“I believe in the liberation of the people of Palestine, and I believe in the liberation of the Jewish people. And those things are not just not mutually exclusive, they require each other.”
This is a bonus episode featuring extra content from our December 4th episode on Cultural Resistance. Playwright and musician Dan Fishback explains the difference between boycott and censorship, why he uses the word "apartheid" to describe Israel-Palestine, and why he wants to start identifying as a "liberationist Jew."
This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Max Freedman. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded at The 'cast Sound Lab in Brooklyn, New York on November 6, 2017. Edited for length and clarity by Ilana Levinson.
Photo credit: Sammy Tunis
Dan Fishback is a playwright, performer, musician, and director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. His musical “The Material World” was called one of the Top Ten Plays of 2012 by Time Out New York. His play “You Will Experience Silence” was called “sassier and more fun than 'Angels in America'” by the Village Voice. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback has released several albums and toured Europe and North America, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread. Other theater works include “Waiting for Barbara” (New Museum, 2013), “thirtynothing” (Dixon Place, 2011) and “No Direction Homo” (P.S. 122, 2006).
As director of the Helix Queer Performance Network, Fishback curates and organizes a range of festivals, workshops and public events, including the annual series, “La MaMa’s Squirts.” Fishback has received grants for his theater work from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He has been a resident artist at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where he has developed all of his theater work since 2010. Fishback is a proud member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artist Council. He is currently developing two new musicals, “Rubble Rubble” and “Water Signs,” and will release a new album by Cheese On Bread in 2018.
references
- Letter calling on Lincoln Center to cancel Israeli government's "Brand Israel" theater performances (Adalah-NY, 2017).
- "5 Myths About Israel Boycotts That Every Theater Lover Should Consider" (Dan Fishback, Forward, July 21, 2017).
- Lincoln Center Festival page for To the End of the Land, presented July 24-27, 2017.
- Lincoln Center Festival page for Yitzhak Rabin: Chronicle of an Assassination, presented July 9, 2017.
- "PACBI Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel" (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, July 16, 2014).
- "Governor Cuomo Signs First-in-the-Nation Executive Order Directing Divestment of Public Funds Supporting BDS Campaign Against Israel" (Governor's Press Office, June 5, 2016).
- Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002), which defines the word "apartheid" in Part II, Article 7 (page 5).