• A Detroit Institution Since 1952 We Are Open On Saturdays For Dinner! chairman of the commission. The Muslims presented commis- sioners with a "Fact Sheet on Paradise" that included a long list of complaints about the play, such as that it showed only negative portrayals of Palestinians and positive representations of Israelis. The commission decided it could not get involved in a situation involv- ing the First Amendment, says Shriberg, a management professor at Cincinnati's Xavier University and the president of his synagogue. He's disappointed the theater decided to cancel the play. "Confronting human relations is a good thing," he says. The day after the hearing, Sycamore High School canceled its booking. Unhappy playhouse board members voiced their displeasure at the uproar and sponsors threatened to pull their funds, O'Malley says. To lessen the perception that this was a "Zionist" play directed by a "Zionist" theater, Goldstein, who is Jewish, was replaced as director. Then, two weeks ago, in response to the clamor, playhouse artistic director Stern (who is not Jewish) decided to cancel the play. First Amendment Concerns "I have been fatwdeh" says O'Malley, referring to an Islamic religious decree ordering someone's death. "I sympathize with the theater, but I'm the playwright. My name is the one being smeared." After a play opens, O'Malley says, anyone can say or write or take any actions he wishes. But censoring the play violates his freedom of speech. He vows to develop the 65-minute, five-actor play into a full-length piece for adults. Canceling the production of Paradise was not the goal of the Muslim community, says Jad Humeidan,.executive director of the Ohio chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), who attended the Dec. 16 reading. However, he is pleased "that particu- lar version" of Paradise is canceled. "People need to know what's hap- pening in the Middle East. They need to know the truth, without any biases and prejudices from either side," he says. "We were trying to work with the author and producer to present a more balanced view." Emotions surrounding the play have run high, he admits, because so many area Muslims have family members in the Middle East or have lived through the conflict. "When you see biases propagated against you, people claiming this is the truth and it's a balanced view — when you know it's not true — it's hard to stay calm," he says. The PEN American Center (an associ- ation for poets, playwrights, essayists, editors and novelists) has urged Stern to reconsider his decision to cancel Paradise. The playhouse commissioned the play and no doubt knew it would be controversial, wrote K. Anthony Appiah of the PEN Freedom to Write - Committee and Larry Siems of the PEN Freedom to Write Program. Thus, "... it is hard to comprehend how the theater could abandon the project at the first hint of protests." Forum For Dialogue The final chapter on Paradise is far from written, says Rabbi Michael Zedek, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, who recently read the draft of the play. He hopes the playhouse will present Paradise as a reading or staged production at the theater or at some other venue where members of the Islamic and Jewish communities could talk about the play. The play has some inaccuracies, notes Zedek, such as saying Israel became a state in 1946. "That doesn't mean I don't want it heard. "I am concerned about free expres- sion. I would prefer it be experienced, commented, talked about, seen for what it is, in an effort for people to talk with each other." The cancellation of Paradise recalls the infamous 1990 controversy when a Hamilton County, Ohio, sheriff raid- ed an exhibit of the late Robert Mappelthorpe's photographs at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. The arts center and direc- tor, Dennis Barrie, newly named head of Cleveland's planned Jewish Museum, were indicted (and later acquitted) on obscenity charges. There are about 10,000 to 15,000 Muslims in Cincinnati and about 22,000 Jews, says Michael Rapp, exec- utive director emeritus of the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati. Freedom of expression was trampled upon in his city, he says. A group of Muslims, who by no means represent the majority of the Islamic communi- ty, went to the Human Rights Commission to have the play stopped. 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