Photo by Josh.
Following Theater J’s recent firing of its artistic director, Ari Roth, the Artistic Directors of the American Theater have released a letter denouncing his dismissal.
Roth, who has served as Theater J’s artistic director for 18 years, was fired last Thursday by the D.C. Jewish Community Center, where the theater is housed, because of, as he told the Post, “insubordination.” The Post reports that his firing is a result of his “clashes over his choices of plays having to do with Israel—some of which were implicitly critical of that country—that Roth’s wide range of supporters say was the actual cause.”
And those supporters include about 60 of American theater’s artistic directors, who, in an open letter, denounced Roth’s firing.
“We, the undersigned Artistic Directors, are outraged by the action of the JCC in Washington DC in summarily dismissing the long-serving Artistic Director of Theater J, Ari Roth, on the morning of December 18,” the letter reads. ”The stated cause was ‘insubordination’, and it is absolutely clear that Roth was fired because of the content of the work he has so thoughtfully and ably championed for the last two decades.”
As Washingtonian notes, the drama between Roth and the D.C. JCC stems from outrage over a play Theater J was mounting earlier this year by Israeli playwright Motti Lerner about “a purported massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers in 1948.” The content of the play, which was seen as anti-Israel, didn’t sit well with a lot of D.C. JCC benefactors.
In their letter, the artistic directors guild blasts Roth’s firing as a political one. ”Ari Roth is a capable, brilliant and inspiring leader of the American non-profit theater,” the letter says. “The actions of the JCC, in terminating him for blatantly political reasons, violate the principles of artistic freedom and free expression that have been at the heart of the non-profit theater movement for over half a century. Such actions undermine the freedom of us all.”
You can read the whole letter below:
