About the Play:

Winner of the 2017 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play

Indecent is a full-length comedic drama by Paula Vogel. The play follows a troupe of actors, the cast of Polish-Jewish playwright Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance, which was produced on Broadway in 1923, and for which the producer and cast were arrested and convicted on the grounds of obscenity. Indecent charts the history of this incendiary drama and the path of the artists who risked their careers and lives to perform it.

Indecent is a deeply moving play inspired by the true events surrounding the controversial 1923 Broadway debut of Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance – a play seen by some as a seminal work of Jewish culture, and by others as an act of traitorous libel. When Sholem Asch wrote the play in 1907, he didn't imagine the height of controversy it would eventually reach. Performing at first in Yiddish and German, the play's subject matter wasn't deemed contentious until it was produced in English, when the American audiences were scandalized by the onstage depiction of an amorous affair between two women. Paula Vogel's Tony Award-winning play traces the trajectory of the show's success through its tour in Europe to its abrupt and explosive demise on Broadway in 1923, when it was shut down after the police charged the cast members with obscenity, in part because it depicted a lesbian relationship. Indecent puts the spotlight on a notorious slice of theatre history and the path of the artists risked their lives and careers against enormous challenges to perform a work in which they deeply believed, at a time when art, freedom and truth were on trial.

Indecent premiered in 2015 at the Yale Repertory Theatre then the La Jolla Playhouse. It opened in 2016 in New York and ran off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre and transferred to Broadway at the Cort Theatre in 2017. The play was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play and won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across the US.

Cast: 3 female, 4 male (doubling)

What people say:

"Superbly realized... Indecent, the powerful play by Paula Vogel, sheds an eye-opening light on a little-known time when theatrical history, Jewish culture, and the frank depiction of homosexuality intersected, with explosive results." — New York Times

"…riveting backstage drama… Revelatory... As intimate and immediate as a whispered secret. Vogel's play thrums with music, desire, and fear, and it's shrewd about the ways in which America isn't free, and about how art does and doesn't transcend the perilous winds of history." — The New Yorker

"Gorgeous. Illuminating and heartbreaking. Rich in sympathy and humor, Indecent has the scope of an epic but the intimacy of a chamber piece... It celebrates and illustrates the power of theater." — Time Out New York

"Indecent is more than a play about forbidden love: It's about theater as a life force." — New York Post

"Indecent ranks as a must-see for anyone who cares about the important legacy of Yiddish theater, or of theater in general. …we are indebted to Vogel… for reminding us of a brave play that fearlessly told the world there's nothing indecent about love." — TheaterMania.com

"A moving and fascinating play...A singular achievement... The historical perspective is vast and knowing... Has there ever been anything quite like Indecent, a play that touches – I mean deeply touches – so much rich emotion about history and the theater, anti-Semitism, homophobia, censorship, world wars, red-baiting, and oh, yes, joyful human passion?...An extraordinary play." — Newsday

About the Playwright:

Paula Vogel is an American playwright and university professor. One of the most widely produced and honoured playwrights writing in the English language, her work has garnered numerous awards and prizes including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Susan Smith Blackburn Award, New York Drama Critics Award, Obie Award, AT&T New Plays Award, among many others, as well as fellowships from the Pew Charitable Trust, National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. She is currently the Eugene O'Neill Professor and Chair of the Department of Playwriting at Yale University.