Dusting off this Tumblr to write about the Immersive Arcane show that's currently running in Shanghai. Y'all, it's SO GOOD. I saw it twice and could've seen it a dozen more times. (I met a fan there who's on visit 52!)
This is a full on Punchdrunk immersive show AND a stage musical. It's very much like a Mckittrick party if they had years to develop it and a massive budget. (Unsurprising, as Conor Doyle, who directed it, was creative director during the heyday of McKittrick parties.)
It was difficult to find information about this show on the Western internet, especially from immersive theater fans, so I wasn't sure if it would be mostly a stage musical with some immersive elements, or whether it would be a full immersive show worth seeing multiple times to see different scenes and characters. It's totally the latter. It also has 1:1s - I didn't see any myself, but friends saw them.
For those who, like me, are new to the "Arcane" space, it's a critically acclaimed Netflix show with 18 episodes total, based on a video game called "League of Legends." I prepped for this by watching the show and reading a few TV Tropes recaps. It was good - the aesthetic is steampunk sci-fi, the writing is nuanced and interesting, the animation is gorgeous, and the diversity of the characters is awesome.
Spoilers follow for the immersive show...
There are dozens of characters and each has a story you can follow across many spaces. The main stage is largely focused on the main story from the TV show, centering around the sisters Jinx and Vi. The rooms across the lower level are the undercity Zaun, while the upper levels are the upper city Piltover.
You can access the shops of Zaun and the Last Drop bar from the main area, which feels a bit like the square in Troy at the Burnt City. Going deeper into the undercity, you find places like Silco's lair and Singed's lab. (I definitely didn't find everything!) You can also watch the main stage from the upper level, which feels a bit like watching ballroom scenes from the mezzanine at Sleep No More NYC.
The main stage is a massive space with a large stage that moves around and an additional stage that descends from above. There are at least two secondary stages that also have elaborate lighting and effects, a boardroom type area in Piltover and a space at the back of the undercity.
My first show I stuck mainly to the main stage area and saw the main story, while darting off to explore whenever I could. The FOMO was massive! (At one point I went upstairs and found Mel doing a dance on a boardroom table, evoking memories of Frankie on Stanford's boardroom table. Another time, I encountered a character in a blue dress with a suitcase, in room with mirrors I didn't find again, with no one following her. I assume I could've followed her and gotten an intimate story and maybe a 1:1, but I just had to go back to the main space since I really wanted to see it.)
The main story is told in three acts; the first two are mostly season one, the final is an abridged version of season two. I was crying at the end; boiling the story to its essence and telling it through song was very powerful.
I can't emphasize enough how great the performers were; everyone looked and moved exactly like their characters. It was almost uncanny. It was wild to see them on a huge stage one moment and then be able to follow them the next.
They made a clever choice with Jinx to have two performers play her, one representing her younger more innocent self and the other representing her older darker self. Since she is on the main stage the most, this enabled her to still have smaller scenes and interactions since they were usually not both on the main stage at the same time. Jinx is my favorite character and I absolutely loved how both performers embodied her, especially the mix of danger and vulnerability in older Jinx.
The sisters ending is quite sad, but then the very ending is Vi ending up with her girlfriend Caitlyn and is extremely romantic ❤️. You can find many videos of this online as the audience is allowed to take their phones out for the very end.
(This video is from Aria Lustfal Bal on YouTube)
For the second show, I tried to avoid the main area and experience the immersive elements. There was so much! I barely scratched the surface.
This is all jumbled in my memory, so take it with a grain of salt...
I saw Mylo and Claggor in Benzo’s pawn shop, preparing for the break-in that sets off the story.
Then I followed Silco into his lair, where the backdrop behind his desk was this gorgeous huge spooky underwater scene that changed to reflect his mood. I saw something between him and Vander... He put Vander in a morgue slab or tomb but then Vander disappeared and Silco was left with just his shirt... Then Silco went to the main area and was singing to Vander... It was extremely gay (looking back, there's some subtext in the TV show, but there was more here). The guy playing Silco was so absolutely magnetic - he's this very cold intimidating villain but also traumatized and heartbroken - I could've followed this guy the whole show but I had to go see other things...
(Oh also - at the first show around this time, I sat at a table in the Last Drop next to Vi, Mylo, and Claggor, while Vi ordered Powder to stay behind while they went to rescue Vander.😭)
I saw Singed sitting on a bed, slowly turning the crank on a music box that played a haunting tune. I knew from the show this represents his daughter that he's trying to heal. I was the only person watching. Then a creepy arm reached down from the ceiling. Slowly a clockwork humanoid doll emerged from the ceiling, did an extremely creepy performance, and eventually disappeared back into the ceiling, all while Singed turned the crank on the music box, looking down. This was his imagination of the new body he wants to build her? (I think she does become a clockwork/mechanical being in the game also?)
It felt like the early days of The Drowned Man, where you'd be wandering alone through a huge eerie elaborate space, turn a corner, and find performers doing an extraordinary scene, just for you.
I saw something like a mini rave scene, dramatizing the character Huck becoming addicted to shimmer. Strobe lights, intense music, and these witchy characters that would move from scene to scene. (At the preshow, they were the Black Rose mages, and one of them danced with me then had me cradle a black rose next to her face). In this addiction scene, three of them made a kind of infinite six armed creature, one always emerging from under the one in front, looming over and overtaking Huck.
Then I saw Deckard run in, and he had a whole scene writhing around from the shimmer he'd been given to turn him into a beast.
I went upstairs and found where the big crowd was - they were following Viktor! Apparently he's like the main fandom woobie - I couldn't even get close 😂. I am very curious what his loop was like, as it was almost entirely told in the immersive format and intertwined with Jayce's story, and from what I understand, also extra gay. But I wasn't up for pushing through that crowd.
Caitlyn had a bunch of scenes with her mom Cassandra, who had a much larger part here than in the TV show. I saw what I think was the councilors debating the peace treaty, then went with them to the mezzanine where they were hit by Jinx's rocket. I was completely surrounded by white smoke which was a bit scary! (But luckily I could breathe fine, just stage fog.) I followed Jayce carrying Viktor to be healed, and watched Viktor transform, but didn't follow them down due to the crowd.
The room with the "boardroom table" actually contained three stages that moved around, coming together to make one long stage and then separating to make three. Around this time they came together into one, and a gauzy mesh surrounded the long stage. At one end stood Caitlyn, at the other end, her dead mother. This was some kind of dream sequence or vision, her final conversation with her mother, and seen through the gauze truly did look and feel like a dream.
I somehow missed most of Vi and a lot of Caitlyn - not sure where they were doing their main scenes. I also wandered trying to find spaces I hadn't, and found a huge scene with Renni. This show was huge! There was so much! I'm now dying to go back. 😂
The fans afterward were so sweet. Word got around that my friend and I had visited from afar, so people said hi and gave us gifts. One girl was a massive Renni superfan and gave us a bunch of Renni trinkets she'd made. That girl I met at the beginning gave me a program about the international creative team since I said I was there mainly because of Conor and Olly's involvement.
Also worth noting that the whole thing was in Mandarin and didn't cater to English speakers at all aside from the titles of each act. I honestly don't think this was a problem... If you're used to Punchdrunk, the stories are told through movement, lighting, sound, staging... You are used to getting the meaning without words anyway. Of course I would've liked to understand, but I loved this show anyway even without understanding the words. I do think you'll be pretty lost though if you don't speak Mandarin and haven't seen the TV show. I finished it on the plane over and am glad I did!
