When I look back on plays I’ve seen, what I remember most isn’t usually the feeling of walking out of the theater. But, when thinking about seeing “Indecent” for the first time, that’s what stands out: the quiet reflection, the strangeness of emerging into the crowded New York streets, and the glances I exchanged with other audience members as we left—ones that acknowledged the weight of what we’d all experienced. In that month, July 2017, everyone was talking about “Indecent”.
Five years later, I sat in a crowded restaurant with friends, still talking about it. We all knew of a different production of “Indecent” happening somewhere in the country. “It’s sort of already become a classic,” someone said from across the table. “For some reason, everyone’s doing it.”
In six years, “Indecent” hadn’t really lost the momentum it achieved during its Broadway run. It made sense to me that this play had become such a classic so quickly—but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
“Indecent” by Paula Vogel is about the history of the play “The God of Vengeance”, written by Jewish Polish playwright Sholem Asch in 1906. “The God of Vengeance” is set in a brothel and follows its Jewish owner, his wife, and their daughter who enters into a lesbian relationship with a prostitute. The history of “The God of Vengeance” is most notably defined by its controversies, especially regarding its portrayal of a romantic relationship between two women. This became the first kiss between women on a Broadway stage, and led to the arrest of the producer and cast of the production on the grounds of obscenity. “Indecent” spans about 50 years, across the play’s inception, its initial tour across Europe, its move to America and brief Broadway transfer, and performances in European ghettos during the Holocaust.
In the years since its premiere in 2015, “Indecent” has become a staple: it was the seventh most produced play of the 2018-2019 season with 12 regional productions across the country, and this year alone, has been performed in at least five regional theaters and six colleges. Its Broadway production won two Tony Awards, extended its run by two months due to audience demand, released a cast album, and was professionally filmed to air on PBS and stream online. New Voices even recently published an article about God of Vengeance—and when I saw the article, I thought, “of course.”
Like the play it’s based on, “Indecent” has run into its own amount of controversy; most recently, Florida public school officials banned a high school production on the basis of “inappropriate” sexual dialogue, leading to backlash from free speech groups. There’s something about “Indecent” that makes it not just compelling to audiences, directors, and producers, but a play people will actively fight to perform. What is it about “Indecent”?
The easiest answer may be that modern audiences want to hear stories about people and parts of history that have previously been erased. “Indecent” is a Jewish story, and largely centers around a lesbian relationship. That’s exciting and significant. It’s also about a little-known historical moment, the “singularity” of which fueled director Rebecca Taichman’s motivation to develop the project for two decades after it began as her thesis at the Yale School of Drama.
Rachael Swartz, a theater professor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside who directed “Indecent” in February 2022, says she was drawn to “Indecent” because it was a true story that focused on a compelling intersection of identity. She described her queer students’ excitement about the play, and stressed its importance in relation to contemporary antisemitism. “We’re in a time where antisemitism is really loud,” she said. “So I think it’s necessary to tell Jewish stories now that are joyful, beautiful, and also have great consequence in them.”
“Indecent” also discusses immigration and assimilation, another topic audiences may find salient today. It heavily focuses on the difficulties the actors in “God of Vengeance” faced upon moving to the United States, which eventually resulted in some returning to Europe—a decision with catastrophic consequences on the eve of World War II. In 2017, during “Indecent’s” Broadway run, Taichman said she was “devastated” by how relevant the play was to modern-day life, especially during the outset of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant sentiment.
But to really understand why “Indecent” is so popular and distinct, we have to dig a little deeper. There are a lot of Jewish plays. There are a lot of queer plays. There are a lot of plays about immigration. So why is this play different from all other plays?
Indecent as media analysis
Rachel Hodes, who directed a production of “Indecent” at Wellesley College in fall 2019, suspects the play feels so relevant because it explicitly discusses the complexity of approaching representation in the arts. Hodes had never directed a play before “Indecent”, but became motivated to direct it after seeing a production in Boston. “I feel like the discussions of identity were what were most impactful for me,” they said. “The conversation it’s having about how Jews should be portrayed on the stage, and the writer, Sholem Asch, wrestling with how he was going to represent a community, that was what I mainly took away from it.”
