MY CALAMITOUS AFFAIR WITH THE MINISTER OF CULTURE & CENSORSHIP...

*Photos by Stan Barouh

What The Critics ARE SAYING

From DC Theatre Arts:

“Fierce... Blistering... Scaldingly Self-Inquisitional

“a public forum for putting one’s own conscience on trial... an ambitious attempt at moral reckoning... something particular that is rare on stage and worthy: vivid and edifying evidence of what it might look like in retrospect to examine and own one’s flaws and errors along with one’s slings and arrows.

“Director John Vreeke shrewdly meets the challenge of how to stage this text fest with a polished production that is both provocative and dynamic... The cast is superb. Ilasiea Gray as Virginia B. Lawrence, Karl Kippola as AD, Lisa Hodsoll as Miri Rekev, Anat Cogan Eilat Herzog, and Hassan Nazari-Robati as Samad Hussein keep the playing area in diagrammatic motion as they fill the script’s fragmentary, staccato exchanges with sense and long speeches with passion.  Their impressively heightened acting style both intensifies and illuminates the knotty drama...

“The sleek, white-walled street-level space at the corner of 14th and R has see-through windows reflecting transparency as theatrical intent. Upon the wide upstage wall appear Projections Designer Devin Kinch’s scene-setting images and videos, a brilliant word cloud that punches up the fast-paced dialogue.”

-       John Stoltenberg, DCTA

From The Washington Post:

“Important themes, humor and dynamic performances... depicts a seismic clash between theater people who feel passionately about their artistic and political values. It’s a clash evidently based on events related to Roth’s 2020 departure from Mosaic Theater Company, an organization he founded after being fired from Theater J in 2014. He started Voices Festival Productions this year.

In “Calamitous Affair,” directed by John Vreeke and part of the Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival, the Roth stand-in is called AD (Founding Artistic Director Until Recently), and he’s channeled by Karl Kippola with an apt disheveled-professor air... His collaborators include an Israeli playwright, Eilat Herzog (the charismatic Anat Cogan), and a Palestinian actor, Samad Hussein (Hassan Nazari-Robati, exuding spot-on moodiness and fervor). AD’s colleague Virginia B. Lawrence (a magnetic Ilasiea Gray) strives to calm tempers, but that’s tough when AD has written into “Humiliation 2.0” a right-wing-firebrand based on a real Israeli minister of culture (a radiantly brash Lisa Hodsoll). As the minister character, Miri Rekev, stalks around in a blue pantsuit, haranguing exuberantly, the meta-theater can be sharp.

“Calamitous Affair” also asks significant questions related to art, politics and inclusion. Among them: Is bearing forceful political witness incompatible with good theater, which arguably has at its core a push-and-pull between wills and viewpoints? Eye-catching at the back of the largely bare stage, Devin Kinch’s projections — words like “restorative justice” and “protected speech” and video seemingly of protests and security forces in Israel — add philosophical and geopolitical context... Anger, disappointment and, yes, humiliation do figure in the story, judging by scenes of narration and heated debate... The most moving moment sees Virginia suddenly losing her cool, showing us the anguish that evidently underlies her generally upbeat manner. “When you don’t see another’s suffering, and see only your own, it is violence,” she cries. “…. Stop the violence!”

-       Celia Wren, The Washington Post

From Broadway World:

“My Calamitous Affair... is quite the event ...Hodsoll's Rekev is as charismatically entrancing as the colonial power she represents, speaking for and through AD as a character he has written into his adaptation and a figment of his imagination.

“tensions boil as the projected background fills with buzzwords until Samad 'takes over' the production and dramatically posits the first and only revolutionary idea just before intermission." My Calamitous Affair... is at times funny but it is mentally exhausting, especially for someone less interested in scandal than in the art of theatre.”

-       Martrese Meachum, Broadway World

From DC Theatre Arts (Feature):
My lunch with Ari Roth, Who Appears Barely Disguised in His Own New Play

A conversation with playwright Ari Roth and dramaturg Debbie Minter Jackson previews 'My Calamitous Affair with the Minister of Culture and Censorship.'

From Washington Jewish Week (Interview):
Ari Roth’s Third Act

“There’s a lot to do in order to be kosher in this business,” the theater producer and playwright says as he launches his newest venture.