If you want to get tickets, Trip.com worked for me, and I stayed at Swissotel Grand which is about 15 minutes walk from the show.
NYC area friends, travelers who love immersive theatre... Go see The Death of Rasputin, which runs til June 15 and is FANTASTIC. Get tickets ASAP before they sell out.
https://www.deathofrasputin.com/
Highlights:
- Like Sleep No More if it was a satire with dialogue
- Wonderful soundtrack by Punchdrunk's Stephen Dobbie
- Lots of contemporary resonance without ever being too on the nose (the fall of an empire, violent revolution, cultish beliefs that blind people to reality)
- Great bar, unique atmosphere
- Awesome NYC views you usually don't get to see at night
-Many performers and creative team members with Punchdrunk/Sleep No More experience
You want to call your House rep now and tell them Trump needs to be impeached immediately for defying a Supreme Court order (re: Kilmar Abrego Garcia), which functionally voids our constitution and means no one in America has rights anymore.
I am not exaggerating.
As of now, anybody can be disappeared, no due process, no recourse. Trump is openly disregarding a Supreme Court order and says he’ll send US citizens to El Salvador.
This is not a drill.
Call your House rep and tell them they must impeach. Tell them if they cannot bring themselves to impeach, they must resign. A more open and shut case to impeach is not possible. Trump and his administration are saying openly, in public, that anybody can be kidnapped by ICE, even in error, and disappeared permanently.
Call your senators, too, and tell them to support impeachment (it goes to them once it passes a majority House vote).
Find your representatives. Learn how to find and connect with them. Stay informed about their bills, committees, and contributions.
"Hello, my name is _______ and I am a constituent from _______. My address is ________.
I am reaching out today to urge Representative ______ to call for the impeachment of President Trump due to his refusal to comply with the Supreme Court's April 10th decision regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was unlawfully deported and has been charged with no crime. As Justice Sotomayor stated, this inaction implies the government's ability to 'deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.' This precedent is unconstitutional, highly illegal, and grounds for impeachment. Every individual, regardless of immigration status, must be guaranteed a right to due process.
Representative _____, I urge you to stand on the right side of history today by calling for President Trump's impeachment. This administration can not be allowed to continue unilaterally defying the checks and balances that are intrinsic to our government."
You can also find your representative and senators and their phone numbers on https://5calls.org/
Please don't be afraid of calling. Your job would just be to be a data point, not to sound perfect. Here's some info on why calling is effective.
ive been listening nonstop to the lymond book club episodes on youtube and now that i'm much further into the series, i want to recommend them again -- they explain the books so well (illuminating so so many things i missed in all of my previous reads!) and in a really fun and relaxed conversational way. the tapatalk forums (god bless them) are really good for looking up individual questions by chapter, but they're super hard to navigate and don't offer the same kind of seamless narrative experience.
anyway if you do already love lymond these video are like the perfect perfect podcast about your favorite books. and if you've had trouble getting into or are wary about starting lymond -- reading along with these videos is probably the best entry point out there.
I love re-reading Game of Kings specifically (currently just on the audiobook back-burner while I'm reading The Way of Kings, ha!) because I can't help contrasting my love for it now to the sheer overwhelming confusion and slowly revealing brilliance of that first time I read it.
Just because, here's my favourite snippets of the scene that really made me sit up and know I had something special. Yes I loved the drunken pig, I had a good laugh at little MQoS bouncing on 'monsieur l'abbé' and the Spaniard at Hume Castle, I loved Christian and Agnes Herries and her daydreams.
But right here is where I began insufferably quoting bits at anyone who'd listen, clutching my hard copy like something precious because I couldn't quite believe how GOOD it was and that my mother had been right all along:
This was my point of no return, and I'm so fond of it!
or, on a scale of luke skywalker to jamie lannister how well would you deal with your dad being an utter bastard with unresolved issues about the death of his wife
“make yourselves impossible to ignore. 10,000 signatures on twitter is a lot but 10 unique personal emails is enough to derail an entire council session.”
I was in a city council meeting last week about defunding the police and one of the council members mentioned multiple times that she’d been inundated with calls and emails all that day saying to defund the police.
[ID: Two screenshots of a twitter thread by alex flanigan, anti-fascist @Coff33Detective from June 12, 2020 beginning at 11:25 AM that reads: hi! i work in local government and community management, and i’m here to tell you a secret: it is like, really, really easy to overwhelm the people who work in your local government. especially right now. especially on things they can actionably do or impact.
you may not know this, but i bet your city or town or municipality has a website. i bet that website has some contact forms or email addresses on it. i bet you can use them to put together a message in about 5 minutes! i bet it’s almost as easy as signing a national petition.
which is to say: i’m noticing, like most other people, that the national level discussion on really important and long overdue issues is flagging. but the internet and news cycle is not the only battleground, and you will be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to—
—fight those battles at home, on your own turf, with much more immediate impact, and they are so, so important.
I am begging you: make my job, and the jobs of people like me, difficult right now. flood us with demands. make yourselves impossible to ignore. 10,000 signatures on twitter is a lot but 10 unique personal emails is enough to derail an entire council session. End ID]
I’ve been a city council observer with the League of Women Voters for nearly a year, and I have witnessed the following:
A few guys voicing their anxiety about speeding on a street where their children play and suggesting a radar speed sign. Despite catching all of two meetings where this was mentioned, I walked back home one day and–yep–there was a radar speed sign up.
A persistent force of 3-5ish loud residents coming to zoning and council meetings because they did not want a drive through style restaurant moving into a particular area where there were already major issues with traffic congestion and safety. This eventually resulted in a Chik-fil-a having its planning proposal shot down by council such that the lot is now likely to house an Aldi. I am getting low cost groceries instead of bigotry chicken in my neighborhood because of a D&D party’s worth of regular speakers.
A turnout of residents shouting down an attempt to reduce the amount of funding for the community Juneteenth celebration until Council backed down. One meeting. Roughly a dozen people + their kids speaking about the significance of the holiday. The celebration ended up having its full funding restored.
In my experience, it is incredibly easy to bully local politicians and get some sort of results, especially in small municipalities. If you have something that you want to see happen at the local level, seriously try to contact your local officials and see what you can make happen.
You genuinely don’t even always have to go to a meeting btw. If you have a Facebook, those council members are in your local Facebook groups.Do you know how easy it is to tag your mayor and go “hey what are you gonna do about this?” over everything? Do you know how often that WORKS?
Government From Above looks easy. Command your followers to do shit and they do it, right?
Except when they don’t. Because all of a sudden their neighbors get in their faces.
Then the whole thing comes apart.
It’s easy for people to think Their Boy and their way of thinking has won, beating the Evil Other Side. They think they can then go back to arguing with their HOA and worrying about the price of eggs.
Teach them otherwise!
Turn up at local political meetings and have those people understand that you’re not just going to roll over and let them have their way. Yell at them. (In words bigger than they were equipped to understand, if you feel that’s the way to go.) Give them to understand that they are not right, and you will be back again to get up their ill-prepared noses about this. And again. And again. (Because they’ll never really be ready for opposition. No one’s taught them that. They’re just cannon fodder, poor things. They were never meant to go into battle.)
People hate looking stupid repeatedly in front of other people. You can tire them out. You can make them give up. You can make them feel there’s no point in it.