Hodes references a major throughline of “Indecent”, in which Asch continuously struggles to create a truthful narrative that also makes a suitable Jewish play. “God of Vengeance” is most known for its obscenity trial in New York, which led to the arrest of its entire cast and producer for “an indecent, impure, and immoral theatrical performance.” But the play also faced backlash from other Jews who felt that the characters in the play would reflect badly on Jews in real life. At the end, Asch wishes that he had never written it, despite younger artists insisting upon its urgency.
Pop culture analysis is big in the Jewish and non-Jewish media world right now. Even within pop culture analysis, one of the biggest topics Jewish people love to discuss is what makes “good” Jewish representation and what makes “bad” Jewish representation. A search through Hey Alma’s most recent articles will show you what I mean: in just the past four months, you can find pieces discoursing about Jewish representation in the movie Do Revenge, and the shows A League of Their Own and Paper Girls. All three of these articles take stances on whether certain Jewish characters are, essentially, “good for Jews” or “bad for Jews.”
“Indecent” includes similar conversations, and reminds us of how old and engrained these debates are in Jewish life and art.
“There’s a responsibility when you make art representing a marginalized community,” Hodes said, citing a scene in “Indecent” where a rabbi tells Asch that his play is harmful to Jews. “That scene really represented how we don’t want to be portrayed badly, and we don’t want non-Jews to see us badly. They didn’t want anyone to think Jews were people who owned brothels, but also, in reality, there are Jews who own brothels. And we want to tell the truth in our art as well. There’s another line in the show, ‘Must every Jew be a paragon?’”
Jewish love of media analysis is ancient: Even the Talmud is sort of media analysis upon media analysis upon media analysis. If God of Vengeance is the Mishnah, “Indecent” is like the Gemara, with both its characters and its production team adding their own commentary on the significance and meaning of the original text. Every time another performance of “Indecent” happens, actors, directors, and designers expand upon this commentary in their own distinct way.
A tool for community building
“Indecent” isn’t just an art piece displaying compelling topics and narratives; it’s a tool for creating conversation and community building. It isn’t just about individual identity – it also catalyzes connection.
Part of this quality derives from the structure of the play itself. “Indecent” is an ensemble show for seven actors and three musicians, all of whom play multiple roles. Its script continuously emphasizes the ensemble by structuring the narrative around the trajectory of a troupe of actors. It begins with the ghosts of the troupe, rising from the dead to tell the story of “God of Vengeance”:
“Soft, muffled music. Slowly, in a dim light, a body stirs onstage. The light grows; we see a dusty figure in an old suit. He stretches his limbs that haven’t moved in decades. He lifts one arm; dust pours from his sleeve. He lifts the other arm; more dust. He shakes his legs vigorously; more outpouring of dust.
TITLE: FROM ASHES THEY RISE
The troupe rises and shakes off their dust.”
“Indecent” goes through lengths to remind the audience that they are watching a troupe of fictional actors put on a performance. Each actor has their own name and identity, carries around props in suitcases, and does onstage costume changes. Projections reference the unit of the “troupe” throughout the play. These moments remind the audience that they are watching a very real group of artists as well, ones who are also telling a story night after night.
In her preface to the “Indecent” script, Vogel describes suddenly having a “vision” when Taichman first approached her about writing the play: “A dusty troupe of actors hastily assemble a performance of “The God of Vengeance” with improvised props and suitcases and trunks in an attic.” This scene, which Vogel calls the “turning point,” is still in “Indecent”; it takes place in the Lodz Ghetto, where actors continue to perform portions of “God of Vengeance” against all odds. Here we see that, from the start, Vogel placed an emphasis on the troupe, and the act of creating art together. The UW Parkside production was set entirely around this attic scene.
Later in the preface, Vogel describes the most “intimate collaboration of [her] life”: She and Taichman shared a cabin to write a first draft, and then continued to workshop it across the country. Taichman remembers the rehearsal process as collaborative too, adding or cutting dialogue “when an actor’s growing idea of a character demanded it,” and tailoring scenes and characters for the specific company.
In 2015 “Indecent” made its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre, followed a month later by a production in San Diego, and eventually by a two-month Off Broadway run in 2016. Throughout its four productions, “Indecent” maintained a dedicated creative team. Its seven person cast also stayed the same, just like the show’s fictional troupe.