Response from Audience
& Theatre Professionals

From Philip Arnoult, founder & director
Center for International Theatre Development

“I found Ari Roth’s My Calamitous Affair with the Minister of Culture and Censorship or Death of Dialogic in the American Theater a breathtakingly ambitious admixture of personal frailty, insider theatre power struggles, and thorny Middle Eastern conflicts.  I felt like the taut  performances I saw last week dealt with more substantial issues in 2 1/2 hours than any stage in America that night.   Controversial: yes.  Ambitious: yes.  Perfect: no.  Worth your time and attention:  absolutely.”

From Adele Robie, Theatre Producer
Founder of Anacosita Playhouse & H Street Playhouse

“I had vowed never to post on Facebook again (with the exception of photos of Julia and Chloe) but I’m breaking the vow for one quick minute. Last Sunday Ari Roth invited me to see his new show, in a new space with his new production company. Written by Ari and performed by a powerful cast, the piece kind of astonished me. You see Ari and I share a dubious distinction, arrived at by very different routes, but with the same end result. Both of us ended up on the outside of something we had founded and nourished and something, ultimately, we were locked out of.

So bravo Ari. This is his story. And while its underpinnings are middle east conflict, the clash of opinions and values, and very insider-theater action, I kept being drawn by a bigger more global message, that of losing voice. It’s a theme woven throughout, as characters argue, stomp, yell, leave and return as they try to stay true to their own voices. I know the theater part was important and true, yet I kept coming back to voice, both silenced and appropriated. And shouted down. And how a person can attempt to honor many voices without success, ending up exactly where he started. Some folks will watch this and come away with a very literal interpretation and that’s good. The story is important. For me it was also about loss and ultimate new beginnings. And the work of finding and staying true to your own voice.

It’s called “My Calamitous Affair with the Minister of Culture and Censorship or Death of the Dialogue in the American Theater” See it if you can. It goes through October 23.”

From Michael Bloom, Director/Playwright 

★★★★

“I attended MY CALAMITOUS AFFAIR at the Voices Festival and was very glad I did.  This is a brave, heartfelt, and funny play that uses the authors own experience as a lever to dissect the tumultuous cultural world we now live in. Roth presents a cacophony of voices from three different countries in exciting and utterly revealing ways. Few other writers have had the courage and the honesty to dramatize the convulsions we are now experiencing—and to do so with empathy and humor.”

From Dana Scott Galloway, Actor/Writer

“Do not miss this show. Funny, provocative, entertaining, very challenging, a sometimes flawed, confusing maelstrom... It's big, noisy, messy, powerful theatre, and left me thinking and rethinking a few things, and laughing...yea, it's funny, (and yes, long, 2.5 hours and they fly by. No joke.) A stellar and truly diverse cast, written by Ari Roth. Not for those who desire being spoon fed the current politically correct soup of the day. It's an exhilarating, ass-kicking show.”

From Carl Randolph, Artistic Director of Transformation Theatre

“What a play! The performance was fantastic and the play very powerful.  It needs to be seen by every AD, ED, PM and theatre Board! Even directors and dramaturgs need to see this. So much resonated with me as I'm sure you guessed. It was interesting to watch this play sitting directly across from you. It was especially moving (and a little difficult) to see you during the passing of your father. Still very fresh for you. I lost my father 10 years ago on Oct 25 and it still moves me.  I'd love to chat with you sometime and talk more about the play and your experience. As you said last night, every Artistic Director has or will experience much of this. Thank you for sharing this.  FABULOUS performances of a very powerful and thought provoking play.”

A text to House Management From Susan (and Ronald) Shapiro

“We left right after the play because we were absolutely starving but we wanted to stay so please tell Ari is was unbelievable, fabulous and just transformative....”

[and then on email]

 “We were spellbound after the play, by the sense of authenticity and vulnerability –presenting a self-critique during a time of intense political polarization. There’s a fine line between exposing – and moving on – accepting and changing – forgiving oneself so that lessons can be learned.  You had courage and were vulnerable and you opened your art – and you made new art.  You were authentic and it was felt. You had to be stripped – you had to suffer – and that suffering led to a new self. 

I have been talking about it to colleagues and friends, trying to tackle some of the ideas. I would love to brainstorm ways you might use this material.  I can imagine using it to explore the political polarization in our world today and to gain inner awareness.  I might advocate using it in schools in some ways.  Maybe universities?   I am working with a nonprofit consisting of educators, artists, a maze designer, and students to improve our educational systems, globally, and have teachers transform their thinking.  This is similar to the intent you expressed in your play.  I will do whatever I can to spread word about the play.” 