Don’t talk yourself out of this. The Goddess of Justice must descend from great heights to effect herself into the works of human beings. Don’t talk yourself out of “your turn in the barrel.” (As some humans have been known to call it.) It won’t last that long. They’ve got no staying power.
Let the folks you’re opposing understand that you’re going to keep on doing this every time they show up. Let them get the sense that you’re willing to be unreasonable about this. They’ve been thinking they’re the “sane” ones in this discourse. Teach them that they may possibly be incorrect.
Be persistent. Some of them will never have seen persistence in their lives. (As opposed to repeating somebody else’s talking points over and over again, which isn’t the same thing at all.) True persistence requires creativity! Every day, make a new way to come at them. They will never be able to keep up with you.
If enough of us do this… we can take whole legislative structures back: from the bottom up.
Show up!! Library programs always track attendance and this is a major point of getting funding, both from the city / county (allotting money to the library as a whole) and for individual librarians / departments (getting a piece of that funding to do specific programs). If no one shows up, we can’t justify putting on another D&D campaign, craft circle, computer basics class, teen art show, resume help, etc.
Use the services! Basically the same as above, but for everything in the library, not just events or programs. Your library may let you check out video games or musical instruments or sewing kits or seeds to plant, etc. They’ll almost certainly have some sort of ebooks or downloadable audiobooks, probably through Libby, Hoopla, CloudLibrary, or some other app. The more people use these services, the more funding we get to buy them and keep paying for them!
Request books! This is super helpful for combating banned books because it literally shows the community WANTS to have these books in the library. Request small press and indie published books, request any books with LGBT+ rep (or whatever cause you want to focus on), request to get more copies of books being challenged. Your library might have a form to fill out online or just ask at the desk how you can ask them to purchase a copy, this is super great engagement and we will be HAPPY to help you do this!
April 16, 2011. My friend Tammy had told me she'd seen an incredible production of Macbeth that she was certain I would love. I walked into the McKittrick Hotel that Saturday night with no idea that I was entering a place that would change my life forever.
What an extraordinary, fruitful place of creative energy it was. How wild, almost unbelievable, that such a place survived in New York City for nearly fourteen years.
My first impression: You have to walk around and climb stairs and wear a mask? How can you do Shakespeare without dialog? Until I realized the dialog was in the dance, and the rave shocked my jaded sensibilities, and I was in a tiny room with a beautiful sobbing naked man, and then I went home and dreamed about it and knew I had to go back.
Then the parties. Halloween 2011 was the best event party I had ever been to - welcoming, engaging, fun. For fourteen years the McKittrick became my Halloweens, my New Years Eves, my May Fairs (I didn't even know that was a thing), that wonderful exhausting year of 2016 when they did Supercinema almost every month. The parties became more elaborate, the costumes, the set designs, the stories, the interactions, the performances. The Paisley Players, the epic ballroom extravaganzas, the tableaus in the walled garden...
Remixed (the first) remains the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. November Rain at the banquet. The Imperial March in the maze. Diamonds are Forever, forever...
The Boy Witch party made me cry and cry. Two nights only and it was probably the best thing I've ever seen. The carousel on the ballroom stage, the fire, the lady in pink tights, the lost love. Every time I hear that version of Crazy in Love, I feel that emotion again.
At the Clue party, Maximilian led us through the floors, and we watched Neil Patrick Harris chop off his own head in the Macbeth bedroom.
Fourth of July 2012, after the show, a marching band played as we climbed six floors to the roof to reveal a beautiful secret garden where we watched the fireworks. Gallow Green was magical in the early days, with Paul Corning's gardener watering plants and occasionally leading people away, and Annabella planting herbs and making potions with us.
One day after the show, Lulu put a stamp on my hand and told me to go to the elevator. I took it up and a character led me into the Heath for the first time. We'd go there for drinks or dinner, watch Elizabeth Lindsey glide through the space like watching a portal into a film noir, follow instructions on secret notes and hope to win the lottery. (Once I did; Ginger took me, blindfolded, to High Street, and I still have the memories of discombobulated absurdity - and a spoon with my name engraved on it.)
Then they put a cozy little Scottish lodge on the roof, with bunk beds and blankets and heaters, and a forest out back with a canoe? in a tent. We'd huddle around the fire pit, or sprawl on the bed. All the books were pre-1939. At some point there was a room full of board games. My friend Matty would sit at the desk writing his dissertation and people thought he was a character.
I watched Rosemary's Baby on the rooftop, curated by Amy Poehler, and Vertigo in the ballroom, shivering in the air conditioner.
Calloway started doing these "salons" in the Manderley after the show, with songs and narratives and recurring characters and Hans dying every time. Then one day the email said something about "McKittrick Follies," and I showed up and characters were singing and telling stories and everyone was drinking and talking into the night.
I can't believe we were so spoiled by that boundless creative energy for so long. For months? years? we had a weekly Follies, then... biweekly? Sunday afternoons we'd sit on the beds in the Lodge drinking mulled wine before going down to the Follies; then Wednesdays I'd work late and walk into the Manderley at 10pm, or go home and walk up the High Line to come back, listening to the show crowd's excited chatter as they exited, entering to music and humor and drinks that flowed and flowed and flowed. So much extraordinary talent, all concentrated in this one place and sparkling off of each other, creating and creating and creating.
Ginger was so funny. Lily's voice was beautiful. Mallory was the bawdiest thing. Nick's Maximilian was a true original. Conor and Austin were so awkward and snarky. JWW has the most dear, sweet, unique style. I can't list everyone; I can't believe we were blessed with so much.
There were so many incredible singers and musicians over the years. Kat Cunning. Lisa McQuade. Julia Haltigan. Stephanie Amoroso. Onalea Gilbertson. Every iteration of the Manderley band was full of wildly talented musicians. I was lucky enough to see Cibo Matto in the Heath, and Leslie Odom Jr in the Manderley. The place was absolutely punching above its weight in terms of talent.
I learned to drink in the Manderley bar. When I first went, the only drink I knew how to order was a Sex on the Beach. I had my first gin gimlet at the Manderley Bar. The Professor, Brandon Tyler Harris, asked me what gin I liked, and I didn't know, so I tried them all and discovered that it's Hendricks. Then I switched to smoky mezcal margaritas, and drank them for years, occasionally starting trends. Later it was scotch sours, smoky Laphroaig, heaven in a glass. At the Heath they'd had my all time favorite drink, long gone; something with Scotch, orgeat, and a cabernet float... I'm at the age now where I've largely had to stop drinking; the era of alcohol in my life will always be tied up in the McKittrick.
If it weren't for Sleep No More, I wouldn't have gone to London and made many of my dearest friends; would never have experienced Shanghai the way I did, with local friends to guide me.
Lily Ockwell brought me on the Manderley stage on my birthday. The lights were very bright. Could she have imagined how utterly terrified I was? In a good way.
At my 100th show, Kit/Ginger bought me a drink as soon as I walked in.
Gus from front of house overheard me talking about an upcoming trip to Shanghai and invited himself along. We had so much fun, we took a trip to Costa Rica the next year.
After my cat Lucifer died, London gave me the biggest hug as soon as he saw me.
