Imagining Madoff

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Imagining Madoff is a 2010 play by playwright

Bernard Madoff, the admitted operator of what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in history, and his victims. Margolin had originally planned to use Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel
as a character representing a victim, but was obliged by legal threats to substitute a fictional character, whom she named Solomon Galkin.

Elie Wiesel's response to the play

Wiesel had been one of Madoff's most notable victims, having lost his life savings to Madoff's fraud in addition to more than $15 million in losses to a charitable foundation Wiesel operated, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, with Wiesel calling Madoff a "thief, scoundrel, criminal".

National Public Radio on May 20, 2010, attorney Richard Lehv expressed his opinion that Wiesel would have had little chance in court of preventing Margolin from using him as a character, noting that "it's a free country. You can make a public figure a character in a work of fiction."[4]

Productions

The play was originally to have been staged at

Holocaust survivor, poet, translator, treasurer of his synagogue", retained most of the dialogue that had originally been planned for the Wiesel character.[3]

The revised play premiered in July-August 2010 at Stageworks/Hudson in Hudson, New York.[7] It ran at Washington's Theater J from August 31 to September 25, 2011.[8]

Artistic director Laura Margolis of Stageworks/Hudson has commented that nothing was lost by removing the Wiesel character, and that the new version of the play gave Margolin greater liberties to develop the Galkin character as a person, rather than as representing a famous figure. In a July 2010 article in The New York Times, Margolin emphasized that she had never planned "to be on the wrong side of anybody, let alone someone I admire".[3]

The New Repertory Theatre of Watertown, MA staged the New England premiere in January 2014, which included sixteen sold-out performances. An encore extension was co-presented with the Boston Center for American Performance at the Boston University Theatre-Comley Studio 210 in May-June 2014.

Awards

On February 27, 2012, Deb Margolin's Imagining Madoff was nominated for the 28th Annual

Helen Hayes Awards which celebrates excellence in professional theater in the Washington D.C. area.[9]

References

  1. ^ Strom, Stephanie. "Elie Wiesel Levels Scorn at Madoff", The New York Times, February 26, 2009. Accessed July 19, 2010.
  2. ^ Horwitz, Jane. "Theater J pulls Madoff play after objections from activist Elie Wiesel", The Washington Post, May 19, 2010. Accessed July 20, 2010.
  3. ^ a b c d Healy, Patrick. "The Play on Madoff, Without Wiesel", The New York Times, July 19, 2010. Accessed July 19, 2010.
  4. National Public Radio
    , May 20, 2010. Accessed July 19, 2010.
  5. ^ Taylor, Kate. "Play Canceled After Wiesel Objects", The New York Times, May 19, 2010. Accessed July 19, 2010.
  6. ^ Fischer, Jonathan L. "Imagining Madoff, sans Elie Wiesel, Opens This Week in New York", Washington City Paper, July 19, 2010. Accessed July 19, 2010.
  7. ^ Review, Times Union, July 25, 2010. Accessed on 7/7/11 at: http://blog.timesunion.com/reviews/imagining-madoff-stageworkshudson-72510/2765/
  8. ^ Theater J website, accessed on 7/7/11 at: http://washingtondcjcc.org/center-for-arts/theater-j/on-stage/11-12-season/ Archived 2011-05-22 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Playbill.com, accessed on 2/29/12 at: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/160175-DCs-Helen-Hayes-Nominees-Include-Hairspray-Eric-Schaeffer-Jan-Maxwell-Imagining-Madoff
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