Israel Horovitz Plays

At first, the idea of sitting down and watching three plays in a row seemed a tad bit boring in my eyes.  Usually I’m unable to sit through one play at the most, however, the short style of Horovitz’s plays made it much easier to sit through the plays and the majority of the plays caught my attention from start to finish. In high school, I’ve went to see many plays that were sometimes two to three hours long with just one intermission.  These plays were always really hard to connect to or to understand, which is why we’ve had to read all of them before seeing them in action.  This took away the surprise factor that there usually is when seeing a play.

After reading “The Indian Wants the Bronx,” I was almost sure that I could picture exactly what would happen and to sit there and watch it would be pretty boring since it was an uneventful play, but I was wrong.  The characters weren’t exactly what I was expecting which made it a lot more interesting and engaging.  Many of my fellow students thought that the play had no plot but I think that was the exact intention of Israel Horovitz.  He wanted to show the way immigrants are treated in everyday situations not just a made up storyline.  I loved the way the lights were on the young kids and not on the Indian because it showed how unimportant the other characters made the Indian seem.  Also, the phone booth and garbage cans made it a little easier to picture the scene where this event might have occurred.  One thing I did not like was that it was difficult to notice that the scene was in fact at a bus stop.  Maybe a bus stop sign or a bench of some sort would’ve made that easier to understand.  This play evoked many emotions in the audience because we saw a man get killed just for being an Indian, an immigrant, and in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Even though there are some questions that make the play seem unbelievable like, how come no one saw this happening and why would the Indian’s son leave him alone is such a big city, events and situations such as these happen on a regular, especially in other parts of the world.  Last week, when I attended church, there was a guest pastor from Pakistan who spoke about people who were killed on their way to church just because they’re Christians in a predominantly Muslim society.  Israel Horovitz brought this aggression amongst cultures to life.

The second play, “What Strong Fences Make,” was completely foreign to me.  For one, I did not hear a word of what the actors said and so, I stopped paying attention.  I believe that it’s the job of the actors to engage their audience as well as the setting of the stage.  I couldn’t even tell that the two men were at a border because there was no set.  There were no props other than a gun and some costumes, which, in my opinion, weren’t that great.  I can understand that it might be difficult to create an entire stage set for such a short play but something small would have been enough just so that we can understand the setting.

The third play, “Beirut Rocks,” was by far, my favorite of the three plays.  As I sat there that night watching, I remembered that we had acted out a part of this play during our theater workshops and I was eager to see that scene played out.  The racial slurs that were being thrown back and forth between the “Jew” and Nasa showed the ignorance that some people have when it comes to other races and other cultures.  At the end of the play when they check Nasa to see if she was hiding a bomb, it made the entire audience gasp in shock.  Israel Horovitz made a good decision in deciding to include this because it showed how far these people went just to prove something that they weren’t even sure of.  One thing I did not like was that everyone focused on what had happened to Nasa, but many forgot that she had also called the Jewish young man, a “Jew” and told him that the world won’t be good until all of the Jews are out of it.  Sometimes a person’s background and culture can influence their views of other cultures.  For example, some of the people who were affected by the incident of 9-11 now show hate against Muslims and their children will probably follow the same.

Israel Horovitz correctly displayed the social issues between races and the unfortunate events that occur because of this.  Overall, I really enjoyed watching the plays, and I might have even enjoyed the second one if I had heard it!