At Austin Goodwin's Juilliard graduation performance, the whole evening was so beautiful. All these extraordinary young people who'd worked so hard, accomplished so much, brimming with possibility for their futures. I wanted so much to be one of the families, full of pride and love for someone I'd helped nurture. When I wrote a tumblr post wrestling with the decision to have a child, Austin sent me a message telling me he thought I'd make a good mother. It is one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me, and helped me make one of the hardest decisions I've ever made.
Once on new years eve, Anabella gave me a Tarot card - Ten of Pentacles. I knew when I got that card that it was about my desire to have my own family, a child of my own. I put it on my fridge as inspiration and it's still there next to pictures of my kid.
I met my best friend on High Street, looking in the window of the tailor shop, watching Paul Zivkovich as a clown. This is the friend who is now in my will to take care of my child if I die.
I say I'm not creative, but the McKittrick brought out the creativity I do have. So many words in this blog. Several interviews for academic papers or articles. A box full of costumes in my closet: Andrea Alden in the Infidelity Ballet scene; Medusa out of a bunch of plastic snakes I painted and attached to a headdress; Vampire Willow; a Baz Luhrman Capulet; Mrs White. I see photos and find myself wearing costumes I don't even remember.
In early 2020, I hadn't been going to Sleep No More for a while, but when covid got scary, suddenly that's where I had to be. I was there until the day I showed up and the doors were closed.
I genuinely wonder, will I ever be as good at anything in my adult life as I was at following the Macbeth loop? I knew just where to stand, to view a perfect wide shot, to see a close up at a respectful distance. I loved to follow Macbeth down the corridor into the rave, a shadow halo'd in red, arms out against the tin walls. And to follow him out, running full speed, enraged and out of control as the music swelled and he went into the speakeasy to kill Banquo; there was no room for anything but adrenaline and utter absorption in the moment. To follow the Macbeths down the stairs as they screamed and shoved and kissed chocolate blood all over each others' faces. To stand still in the bedroom as they danced and fought around the room, the audience swarming around them, everything moving around me from close up to wide shot to close up.
Will anything bring as much peace as a Porter loop? I could always go there when I was sad. The hotel lobby was my favorite space. So dark it was almost black; figures emerging through the shroud of darkness. The tiny office, the papers and pencils. The sweet silliness of that character, the eternal hope. The overwhelming sadness. To be the one not chosen. Trapped, unable to change anyone's fate, watching and witnessing.
I used to think, there's a lot of downtime in this loop between the big moments like the cabaret, but in the end I realized, there is no downtime. Every moment is beautiful. I'd go there just to see the ominous deer loom over him as he reset the dining room, or to see those white sheets moving through the darkness like abstract art.
Zach McNally's Porter was my first 1:1, in 2012. I remember watching the tears down his face during the cabaret and thinking, wait, this character is as important as the Boy Witch. On Saturday, I watched him fade away into the shadows for the last time.
At the very last show, Andrew Robinson's Porter cried along with the audience as we watched him trace his hand. At the end, he cut his toast into a tiny heart and gave it to Danvers. She burst into tears, cut it in half, and they ate it together.
Boy Witch ended for me when my favorites left; it was all memories, echoes of the past. I'll never forget Conor, who always saw me, no matter how far away I stood, and always created some little moment to make my night special.
(I used to rarely watch the shower scene, and once he ran up to me in the bar and told me, you paid for your ticket, you can watch what you want to watch.)
Oddly, at my second-to-last show, I followed Macduff. Never a favorite, but the choreography is so good. Steven Bangerter looks and moves so much like Rob McNeill, and his sweetness balances out the character. How extraordinary to see the echoes of Rob, who was in the 2003 London production, so clearly and vividly, 21 years and who knows how many performers later. (I did not see the original production, but there are photos, and the first time I saw Rob in the Drowned Man I thought, wow, he moves like Macduff.)
I was noticing new things up until the end. Macbeth, upside down in the ballroom at the reset; the hanged man Tarot card. Macduff, lifting Sexy Witch in the ballroom and spinning her around, like Rob McNeill once did to me as we danced to the finale stage at the end of a Drowned Man.
After the second Remixed, I worked up the nerve to speak to Stephen Dobbie, asked him about the song choices, raved about how great they were. I'd forgotten that the November Rain video actually has a banquet scene in it.
One time I sat across from Felix Barrett at dinner and accidentally changed the ending of the show. I complained that the matron just closes the door to the pagoda and black masks hurry you away; he made a note on his phone and within days it was better.
Once, I had a long conversation with Maxine in the Manderley. (And a few brief ones in London.) Sunday night when I said goodbye, she gave me a hug and said, you've been here all these years.
I don't know why it matters that I met these people. I'm not trying to break into the arts. Maybe I just have so much admiration for the people who've succeeded, in a world that makes it so difficult. Actually if I could have been anyone in the building, it would have been Carrie Boyd; color-coded spreadsheets are my jam. What an unsung superstar. Her salon was the best.
Once after a roundtable, I found a note in my bag from Ilana. "Thank you for your heart and mind." I'd say the same to her.
I don't even know what else to write. Fourteen years of memories. After I post this, I'll think, oh I should have mentioned that other thing too. How can you sum up something that meant so much?
The McKittrick was at the center of my experience of New York City; of my mid-adulthood. I will mourn it at the same time as I marvel that it ever happened, that I found it as early as I did, and that it could possibly have lasted so long.
A woman with a child is shot while waving a white flag ■ Starving girls are crushed to death in line for bread ■ A cuffed 62-year-old man is run over, evidently by a tank ■ An aerial strike targets people trying to help a wounded boy ■ A database of thousands of videos, photos, testimonies, reports and investigations documents the horrors committed by Israel in Gaza
Footnote No. 379 of the carefully researched, wide-ranging document that historian Lee Mordechai has drawn up contains a link to a video clip. The footage shows a large dog gnawing something amid bushes. "Wai, wai, he took the terrorist, the terrorist is gone – gone in both senses," says the soldier who filmed the dog eating a corpse. After a few seconds the soldier raises the camera and adds, "But what a gorgeous view, a gorgeous sunset. A red sun is setting over the Gaza Strip." Definitely a beautiful sunset.
The report Dr. Mordechai has compiled online – "Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War" – constitutes the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. It is a shocking indictment comprised of thousands of entries relating to the war, to the actions of the government, the media, the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli society in general. The English translation of the seventh, and to date latest version of the text, is 124 pages long and contains over 1,400 footnotes referencing thousands of sources, including eyewitness reports, video footage, investigatory materials, articles and photographs.
For example, there are links to texts and other kinds of testimony describing acts attributed to IDF soldiers who were seen "shooting civilians waving white flags, abuse of individuals, captives and corpses, gleefully damaging or destroying houses, various structures and institutions, religious sites and looting personal belongings, as well as randomly firing their weapons, shooting local animals, destroying private property, burning books within libraries, defacing Palestinian and Islamic symbols (including burning Qurans and turning mosques into dining spaces)."
One link takes readers to a video of a soldier in Gaza waving a large sign taken from a barber shop in the town of Yehud, in central Israel, with bodies strewn around him. Other links are to footage of soldiers deployed in Gaza reading the Book of Esther, as is customary on the festival of Purim, but every time the name of the wicked Haman is uttered, instead of simply shaking traditional noisemakers, they fire a mortar shell. A soldier is seen forcing bound and blindfolded prisoners to send regards to his family and to say they want to be its slaves. Soldiers are photographed holding stacks of money they plundered from Gazan homes. An IDF bulldozer is seen destroying a large pile of food packages from a humanitarian-aid agency. A soldier sings the children's ditty "Next year we'll burn the school" – while a school is seen in flames in the background. And there are plenty of clips of soldiers modeling women's underwear that they looted.
