Overview
Synopsis
Indecent by Pulitzer-winning playwright Paula Vogel tells the story of Sholem Asch’s controversial play, The God of Vengeance, and the passionate artists who risked everything to bring it to the stage. A small theatre company tells the story of the play from its inception in Poland in 1907. The story—about the daughter of a brothel owner who falls in love with one of her father’s prostitutes—was polarizing even at its first readings, with many of Asch’s fellows arising him to burn it. Nevertheless, it achieved great success on the stages of Europe and in the Yiddish theatre scene of downtown New York City. But when an English-translation was attempted on Broadway, the play—featuring the first kiss between women on a Broadway stage—proved too scandalous for the general public, and the entire cast was arrested and charged with obscenity. Vogel’s Indecent resurrects Sholem Asch’s great play, and celebrates the love, magic, and hope of the theatre even in the face of the greatest adversities.
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Context
Indecent tells the story behind the Yiddish play The God of Vengeance by Polish-Jewish novelist Sholem Asch. Asch wrote the play early in his career. He sought to depict universal stories, so as to bridge the gap between Yiddish and non-Yiddish theatre, and thus also show Jewish characters as relatable and universal to non-Jewish audiences. The content of the play was radical and polarizing for the time: it featured two lesbian characters, prostitutes working in a brothel, and the hurling
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A body, dressed in an old-fashioned suit, stirs on a dimly lit stage. Slowly, as if long out of the habit, he straightens himself up. He dusts his newly-wakened limbs off as he rises, pouring sawdust from his sleeves and shaking more from his pant legs. Around him, six other figures begin to rise from the dust, all as if waking from a long sleep.
The first man introduces himself as Lemml, the stage manager of their theatre troupe. He introduces the six actors who will perform all the roles
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