Don't call it "cancel culture"

A festival gives an acclaimed play the boot - and gets the playwright to agree

It’s an article of faith among many members of Canada’s literary community that “cancel culture” is a myth, a delusion spread by right-wing American media to stigmatize efforts to open up artistic conversations to new viewpoints that question long dominant understandings of power, race, class and gender.

The recent cancellation of a play entitled The Runner, which had been scheduled this winter at The Belfry Theatre in Victoria and at Vancouver’s PuSh Festival of performing arts, ought to – but probably won’t – shake that comforting faith.

The Runner is a one-man show focusing on an Israeli volunteer who saves the life of a Palestinian woman accused of killing an Israeli soldier – the man then deals with fallout from his own community and even questions himself as to why he saves the woman’s life. I haven’t seen it, but it won a Dora Mavor Moore award when it premiered in Toronto in 2019.

Because programming decisions for festivals and theatre company seasons are made well before the plays take the stage, the decision to remount The Runner at the two West Coast venues would have been made long before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the current Gaza war. But as a result of that war, the decision to mount the play became a lightning rod for criticism.

The Belfry actually pulled the plug first on the play, after an online petition to do so attracted about 1,500 signatures, but I’m going to focus here on the decision by the PuSh Festival because it came in response to demands by another artist at the festival, Basel Zaraa, whose installation Dear Laila is inspired by his family’s “ongoing trauma and struggle as Palestinians exiled by Israel.”

Zaraa refused to allow his work to be shown at the festival if The Runner were shown. (There was also a petition against staging The Runner at PuSh that was signed by a number of writers, students and activists.)

Not surprisingly, given the politics of the Canadian arts community, the festival gave in to Zaraa’s demand. What’s really interesting to me is that the festival managed to get The Runner’s playwright, Christopher Morris, to support the decision.

Morris, in his statement, bends over backwards to be nice about the guy who has just pushed him off the stage.

“Basel Zaraa’s voice is new to Canadians and his installation Dear Laila–also nuanced & award-winning–focuses on his family experience as Palestinians exiled by Israel. It is an extraordinary, important work.”

Does that buy Morris any goodwill from Zaraa? What do you think?

 “I cannot agree for Dear Laila to be shown alongside The Runner, a play which reinforces dehumanising narratives about Palestinians. Palestinians appear in The Runner almost exclusively as perpetrators of violence. While the Israeli characters are vividly portrayed, the Palestinian characters don’t even have names, and barely speak. The fundamental context of Israel’s occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is not given.”

(It’s worth noting that The Runner is a one-person play, and worth noting as well that the “dehumanizing narrative” in the play is comes from a character who is the villain of the piece.)

Of course, Israel-Palestine is one of those intractable conflicts with little to no middle ground to be found anywhere from the river to the sea.

But there are indications that similar arguments could be made regarding the depiction of many other subjects on a Canadian stage.

As Zaraa says in his statement: “While many voices are welcome, artistic endeavors on this subject have a responsibility to reflect the reality that there is an occupier and an occupied.”

That is, “many voices” may be welcome, but Zaraa is demanding that one interpretation and one perspective only is permissible. Are there not many other issues on which supporters for one side will insist that there is only one legitimate interpretation?

Both the PuSh Festival and a Toronto theatre critic commenting on CBC radio’s culture show Commotion also bring up the fact that Morris isn’t from Israel or Palestine, yet another indication that the issue of appropriation is increasingly leading to a cultural world in which ideas, themes, settings and issues are all strictly allocated according to identity-based lines. (In this case though, it’s hard to imagine that Zaraa’s concerns would have been assuaged if The Runner had been written by an Israeli Jew.)

The most bizarre part of the entire debacle is seeing Morris quoted extensively in the PuSh Festival’s statement, endorsing his play’s cancellation.

Imagine going up to an artist who spent years and poured his heart and soul into a play and is now seeing it characterized as some sort of racist propaganda piece and asking him to endorse giving in to the demands of the people who are insulting him and his work. As they say in the genocidal, occupying Zionist entity: that’s chutzpah!

Whatever Morris may have thought, here’s what he says in the PuSh statement:

“Holding space for other viewpoints is essential, particularly at this moment of trauma and division. I sympathize with the PuSh Festival’s distress when Basel shared that he’d withdraw his work if The Runner remained in the festival; and when they arrived at their difficult decision to prioritize one artist’s voice over another. PuSh’s leadership has navigated this complicated situation with transparency and care. If removing The Runner is the only way Canadians can hear Basel’s crucial voice, then there is value in stepping aside.”

I like to think that if I were ever in Morris’s shoes I would channel General Anthony McAulliffe of the U.S. 101^st Airborne. In December 1944, with his men surrounded and outnumbered in the Belgian town Bastogne by the German counterattack known to history as the Battle of the Bulge, McAulliffe received a long demand by the Germans to surrender or be annihilated by the Panzer tanks and howitzers of the Wehrmacht. McAulliffe famously sent back a message that read in its entirety:

“To the German Commander:

Nuts.

The American Commander”

But I probably wouldn’t. Like Morris, I’d consider the need to stay on the good side of future artistic directors, festivals and arts grant juries. I’d probably cave too. But if I ever find myself in this situation, I’ll insert a code word so that you’ll know I don’t really mean whatever I say.

If you ever see me use the phrase “holding space” you’ll know I’m looking down the barrel of a metaphorical Panzer.