Footnote No. 379 appears in a subsection titled "De-humanization in the IDF" that's included in the chapter called "Israeli discourse and de-humanization of Palestinians." It contains hundreds of examples of the cruel behavior displayed by Israeli society and the state's institutions vis-à-vis Gaza's suffering inhabitants – from a prime minister who talks about Amalek, to the figure of 18,000 calls by Israelis on social media to flatten the Strip, to Israeli physicians who voice support of the bombing of Gazan hospitals, to the stand-up comic joking about the death of Palestinians, and includes a chorus of children sweetly singing, "Within a year, we will annihilate everyone and then we will return to plow our fields," set to the melody of the iconic War of Independence-era song, "Shir Hare'ut" (Song of Camaraderie).
The links in "Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War" also lead to graphic footage of bodies strewn about, in every possible condition; of people crushed under rubble; of puddles of blood; and of the cries of people who lost their entire families in an instant. There are items attesting to the killing of disabled people, humiliation and sexual assaults, the torching of homes, forced starvation, random shooting, looting, abuse of corpses and much more.
Even if not each and every one of the testimonies can be corroborated, the picture that arises from them is of an army that in the best case has lost control of many units, whose soldiers proceeded to do whatever struck their fancy, and in the worst case is allowing its personnel to commit the most atrocious war crimes imaginable.
Mordechai cites evidence of the horrific predicaments the war has forced upon Gazans. A physician who amputates his niece's leg on a kitchen table, without anesthesia, using a kitchen knife. People eating horse flesh and grass, or drinking sea water to ameliorate their hunger. Women compelled to give birth in a classroom crowded with people. Doctors helplessly looking on as wounded people die because there's no way to help them. Starving women being pushed in a chaotic line outside a bakery; according to the report, two girls, 13 and 17, and a 50-year-old woman were crushed to death in the incident.
In the DP camps in the Strip in January, according to "Bearing Witness," there was an average of one toilet cubicle for every 220 people and one shower for every 4,500. A significant number of physicians and health organizations reported that infectious diseases and skin disorders were spreading among a great number of Gazans.
More and more children
Lee Mordechai, 42, a former officer in the IDF Combat Engineering Corps, is presently a senior lecturer in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose expertise is human and natural disasters in the ancient and medieval eras. He has written about the Justinianic plague in the 6th century and the volcanic winter that struck the northern hemisphere in 536 C.E. He approached the subject of the Gaza disaster in an academic-historical way, with dry prose and few adjectives, availing himself of the greatest possible diversity of primary sources; his writing is devoid of interpretation and open to review and revision. Which is precisely why the faces reflected in his text are so utterly appalling.
"I felt that I couldn't go on living in my bubble, that we're talking about capital offenses, and that what's going on is just too large, and contradicts the values I was raised on here," Mordechai says. "I'm not out to confront people or to argue. I wrote the document so it would be out there. So that in another half a year or year or five years or 10 or 100 – people will be able to go back and see that this is what was known, this is what it was possible to know, as early as this past January, or March, and that those among us who didn't know, chose not to know.
"My role as a historian," he continues, "is to give voice to those who cannot sound their own voices, whether they were eunuchs in the 11th century or children in Gaza. I deliberately seek not to appeal to people's emotions, and don't use words that may be controversial or unclear. I don't talk about terrorists or about Zionism or about antisemitism. I'm trying to use as cold and dry a language as possible, and to stick to the facts as I understand them."
Mordechai was on sabbatical in Princeton when the war broke out. When he woke up on October 7, it was already afternoon in Israel. Within hours he grasped that there was a disparity between what the public in Israel was seeing and reality. This understanding stemmed from an alternative system for receiving information that he'd created for himself nine years earlier.
"In 2024, during Operation Protective Edge [in Gaza], I returned from my doctoral studies in the United States and from conducting research in the Balkans. I felt then that there was no open discourse in Israel; everyone was saying the same thing. So I made a conscious effort to access alternative sources of information – [based on] foreign media, blogs, social media. It's also similar to my work as a historian, seeking out primary sources. So I created for myself a kind of personal system in order to understand what was happening in the world. On October 7, I activated the system and realized quite quickly that the public in Israel was experiencing a delay of hours – Ynet carried a bulletin about the possibility that hostages had been taken, but I'd already seen clips of abductions. It creates a dissonance between what's being said about the reality of the situation and the actual reality, and that feeling intensifies."
Indeed, the disparity between what Mordechai discovered and the information appearing in both Israeli and foreign media has only grown. "The most prominent story at the beginning of the war was the one about 40 Israeli infants decapitated on October 7. That story generated a lot of headlines in the international media, but when you compare it with [National Insurance's official] list of those killed, you realize very quickly that it didn't happen."
Mordechai started to follow reports from Gaza on social media and in the international media. "From the start I got a flood of images of destruction and suffering, and you grasp that there are two separate worlds that aren't talking to one another. It took me a few months to figure out what my role was here. In December, South Africa submitted its formal claims of genocide against Israel in 84 detailed pages with multiple references to sources that could be cross-checked.
"I don't think everything has to be accepted as evidence," he adds, "but you have to grapple with it, see what it's based on, consider its implications. Early on in the war, I wanted to return to Israel to do volunteer work on behalf of some sort of civil society organization, but for family reasons I couldn't. I decided to use the free time I had during the sabbatical at Princeton to try to enlighten the public in Israel that consumes only local media."
He published the first version of "Bearing Witness," just eight pages long, on January 9. The number of those killed in the Strip, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, officially known as the Palestinian Ministry of Health – Gaza, stood at 23,210 then. "I do not believe anything written here will lead to a change of policy, or convince many people," he wrote at the beginning of that document. "Rather, I write this publicly as a historian and an Israeli citizen in order to state for the record my personal position regarding the horrible current situation in Gaza, as events are unfolding. I am writing as an individual, partly because of the disappointing general silence regarding this subject on the part of many local academic institutions, especially those that are well-positioned to comment on it, even as some of my colleagues have bravely spoken out."
Since then, Mordechai has spent many hundreds of hours collecting information and writing, continuing to update the document that appears on the website he's created. Since embarking on this project, he has improved the way he works: meticulously compiling reports from different sources on an Excel spreadsheet, from which, after further examination, he selects the items that will be mentioned in the text. He uses a wide variety of sources: footage shot by civilians, media articles, reports by the United Nations and other international organizations, social media, blogs, and so on.
While he acknowledges that some of the sources are not committed to proper journalistic or other ethical standards, Mordechai stands by the credibility of his documentation. "It's not like I copy-paste everything that someone else comes up with. On the other hand, it's clear that there is a gap between what exists and what we would actually like to see: We would like every incident in the Strip to be examined properly by two independent and non-dependent international organizations, but that's not going to happen.
"So I examine who's reporting, whether they've been caught lying, if there's some nonprofit or blogger who conveyed information that I can prove is incorrect – and if so, I stop using them and delete them. I give greater weight to neutral sources, like human rights organizations and the UN, and do a sort of a synthesis between sources to see whether it [the information] is consistent. I also work very openly and invite anyone who wants to check me. I will be very happy to see that I was wrong about things I wrote, but that's not the case. Until now I've had to make very few corrections."
