Using transcripts, she’d staged the obscenity trial. A newlywed man in his 20s wrote this? How could he so clearly see women who have to work in the sex trade, and how women were brutalized?”ĭirector Taishman, it turns out, had written about “God of Vengeance” for her graduate thesis at Yale. “I couldn’t believe these beautiful female characters, and a love between two women. “I was stunned when I first read it,” says Vogel, who teaches at the Yale School of Drama. The result, “Indecent,” a provocative play with music, receives its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse (11/13-12/10). Now, four decades later, she’s teamed up with acclaimed director Rebecca Taichman, to tell the story of that fateful night, the buildup, the aftermath, and the artists who risked their lives and careers to perform in that incendiary work of theater. His play had a profound effect on another playwright, Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel (“How I Learned to Drive”), who first encountered “God of Vengeance” when she was a 23 year-old graduate student.

It was a travesty, and it dogged the writer, Sholem Asch, for the rest of his life.

The vice squad not only closed down the production of “God of Vengeance,” they arrested the producer and 12 actors, and booked them on obscenity charges. It seemed like a typical night on Broadway, 1923. PAT LAUNER – THE SAN DIEGO JEWISH JOURNAL

Indecent by paula vogel script