ABC 7:30 Report: Interview with Louise Adler

Date: Monday 4th December 2023

 

Host Laura Tingle: The decision last week of three actors in the Sydney Theatre Company's new production of the Chekhov play 'The Seagull', to wear the Palestinian scarf, know as the 'keffiyeh', during curtain call, sparked a frenzy of condemnation from members of the Jewish community, resignations from the STC board, and withdrawal of donor support.

Louise Adler has been involved in the Arts sector for over 30 years, as a board member and book publisher and is currently director of Adelaide Writers' Week. Her view of the place of politics in the arts is also informed by her own family history.

Louise Adler, what was your response when you saw this controversy break out last week over the Sydney Theatre Company's curtain call?

Louise Adler: Well, I was rather surprised by the media reports – and if I can believe the media reports – and it seemed to me STC management wasn't taking great care over supporting their actors, and, that they seemed to be more concerned with pacifying donors who objected to the actors donning keffiyehs as they took their curtain calls

So I was rather surprised by that. The attention seemed to be on donors taking their cheque books and walking away. And I think Arts organisations need to have some clarity about the moral compromised they're prepared to make when they take donor's support, if you like, or funding. That comes with contradictions and compromises that need to be made.

And I didn't see any STC media reports, but there was a great deal of attention paid to the artists and their right to have an opinion when they took the curtain call.

Laura Tingle: Is it reasonable nonetheless to say: 'Well the audience is taking offense and we have to take that seriously'?

Louise Adler: So the question is: 'why would the audience take offence?'

Here we were with this group of actors -- three actors if I am correct. Three actors who declared at that curtain call that: 'we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and what is going on under occupation at this point in time.'

And for donors, and, in the main, captains of industry, with the capacity to support the Arts, to feel threatened by that declaration, in the comfort of an air conditioned theatre , seems to me to be remarkable ... Remarkable and disturbing.

Laura Tingle: So should artists and actors be bringing their own personal political views into the theatre?

Louise Adler: Actors, artists, writers have always had political views. I mean the history is long of artists being part of the world that they live in. And bringing that world into the works they make and .. Picasso and 'Guernica', Goya's 'The Horrors of War', and ... Percy Shelley saying: ' artists are the acknowledged legislators of the world.' And the writers who declared that they took sides in the Spanish Civil War. There is a long and honorable and important tradition of artists being engaged in the world they inhabit. And art that is not made of this world, that doesn't take into account this world feels to me rather vacuous.

And I'm not sure what we expect from contemporary theatre, if we don't expect artists to engage with the issues of the day.

Laura Tingle: So this was a particular issue amongst the Jewish community. A lot of Jewish supporters of the theatre, the STC ... a lot of patrons said that they were really confronted by this. Why is it that this issue, and at this point in time, seems so contentious?

Louise Adler: Well I think there's ... it's not just at this point in time. There's been a long and assiduous campaign by those who support Israel and it's governments – successive governments and policies. And to suggest that any criticism of Israel is intolerable and inappropriate. And that project if you like -- I would say agenda – has been crucial in promoting a conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. So if you have problems with criticisms of the state of Israel you're deemed an anti-Semite now.

So it becomes impossible to have the discussion. It becomes impossible to become a critic of Israel and its occupation, if we want to be so specific at this point in history. And so that seems to me to be the sub-text if you like. To the grievance today that we're discussing. Which is that it was inappropriate for actors to bring their solidarity with Palestinian people and suffering under occupation to a moment in contemporary theatre.

Laura Tingle: So we've seen a growing number of protests from both sides of conflict in middle east in recent years, making their way into cultural events in Australia. We saw a very aggressive push to get people to boycott the Sydney festival a couple of years ago from people who were worried that it was being subsidised by the Israeli embassy. And then earlier this year, there was pressure on the Adelaide writer's week, and on you as its director, because you had invited some Palestinian writers.

Can you just talk to us what happened in the case of Adelaide writer's week.

Louise Adler: Yes, and I should be clear here, that I'm speaking as the current director of writer's week, but I'm not speaking, in this discussion we're having tonight, as the representative of the Adelaide festival. It comes from my own long history in the arts and cultural space and by engagement with the Israel lobby.

It goes all the way back to the early 2000s when the Israeli ambassador decided, or demanded a meeting with me – a private meeting with me – after I had written a review of Edward Said's memoirs. And he demanded that I not air Israel's dirty linen in public.

That was one of my early experiences of being told that: 'we don't talk about Israel and our criticism of Israel in the public sphere.'

Fast forward a decade perhaps, and when I publish a book by Anthony Lowenstein, about the Israel lobby, federal MPs feel it's incumbent upon them to write to the vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne to demand that I be sacked.

And then let's fast forward to Adelaide writes' week when we decide that it is important to feature Palestinian literary culture as part of our program. And the Israel lobby decided that was reprehensible. They did not like the views of individual Palestinians. They didn't approve of them. And take them seriously.

They had every right not to approve of those Palestinian writers and their views on the current state in the Middle East. And they're perfectly entitled to those views, but they were not entitled in my view, to say that those Palestinian writers should not therefore be included in a literary festival celebrating a very rich literary culture, that was Palestinian literary culture.

There was a barrage of letters to the Adelaide Festival board. There were letters and op-eds, and news articles in all the media, but particularly in NEWS Limited, that went on and on for days. There was demands on sponsors that they withdraw their funding from Adelaide festival. And there was pressure put on the premier of South Australia even. It went that far.

And thankfully the board was resolute. The Adelaide Festival was resolute, that this was an opportunity for people to hear Palestinians talk about their writing.

Laura Tingle: As a Jewish Australian, I wonder how you see what has been happening in terms of the capacity of people to speak out and your own family history.

Louise Adler: Well I think it's a tragedy that we are being silenced, if you like. That the concern for peace and justice in the Middle East is suppressed. The wish that we should have peace and justice and self-determination for Palestinian people in the Middle East. That everybody should live in peace and security. That that's suppressed – that can't be discussed here. What it means to live under occupation can not be discussed here.

Everybody brings their own personal history to these issues. If one is Jewish, or one is Palestinian, or one is from the Middle East. One brings one's personal history.

My grandfather was murdered in Birkenau because he was Jewish. My father entered the resistance in Paris when he was 14 years of age, and his legacy to me is that it is important, and it is vital, for us not to look away. That we all have a choice. That the world looked away during the Second World War, and Jews, six million of our people, were murdered in that 'looking away.' And that it is incumbent upon humanity to look at what is happening in Gaza now, and to say: 'we will not accept this.' We will say: 'No. Not in our name.'

Laura Tingle: Louise Adler, thank you so much for speaking to us. Tonight.

Louise Adler: Thank you.

 

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