A perusal of Mordechai's report helps to disperse the fog that has blanketed Israelis since the war broke out. A case in point is the number of fatalities: The October 7 war is the first war in which Israel is not making any effort at all to tally the number of those killed on the other side. In the absence of any other source, many people around the world – foreign governments, media outlets, international organizations – rely on the reports of the Palestinian Health Ministry – Gaza, which are believed to be quite credible. Israel tries to make a point of denying the ministry's figures. Local media outlets usually note that the source of such data is "Hamas' Ministry of Health."
However, few Israelis know that not only do the IDF and the government of Israel not have their own, alternative figures regarding the number of fatalities, but that senior Israeli sources, lacking no other data, end up effectively confirming that published by the ministry in Gaza. How senior? Benjamin Netanyahu himself. On March 10, for example, the prime minister stated in an interview that Israel had killed 13,000 armed Hamas militants and estimated that for every one of them, 1.5 civilians had been killed. In other words, up to that point, between 26,000 and 32,500 people had been killed in the Strip. On that day, the Palestinian ministry issued a figure of 31,112 fatalities in Gaza, within the range cited by Netanyahu. At the end of that month, Netanyahu spoke of 28,000 dead – about 4,600 fewer than the official Palestinian figure. In late April, The Wall Street Journal quoted an estimate by high-ranking IDF officers that the number of dead was approximately 36,000 – more than the number published by the Palestinian ministry at the time.
Mordechai: "It seems as if, on the Israeli side, they're choosing not to deal with the figures, although Israel could ostensibly do it – the technology exists, and Israel controls the Palestinian Population Registry. The defense establishment also has facial images; they could cross-check them and see that someone who may have been reported dead has gone through a checkpoint. Come on, show me! Give me proof and I will change my approach. It will make my life more complicated, but I will be a lot less upset.
"I think we must ask ourselves what 'bar' of evidence is required in order for us to change our views about the number of Palestinians who have been killed. That's a question that each of us needs to ask themselves – maybe for you the evidence I'm citing isn't sufficient – because there must be some sort of realistic stage in the accumulation of evidence at which we will accept the numbers as reliable.
"For me," he explains, "that point arrived long ago. And after one does the dirty work and understands the numbers a little better, the issue starts to be not one of how many Palestinians died, but why and how the Israeli public continues to doubt these figures after more than a year of hostilities and contrary to all the evidence."
In his report, he quotes Palestinian ministry's figures that cite – among those killed from the time the war broke out, up until this past June – 273 employees of the UN and aid organizations, 100 professors, 243 athletes, 489 health workers (including 55 specialist physicians), 710 children under the age of one year and four preemies who died after the IDF forced the male nurse who was caring for them to leave the hospital. The nurse was caring for five preemies and decided to save the one who looked as if he would have the best chance to survive. The decaying bodies of the other four were found in incubators two weeks later.
The footnote in Mordechai's text dealing with those infants does not reference a tweet by a Gazan or a pro-Palestinian blog, but an investigation by The Washington Post. Israelis who may question "Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War" on the grounds that it relies on social media or on unverified reports must realize that it is also based on dozens of investigations by almost every self-respecting Western media outlet. Numerous outlets have examined incidents in Gaza using rigorous journalistic standards – and came up with evidence of atrocities. A CNN investigation corroborated the Palestinian claim about the "flour massacre," in which about 150 Palestinians who arrived to collect food from an aid convoy on March 1 were killed. The IDF declared that it was the crowding and stampeding of the Gazans themselves that killed them, not warning shots fired by soldiers in the area. Ultimately, CNN's investigation, based on careful analyses of documentation and 22 interviews with eyewitnesses, found that most of the fatal casualties indeed stemmed from the shooting.
The New York Times, ABC, CNN, the BBC, international organizations and the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published results of their own investigations of incidents of torture, abuse, rape and other atrocities perpetrated against Palestinian detainees in the IDF's Sde Teiman base in the Negev and other facilities. Amnesty International examined four incidents in which there was no military target or justification for attack, in which IDF forces killed a total of 95 civilians.
An investigation in late March by Yaniv Kubovich in Haaretz showed that the IDF created "kill zones" in which many civilians were shot after crossing an imaginary line demarcated by a field commander; the victims were categorized as terrorists after their death. The BBC has cast doubt on the IDF's estimates of the number of terrorists its forces have killed in general; CNN reported extensively about one incident in which an entire family was wiped out; NBC investigated an attack on civilians in so-called humanitarian zones; The Wall Street Journal verified that the IDF was relying on reports of fatalities in Gaza that were published by the Palestinian Health Ministry; AP claimed in a detailed report that the IDF had presented only one reliable piece of evidence showing that Hamas was operating on the grounds of a hospital – the tunnel that was discovered in the yard of Shifa Hospital; The New Yorker and The Telegraph published the results of extensive investigations of cases involving children whose limbs had to be amputated, and there is much more – all of it mentioned in "Bearing Witness."
Not included is a report published just this week by the Palestinian Health Ministry – Gaza, stating that since October 7, 1,140 families have been totally wiped out of the local population registry – most likely victims of aerial bombings.
Mordechai cites numerous items relating to the IDF's lax rules of engagement in the Gaza Strip. One clip shows a clutch of refugees with a woman in the front, holding her son in one hand and a white flag in the other; she is seen being shot, probably by a sniper, and collapsing as the child drops her hand and flees for his life. Another incident, widely reported in late October, shows 13-year-old Mohammed Salem crying for help after being wounded in an air force attack; when people approach to offer aid, they are targeted by another such attack. Salem and another youngster were killed, and over 20 people were wounded.
Mordechai acknowledges that watching the visual testimony from the war has hardened his heart – today he can view even the most awful scenes. "When the ISIS videos were posted [years ago], I didn't watch them. But here I have felt that it's my obligation, because this is being done in my name, so I must see it in order to convey what I've seen. What's important is the quantity; it's children and again children and once more children."
Asked which of the thousands of images, whether videos or stills, of dead, wounded or suffering people have had the greatest impact on him, Mordechai thinks and mentions a photo of the body of a man who was later identified as Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour. Ashour, 62, was reportedly run over by a tank in March, his body mangled beyond recognition. A zip tie on one of his hands attested to the fact that he had been detained beforehand, Palestinian sources say. The image was posted on an Israeli Telegram channel with the caption, "You're going to love this!"
"I have never in my life seen anything like that," Mordechai tells Haaretz. "But worse than that was the fact that the image was shared by soldiers in an Israeli Telegram group and got very favorable reactions." Besides the information about Ashour, "Bearing Witness" provides links to images of a number of other bodies whose condition suggests that they were run over by armored vehicles. In one case, according to a Palestinian report, the victims were a mother and her son.
One case mentioned only in a footnote attests to issues relating to Mordechai's methods and to the dilemmas he has faced. At the end of March, Al Jazeera ran an interview with a woman who arrived at Gaza's Shifa Hospital and said that IDF soldiers had raped women. Shortly afterward, the woman's family denied the allegations she had made, and Al Jazeera deleted the report, but many people had lingering doubts.
"According to my methodology, after Al Jazeera's deletion, it's not credible and it didn't happen," Mordechai says. "But I also ask myself: Maybe I'm participating in the silencing of that woman? And the silencing is not for reasons of honoring the truth, but in the name of her and her family's honor. Is it perfect? It's not perfect, but in the end I am a human being and I have to decide. So in a footnote I explained that it was one woman's allegation and I added [that it was] 'almost certainly false' to express my reservations.
