Disclaimers

So, like every good Child of the New Media, I have, of course, used Facebook to advertise our show.  And, like every good Facebook user, I am friends with people I haven't spoken to in years, and people I met casually at a party one time, and probably people who have mistaken me for somebody else of the same name.  My nose being to the publicity grindstone, I invite all these people to come see the show.  Since I am a hardened insomniac, I check back in at 4AM to see who's planning to show up.  I see that Mary and Matt are planning to come; that's good, because we don't have understudies.

I see that two people have already definitively decided that they're not coming.  I know who they are; I don't know them that well.

I can already hear Becca tactfully suggesting that I am perhaps a little paranoid, yes?  And  I am decidedly paranoid.  But I, looking at their (Arabic) names make anxious (probably incorrect) guesses about what they, looking at my name, may (incorrectly) guess about my play.  Such as: since it is written by this playwright with the Hebrew given name and the German-Jewish surname, it must be a defense of Israel.  It concerns "Tomorrow's Pioneers", so it is about how Palestinians are anti-semitic.

But obviously it is no more fair for me to assume that these are their reasons for not coming than it would be for them to make those assumptions about my play.  Nevertheless, I'm filled with a pathetic desire to take every opportunity I can to assert or suggest my actual values.  I won't fall so far as to begin writing "Not anti-Palestinian!" on the postcards I hand out, because once you start going there you might as well break out the fine-tipped pen and write a little essay about how your play is about different ways of conceptualizing/narrativizing traumatic events and the concept of home, and the loss of home.  And once you've done that, everybody knows you're not a blind supporter of Israel, and nobody wants to see your play, because it sounds boring as fuck.

And it just seems craven: why should I have to fall all over myself to prove that I'm a moral human being with an independent opinion?  Just because I'm Jewish?  No.  No.  You'll have to trust me, and give me credit, as you should try to trust and credit every writer.  (Or at least, until they have proven themselves unworthy of such credit.)