←Recommendations of SETTLEMENTS

This is going to sound hyperbolic, but I truly think if the American Jewish community can figure out how to talk about Israel, then the whole country can recover from disabling partisanship. That's how important Seth's play is; it's world peace.

As a playwright who lived this experience with a play that I wrote based on my travels in Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine during the first Intifada (now a period piece), I find SETTLEMENTS to be spot on, pitch perfect in exposing the corporate realities of most American theatres. Rozin writes with compassion - the characters are never 1-dimensional - and humor that helps these realities go down even as he breaks our hearts and reminds us of the limits of our art.

Art and politics is a tale as old as time yet we're often more silent than we should be on it if we ever want to help change it. Terrific!

I had the pleasure of listening to this play as part of the Quarantine Players podcast. Rozin's play is incredibly compelling with nuanced characters and a really captivating subject matter. Beyond the BIG topics of Israel-Palenstine and American Jews complex positions on this issue, the push-pull of artistic statements that don't please the people paying for the art resonated deeply for me. This play does so much and it achieves amazing depth and leaves audiences with so many important questions to ponder. Wonderful work!

This play is fierce, radical, and true, and probably destined to be as controversial as the events that maybe/probably/could have inspired it. A call to arms for any theater asked to put its money where its mouth is.

"Settlements" is a compelling and brisk read that tackles the compromises people either strive to make or struggle to resist when controversial art meets the practical realities of funding. Each character has a compelling reason to have a stake in the creation and potential production of Yasmin's play. I'm going to remember the conversations and debates about tribalism, idealism, and provocation long after having finished this piece! What I perhaps most enjoyed were the rich additional stories that could be told or imagined about this scenario. I hope to track this play's developmental trajectory.

I'm not sure when I last read a play that felt as truly and deeply brave as "Settlements." This play is one the fiercest critiques I've ever read of how art is forced to bend to the politics of those who fund it. I was shocked and impressed with every page at how radical Rozin is willing to be in his exploration of how plays live and die in the American theatre when they are about things that some don't want to talk about. Reading this play for the first time felt like a revelation.