This is what theatre is supposed to be: How Paula Vogels Indecent remembers a century of dramatic censorship – Toronto Star

From ashes they rise, opens Paula Vogels play Indecent, at the CAA Theatre on Yonge Street starting this Friday.

That opening moment is a haunting image a troupe of actors coated in dust, seemingly lost to history before this instant. The story then begins as we meet Lemml, the stage manager, who promises to tell us a story about the play that changed his life. The play in question? Sholem Aschs God of Vengeance, which in 1907 became the subject of Yiddish newspaper headlines in New York due to the plays strikingly contemporary lesbian plot line.

In 1907, God of Vengeance was called filthy, immoral and, yes, indecent for its content and thats where Vogels investigation into the plays history begins.

I read God of Vengeance when I was 22 years old, and it always stayed with me, said Vogel in an interview. It was an important play for me to read.

Fast forward 20 or 30 years, and I get a call from Rebecca Taichman, who for a directing project had directed a performance of the God of Vengeance obscenity trial and she asked if Id like to work with her. She would direct it, and I would write it.

I didnt just see this as a play about the obscenity trial, Vogel said. I tried a version just concentrating on the trial, and I thought it was kind of flat and not really getting at the issues of why this was shocking. So I went at it just from what I saw. And what I saw the moment she called me was a dusty theatre troupe rising from a kind of limbo in an attic room. I knew that was the play.

Indecent had its Broadway premiere in 2017 nearly 100 years after God of Vengeance hit the Great White Way in 1923. Indecent was Vogels Broadway debut, despite an illustrious playwriting premiere including a Pulitzer Prize for How I Learned to Drive.

Vogel made clear in our interview that while Taichman is credited as a co-creator in the printed version of the play, Vogel wrote every word of the text including those haunting stage directions.

If theres a word in the script thats a stage direction, thats coming from me, said Vogel.

On the other hand, you know, I would hand her a few pages, and say something like do a tour around the world in four scenes on the stage. And shed say, how do I do that? And I told her I didnt know thats her problem, said Vogel with a laugh.

I wrote it, but I feel very collaborative, she continued. Even with directors Ive never met who are doing my work (like Joel Greenberg, who is directing the Toronto production).

Part of what makes Indecent so special is its music while its not a musical, per se, its certainly a play with music that plays an integral part in the storytelling.

I immediately heard a Klezmer band as I was writing it, said Vogel, and I recorded over 600 Klezmer songs to find the songs I wanted. I selected all the music, and I always write to music musics very important to me it goes back to this Wagnerian notion of a total work of theatre. A total work of theatre always includes music and dance in some ways and movement.

Indecent, while weaving in music and dance, also pays homage to a long legacy of theatrical censorship from Edward Bonds Saved in 1965 to Sarah Kanes Blasted 30 years later. In the early 20th century, God of Vengeance was similarly reviled for its content and themes and through Indecent, Vogel has honoured this history of great work being smothered by its context.

Theres a long history of what I call benign censorship, said Vogel. You suppress someone through criticism and the marketplace. You cant say its illegal although before 1968 in England, you could say it was illegal but I think capitalist marketplaces do that benign censorship, through criticism, through marketing. There are so many writers not being done because what theyre saying isnt the status quo.

Vogel has spent the past few years working to make sure those writers rejecting the status quo can get produced and paid for their work, in an initiative titled Bard at the Gate.

Im in my third year of producing digital theatre of BIPOC writers in America, who are writing brilliant plays that are not being done by American theatres, said Vogel.

We have to have a resistance to the censorship going on. Were not looking at it as censorship because when we think of censorship, we think of book-burning in 1933. We think of the 1930s in Germany.

But I feel like we need to resist that. We need to create desire. Im hoping 18-year-olds start to watch these plays and they think, this is what theatre is supposed to be.

Indecent, a Studio 180 Theatre production. Onstage at the CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge Street, Oct. 14 to Nov. 6, 2022. For tickets, visit mirvish.com or call 1-800-461-3333

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This is what theatre is supposed to be: How Paula Vogels Indecent remembers a century of dramatic censorship - Toronto Star