From Laura Zam, Author/Performer

“Just a note to say Kurt and I are still thinking about, and talking about, your terrific play. There was so much bravery and heart on that stage. The play raised such important questions about our biases, and where they might come from. Too many people believe we can easily get rid of them, but the play showed us the reality, with deep empathy for all concerned.  I hope it has a rich life beyond this production.”

From Antoinette Dougherty

“The production is passionate and thought-provoking. I highly recommend it!”

From Minna Scherlinder Morse
[to her Book Club and a Listserve - used with permission]

Hi everyone! Ari Roth's new company is called Voices Festival Productions, and it is the new container for both his Voices of a Changing Middle East Festival (the one he started at Theater J and continued at Mosaic Theater company) and Voices from a Changing Nation Festival (next spring, I think), which he started at Mosaic. His performance space is a bare-bones black-box (where matinees will be an interesting lighting challenge) on the north-east corner of 14th and R Streets, NW (1701 14th St, NW--The Corner at Whitman Walker). There's a link for tickets at the bottom of this performance details page, if you feel able to purchase, please do, but contact me if you'd like one of the vouchers I have (I bought 8 tickets for first preview and then first preview got pushed back).

My Brief Calamitous Affair With The Minister Of Culture And Censorship, Or The Death Of The Dialogic In The American Theater is a breathtakingly honest, provocative, and inventive play by Roth about his own reckoning with history, his own culpability as an artist/colonizer in cross-cultural/cross-power-differential collaborations, including the one that ended with his ouster from the "cultural fusion" theater company he founded. ...The play is told in retrospect, from the perch of having wrestled over two years with what happened, with flashbacks and forwards, recreations and elements of magical realism (including the appearance of a fictionalized, hilarious love-to-hate version of 'Bibi in heels,' MK Miri Regev). The basis for one main character – the anti-Zionist Israeli playwright with whom he fought and at least partially reconciled, Einat Weizman – will [was scheduled to be] performing her own one-woman show, I, Dareen T on alternate nights with Affair toward the end of this run and then continuing for a week thereafter.

A great new play with themes of 'teshuvah' (or repentance, just right for holiday!), racism/anti-racism, Palestinian oppression/liberation, artistry and allyship. Incredibly moved and impressed, and also laughed a LOT (in all the right places).”

From J. Michael Kirchberg

“I still feel ripped open by it. All my own righteous attachments, challenged to the core. Each domain was exquisitely articulated and righteously angry. Apart from the AD's Deputy (who becomes the new Executive Director]: perhaps her relative capitulation gives us something of what four hundred years of this stuff can do. I wished for Stokely Carmichael in her too. I came away feeling wrung out, exhausted by my reeling sympathies, spent, but not quite beaten. The clarification implicit in the evolving presentations-of-viewpoint was daunting but not damning: they registered. In the AD and in us. The movement was painful, but it happened…. The acting was superb, everyone. I wish Congress would see it…

“The play remains haunting: each character articulated the passionate version of a representative stance...the Israeli government, the Palestinian vulnerability, the Israeli artistic/theatrical yearning, Ari's complex dilemma in engaging all of this in dialogue that might ultimately lead to a play that might demonstrate the potential for accommodation /resolution/attention from the various viewpoints. The Artistic Director's Deputy, a younger-middle-aged Black woman, offered a complex viewpoint that reflected her cultural stance but also a commitment to the AD's vision. She was less passionate than the others, apart from one singular challenge. She eventually demanded that the group "Stop the violence" in their assaults on another; she remained a more muted representative of Black artistic concerns. I suggested to Ari that her more muted representative response might well have reflected four hundred years of oppression in comparison to the 75 years of Arab/Israeli tension. The others were righteously angry and very compelling articulators of their group's concerns. The AD was made to cave to compelling arguments from all sides, and ultimately seemed to take in what he had heard. His experience was notably qualified by the death of a family member right in the middle of it all. Eventually the AD takes in the broad implications of what has been offered, and by the end seems sobered but not wholly deterred from his vision that some sort of dialogue and accommodation would be possible. The play moved, as the AD took in what was emerging, even as he expressed deep frustration at the accusations of insensitivity, disrespect and so on. The play makes clear how difficult listening can be, how intense the stakes are, how willing the participants are to risking anything to make their points. The review in The Post is disappointing to me in that she did not acknowledge what he was challenging all of us to consider about the larger issues of engaging on matters of intense and different stances. She focused too much, I think, on what had been developing for Ari in the local theater world and not enough on what he was challenging us to consider in a larger sense.”