of mourning for the defacement of our values . . . a period of mourning for the arts, whose job it is to challenge us to think beyond our borders. This would then be a non-violent response to this violent protest . . . a much-loved theatre, our Belfry, that is closed because it was unsafe to present a play that had been chosen.
Please do not cover your words by saying “further tensions in our community” and “for sharing values that added to our understanding.” There is only one thing to understand: the threat of violence from a very aggressive anti-Semitic minority has brought the closure of this widely acclaimed Canadian play that presents a theme that each of us should consider carefully. In the words of the playwright, Christopher Morris, who is not Jewish, “How do you stay true to yourself and live in a moral way, when circumstances tell you it’d be easier not to?” and “Life is precious and short, so how do you live a good life while you have it?”
I would be glad to write a letter to our community asking them to donate their ticket price for The Runner to the Belfry. As well, I think there are donors who would support this with additional funding. I would be happy to phone them.