"I don't guarantee that each and every testimony is completely reliable. In fact, no one knows exactly what is happening in Gaza – not the international media, certainly not the Israelis and not even the IDF. In 'Bearing Witness,' I argue that the silencing of voices from Gaza – restriction of the information coming out of there – is part of the working method that is making the war possible. I stand behind the synthesis that I am using, and I wish I was wrong. But from the Israeli side there's nothing. I'm talking about proof – bring me proof!"
One case described in the document, even though many Israelis will have a hard time believing it, relates to the IDF's use of a drone that emitted sounds of an infant crying in order to determine where civilians were located and perhaps draw them out of their shelter. In the video referenced by the link Mordechai gives, crying is heard and the lights of a drone can be seen.
"We know there are drones with loudspeakers, maybe some bored soldier decides to do it as a joke and it's perceived by the Palestinians to be horrific," he says. "But is it really so far-fetched that some soldier, instead of being filmed with panties and bras or dedicating the detonation of a street to his wife, would do something like that? It might be made up, but it's compatible with what I am seeing." This week Al Jazeera broadcast an investigative report about the so-called crying drones and claimed that their use had been confirmed by a number of eyewitnesses who all related the same story.
"We may still argue about anecdotal testimony of that kind, but it's harder to do so when faced with mountains of more substantiated testimony," Mordechai notes. "For example, dozens of American physicians who did volunteer work in Gaza reported that almost every day they saw children who had been shot in the head – how can that be explained? Are we even trying to explain or to cope with that?"
One of the heights of Israeli military brutality in Gaza was evident during the second major raid on Shifa Hospital in mid-March, the historian adds; indeed, he devotes a separate chapter to it. The IDF claimed that the hospital was a hub of Hamas activity at the time and that there had been exchanges of fire during the raid, after which 90 Hamas personnel had been arrested, some of them high-ranking.
However, the IDF's occupation of Shifa went on for about two weeks. In that period, according to Palestinian sources, the hospital became a zone of murder and torture. Apparently 240 patients and medical staff were locked into one of the buildings for a week with no access to food. Physicians on the premises reported that at least 22 patients died. A number of eyewitnesses, including staffers, described executions. A video shot by a soldier shows bound and blindfolded detainees sitting in a corridor, facing a wall. According to the sources, after the IDF withdrew from the hospital, dozens of bodies were discovered in the yard. There are a number of clips documenting collection of the bodies, some of them mutilated, others buried under rubble or lying in large pools of clotted blood. A rope was tied around the arm of one of the dead men, possibly showing that he was tied up before being killed.
Other heights of brutality have been reached during the past two months in the rolling military operation still underway in the northern part of the Strip. The operation began on October 5. The IDF cut off Jabalya, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun from Gaza City, and inhabitants were ordered to leave. Many did, but many thousands have remained in the besieged zone.
At that stage the army launched what former IDF chief of staff and defense minister Moshe Ya'alon this week called "ethnic cleansing" of the area: Aid groups were banned from entering the area, the last depot of flour was burned down and the last two bakeries shuttered, and even activity by civil defense teams who evacuated casualties was prohibited. The supply of water was disrupted, ambulances were disabled and the hospitals were attacked.
But the army's main effort has centered around aerial raids. Almost every day Palestinians reported dozens killed when residential buildings and schools, which had become DP camps, were bombed. Mordechai's report cites dozens of well-documented accounts concerning bombing campaigns – families collecting the bodies of loved ones among the ruins, funerals at huge mass graves, wounded people covered in dust, adults and children in shock, people crying out with body parts strewn around them, and so on.
In a video clip from October 20, two children are seen being pulled out of the rubble. The first looks stunned, his eyes bulging, and totally covered in blood and dust. Next to him a lifeless body, apparently of a girl, is removed.
In the past two weeks, Haaretz, for its part, has sent queries to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit concerning some 30 incidents, most of them in Gaza, in which many civilians have been killed. The unit responded that it has classified most of them as unusual events and they have been referred to the General Staff for further investigation.
Mordechai rejects out of hand the commonly heard claim by Israelis that what is happening in Gaza isn't so terrible when compared to other wars. "Bearing Witness" shows, for example, that more children have been killed in Gaza than all the children in all the wars in the world in the three years preceding the October 7 war. Already in the first month of the war the number of dead children was 10 times greater than the number of those killed in the Ukraine war over the course of a year.
More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in all of World War II. According to an investigation that Yuval Avraham published on the Sicha Mekomit (Local Call) website, about the AI systems used in IDF bombing campaigns in Gaza, authorization was given to kill up to 300 civilians in order to assassinate high-ranking Hamas figures. By comparison, documents reveal that for America's armed forces that figure stood at one-10th of that number – 30 civilians – in the case of a murderer on a larger scale than Yahya Sinwar: Osama Bin-Laden.
An investigative report by The Wall Street Journal states that Israel rained down more bombs on Gaza in the first three months of the war than were dropped by the United States in Iraq over six years. Forty-eight prisoners died in Israeli detention facilities in the past year, compared to nine in Guantanamo in its entire 20 years of existence. The figures are also telling when it comes to the data concerning fatalities in other countries' wars: Coalition forces in Iraq killed 11,516 civilians in five years, and 46,319 civilians were killed in the 20 years of the war in Afghanistan. According to the most lenient estimates, some 30,000 civilians have been killed in the Strip since October 7, 2023.
Mordechai's report reflects not only the horrors that are occurring in Gaza but also Israel's indifference to them. "At the start there was an attempt to justify the invasion of Shifa Hospital; today there isn't even that pretense – you attack hospitals and there is no public discussion. We are not coping in any way with the implications of these operations. You open up social media and you're flooded by the dehumanization. What is this doing to us? I grew up in a society with a totally different ethos. There were always rotten apples, but look at the No. 300 bus case [an event in 1984, in which Shin Bet agents in the field executed two Arabs who had hijacked a bus] and see where we are now. It's important for me to hold up a mirror, it's important for me for these things to be out there. That's my form of resistance."
A dark secret
In the more recent versions of "Bearing Witness," Mordechai has added an appendix that explains why, in his opinion, Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide, a subject he expounds on in our conversation. "We need to disconnect the way we think of genocide as Israelis – gas chambers, death camps and World War II – from the model that appears in the [1948] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," he explains. "There don't have to be death camps for it to be considered genocide. It's all boils down to the commission of acts and the intent, and the existence of both has to be established. In regard to committing acts, it's killing, but not only – [there is] also wounding people, abduction of children and even just attempts to prevent births among a particular group of people. What all these acts have in common is the deliberate destruction of a group.
"People I speak to generally don't argue about the actions taken; they argue about the intent. They will say that there is no document showing that Netanyahu or [IDF Chief of Staff] Herzl Halevi ordered genocide. But there are declarations and there are testimonies. Lots and lots of them. South Africa submitted a document of 120 pages that contained a great many testimonies proving intent. The journalist Yunes Tirawi collected declarations about genocide and ethnic cleansing from social media of more than 100 people with connections to the IDF – apparently many reserve officers.
"What are we doing with all this? From my point of view, the facts speak. I see a direct line between those declarations, an absence of trying to grapple with those declarations, and the reality on the ground that corresponds to the declarations."