It wasn’t just the original production that functioned as a tool for community building, dialogue, and reflection—in fact, each person I interviewed associated the process of working on “Indecent” with forging community.
Acadia Barrengos, the director of the University of North Carolina’s production of “Indecent” in fall 2021, said that she used theatrical devising in her rehearsals. Devising, a technique popular at UNC, usually involves an ensemble of actors collaborating to develop a script. Although “Indecent” has a set script, actors worked together to shape the many musical numbers throughout the show, similar to the original production process.
According to Barrengos, UNC does not have a large Jewish community, and only two of seven cast members were Jewish. Barrengos saw this as an opportunity to not only share a piece of her identity that she hadn’t been able to before, but also to bring a wide variety of cultural backgrounds to the material.
“We all met the play where we were,” Barrengos said. “People may have initially thought, ‘This isn’t mine, this isn’t my story, this doesn’t belong to me.’ But a lot of people learned about their own family histories or were reminded of their parents’ or grandparents’ stories. There was a really deep curiosity and respect and desire to learn…Doing plays that are steeped in histories we might not be acutely aware of brings us closer as a society to understanding one another.”
Similarly, director Swartz of University of Wisconsin-Parkside felt that “Indecent” allowed her students to build cultural competency. “I wanted to ensure that my students felt an awareness of how historically close we were to this piece,” Swartz said. “I took on a more hands-on approach than I might have with a professional cast…we had to make sure it was a learning experience.”
Hodes felt that a strong community strengthened “Indecent’s” impact. “At Wellesley, everyone knows each other because it’s a small school,” they said. “[Indecent] just hits different when you’re going to see your friends putting on this really powerful performance. It’s a show about intimacy, so that adds to the level of intimacy. With student theater, it’s literally just people doing it because they’re passionate about it. And it came through with how it was performed as well, especially with and all the switching of characters, showing that these connections exist throughout space and time.”
Theater as a Jewish ritual
Alexandra Silber, a cast member in “Indecent”’s London premiere, felt that “Indecent” was especially relevant to a world that has experienced a global pandemic; it is, in her words, about “the power of theater in the face of disaster.”
The London production of “Indecent” played two performances on March 13 and 14, 2020, before closing due to COVID. During the final performance, Silber described audience members gasping when a cast member spit on the ground, and an impending sense of dread as the evening progressed. She also said she felt a newfound sense of connection to the events of the play.
“That theater was so small it actually felt like the size of the attic, only 175 seats,” Silber said. “Real, human people, some coming in gloves and makeshift masks because we didn’t have any protocol yet, were facing fear and the unknown to see a play. And in the middle of disaster, these 10 actors did our play. And that’s exactly what the troupe is doing in the last scene.”
Over a year later, at a time where community felt especially crucial after extended isolation, the same cast performed a complete run of “Indecent”. Here, Silber says she experienced “Indecent” as another kind of tool—a ritual, providing a sense of comfort and order.
“There’s something about the theater specifically, because it’s repetitive, and it’s inherited, and it’s handed down, and you do it over and over again, it’s ritualistic. Returning to the exact same words, costumes, and movements, but each one of us was totally transformed by the events of the pandemic, was profound, to say the least,” she said.
“Indecent’s” troupe does what Silber describes—the troupe of ghost actors performs again and again, rising from and returning to ashes at the beginning and end of each night. In the first scene, the troupe’s stage manager introduces the play by saying, “Every night we tell this story—but somehow, I can never remember the end.”
“Indecent” emphasizes the cyclical, repetitive nature of theater. It’s not just a play about a play, but a play about people putting on a play.
Maybe because of their repetition, it’s easy to take performances (and rituals) for granted. Plays like “Indecent” remind us that these things are powerful, and not always easy—and that the line between theater and ritual isn’t so rigid.
“When I light Shabbat candles, sometimes I just do it because that’s what you do,” Silber said. “Sometimes, I think, ‘I can’t believe I’m the latest person to light a candle in a 5,000 year chain.’ It’s not just that I’m doing it, it’s that I’m doing it in the line of all of these people that made this significant. Ritual really matters. It’s bizarre, and divine, and extraordinary all at once.”
Featured photo by Micah Fong, courtesy of Wellesley College Upstage’s production of “Indecent” in Fall 2019.
