October 1, 2019
K-State Theatre selected for national live interview with Tony Award-winning director
Submitted by Jerry Jay Cranford
K-State Theatre has been selected to participate in the Stage Directors and Choreographers Union's fall 2019 Screen to Screen Live Feed and Q&A with Rebecca Taichman, the Tony Award-winning director of the play "Indecent" by Paula Vogel.
Taichman won the 2017 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play, an Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for "Indecent." Taichman has directed on and off-Broadway, new plays, classics, musicals and opera. She is a resident director at The Roundabout Theatre in New York City, a Henry Crown fellow at The Aspen Institute, and a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.
"Indecent" recounts the controversy surrounding the play "God of Vengeance" by Sholem Asch, which was produced on Broadway in 1923. The cast of the original production was arrested on the grounds of obscenity.
For her graduate thesis at the Yale School of Drama, Taichman wrote and directed a play based on the circumstances surrounding the Asch play. Taichman titled her play "The People vs. 'The God of Vengeance,'" which was presented at Yale Repertory Theatre in May 2000.
"I wrote my own version, but I'm just not a playwright, so it never quite clicked," Taichman said. "But it never went away; I kept wanting to pursue it, and eventually, I found Paula Vogel, who was equally interested in it, and we have since co-created the piece."
In her review for Newsday, Linda Winer said, "Has there ever been anything quite like "Indecent," a play that touches — I mean deeply touches — so much rich emotion about the history and the theater, anti-Semitism, homophobia, censorship, world wars, red-baiting and, oh, yes, joyful human passion?... It’s a gripping and entertaining show with laughter and tears...in which two women from the marvelous 10-member cast re-enact what, in 1921, had been the first lesbian kiss on an American stage."