The English-language version of "Bearing Witness" refers to articles by six leading Israeli authorities, who have already stated that in their view Israel is perpetrating genocide: Holocaust and genocide expert Omer Bartov; Holocaust researcher Daniel Blatman (who wrote that what Israel is doing in Gaza is somewhere between ethnic cleansing and genocide); historian Amos Goldberg; Holocaust scholar Raz Segal; international law expert Itamar Mann; and historian Adam Raz.
"The definition is less important," Mordechai says. "What's important is the actions. Let's say that the International Court of Justice in The Hague declares in another few years that it's not genocide but almost genocide – does that make it better? Does that attest to a moral victory by Israel? Do I want to live in a place that perpetrates 'almost genocide'? The debate over the term draws attention, but the things happen one way or the other, whether they reach the bar or not. In the end we must ask ourselves how we stop this and how we will answer our children when they ask us what we did during the war. We must act."
But the definition is important. You are telling Israelis, "Look, you're living in Berlin 1941." What is the moral imperative for people who lived in Berlin then? What is a citizen supposed to do when his state commits genocide?
"A moral stance always carries a price. If there is no price, it's just an accepted, normative stance. The value of a thing for a person is expressed in the price they are willing to pay for it. On the other hand, I realize that people also have other considerations and needs – to bring food home, to preserve ties with their family – everyone has to make their own decisions. From my point of view, what I do is to talk and to go on talking, whether people listen to me or not. This consumes endless time and mental strength, but I've reached the conclusion that it's the most useful thing I can do."
After we parted, Mordechai sent me a last link. This one was not related to testimony of atrocities in Gaza, but to a short story by the late American novelist Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." The story is about the city of Omelas, where people are beautiful and happy, and their lives are interesting and joyful. But as adults the citizens of Omelas gradually learn their city's dark secret: Their happiness depends on the suffering of a child who is compelled to remain in a filthy room underground, and they are not allowed to console or assist her/him. "It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children," Le Guin writes.
The majority of Omelas' residents continue to live with this knowledge, but from time to time one of them visits the child and does not return, but instead keeps walking and abandons the city. The story concludes: "They walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go toward is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going."
The IDF Spokesman's Office commented in response that the IDF "operates only against military targets, and takes a variety of precautions in order to avoid harm to noncombatants, including issuing warnings to the citizenry. In regard to arrests, any suspicion of a violation of orders or international law is investigated and addressed. In general, if there is a suspicion of untoward conduct on the part of a soldier, of a possible criminal nature, an investigation is opened by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division."
guys, alex krycek is the Most Character of All Time
he's a bright young fbi agent. just kidding, he's secretly working for the shadow government syndicate. the syndicate hates him. so does everyone else. he killed mulder's father. he's a great assassin. he and his accomplice killed scully's sister on accident. he's a terrible assassin. he survived a car bombing. the bomb was put in the car to kill him specifically bc he's so bad at his job. he cannot have a single interaction with mulder that is not intensely homoerotic. mulder once beat the shit out of him in a chinese airport and then the wife of a french diver gave him the black oil virus in the bathroom. like that's not even a euphemism for anything, that's literally what happens. he's working for the syndicate again. he purges the black oil violently from his face and then gets abandoned behind a door underground. he is no longer working for the syndicate. he once beat the shit out of skinner in a stairwell. in retaliation, skinner later shirtlessly beats the shit out of him and handcuffs him to his balcony where he almost dies. it is just as homoerotic as it sounds. his parents were cold war immigrants and he's fluent in russian. we only learn this right before mulder is going to abandon him handcuffed to a car to go to russia. he and mulder go to russia. bad things are happening, but they're in it together. just kidding, krycek is working for the russian government. just kidding, now he is being held prone on the ground while people saw his left arm off. now he has a prosthetic arm. he's working for the russian government. he and marita are enemies. he and marita are fucking. it's probable that krycek doesn't know how to have relationships that aren't both erotic and filled with hate. he's on mulder's team now, he even kissed him about it. just kidding, he's working for the syndicate again. he has a remote that controls nanobots(???) inside skinner's body, allowing him to harm and/or kill him at will. it is just as homoerotic as it sounds. it's all going to hell and the only person he's going to save is himself. he helps get nearly the entire syndicate slaughtered. he throws cigarette smoking man down a flight of stairs to his death. he's a great assassin. he can save mulder's life. he's not going to save mulder's life. scully's child cannot be born. he will help them get her somewhere safe so the child can be born. he's going to take mulder's life. skinner takes his life instead. now he's a ghost. his ghost is on mulder's side. the cigarette smoking man outlives him. he's a terrible assassin
hey hello just investigating and enjoying your lymond tag as i bathe in the nostalgia of my reread and just wanted to ask - did you ever end up finding the room in topkapi? i was there in 2019 and found what i imagine must have been THE room, i think i have a post abt it somewhere, but i hope you were able to make it!
Thank you!! I did go back years later and must've walked through the room, but didn't know how to figure out which it was.
and sure there are other babygirls but are they being hunted by every crown in europe for mass homicide and high treason while also being described as having "eyes like a kitten's"?
It was the first time I'd seen Jordan Morley in the role since 2011, and the 13th anniversary of the opening of Sleep No More NYC.
It was magical. Jordan moves like a witch. Little movements of the hands, ways of floating through the space, supernatural.
Jordan finds so many moments of connection.
In May (?) 2011, Jordan's Witch drew me to sit with them at a little table in the lobby dining room, put a little milagro on a red string around my neck, and whispered, "Wear this always. It will protect you." (My memory of this is fuzzy, and I have other memories from this time that couldn't have been accurate, but I think this one is real.) I put the milagro on my bedroom mirror - it was a little hand - and it remained there for ten years, until I moved in 2021. Other trinkets came and went, but that one stayed, along with other milagros from Boy Witches, until they stopped giving them out a couple years later.
Why did I keep it there for so long? That moment of connection had been so beautiful. I knew it was a performance, I knew it wasn't "real," I knew it happened to whoever was in the right place at the right time multiple times per night. And yet somehow, in that brief moment, it had been so deeply moving and meaningful.
I felt it again last night. For the first time since my son was born, my back didn't hurt. I floated through the space like walking on air, like I was 13 years younger.
I've puzzled for so many years about why I am so drawn to the Boy Witch. Often I'd feel ashamed, wondering if it was something prurient, if I was just coming back to be flirted with by an attractive person who gets naked.
It came to me last night though, what's really going on. The Boy Witch is reaching out for connection. With these little moments of fun, and play, and teasing, and then these moments of great longing, of extended eye contact, of tears, of hugs.
He is a character who is cloaked in darkness, narratively an omen of tragedy and death, literally cloaked in the dark shadows of the McKittrick, and yet he reaches out through that darkness, always trying to find human connection. Last night I felt in those moments that he was seeing me as the Porter, as that embodiment of his lost love and humanity.
(Maybe the tragedy of the character is that he can never truly maintain the connection, that the tears aren't real, that those moments are ephemeral, that one moment he looks deep into your eyes and the next moment he spurns you. (Although I take the Boy Witch/Porter's recent NYE wedding as canon!))
What a miracle that this performer I've never spoken to outside of the show, and never thought I'd see in the role again, could reach out through the darkness of 13 years and create such beautiful moments of connection again.
the thing about the references in lymond, is that they do not fucking matter. the man is a snob, you're not supposed to know what hes talking about, hes just showing off.
