Art Silenced or Preserved?

By Michael S. Serrill

Vanessa Redgrave charges blacklisting by the B.S.O.

Thomas Morris, general manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is a dedicated man of music who has scant interest in more mundane subjects like politics. He reads newspapers "as little as possible," he says, and "I don't pay much attention to television." So no one was more surprised than Morris at the furor that ensued in March 1982 after British Actress Vanessa Redgrave was hired to narrate the B.S.O.'s planned production of the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex. Redgrave, as anyone who does read the newspapers should know, is a Trotskyite and ardent supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and her selection immediately inspired an outcry. Faced with protests from musicians, threats of violent disruption, and possible withdrawal of funds by Jewish orchestra patrons, Morris canceled Oedipus, casting Redgrave into the wilderness.

Now Morris, 40, and his colleagues are paying for their naivete in Boston federal court, where Redgrave is suing the B.S.O. for breach of contract and violation of her civil rights. In testimony that was by turns rambling, deft and once even tearful, Redgrave, 47, argued that the cancellation of her $31,000, six-performance contract effectively blacklisted her for more than a year. The orchestra "may not be E.F. Hutton," her lawyer told the jury, "but when it talks, people listen." Redgrave testified that she was turned down for a role in a Broadway production for fear that her appearance would invite demonstrations. At one point, said the actress, who won a 1978 Oscar for her role in Julia, she was so desperate for money that she agreed to appear nude in an as yet unreleased film called Steaming, for which she earned $100,000.

Redgrave got strong support from Peter Sellars, the artistic director of the Kennedy Center theater in Washington, who would have been in charge of the Oedipus production. Canceling performances because of potential political disruption sets a "dangerous precedent," Sellars testified. "If the Boston Symphony acts this way, no artist is safe."

The B.S.O. countered that it had offered to pay Redgrave's fee and that her lawyer turned the money down. As for her claim of having been blacklisted, Defense Attorney Robert E. Sullivan contended that she received a dozen inquiries about roles during the 15 months after April 1982, and pointed out that she will earn $300,000 for appearing in the movie Peter the Great. Orchestra officials, said the attorney, are guilty only "of a lack of political sophistication." (Conductor Seiji Ozawa admitted on the stand that when Redgrave was hired he had never heard of her.) Furthermore, Sullivan argued, B.S.O. officials were perfectly justified in acting to preserve the orchestra's artistic strength by excluding a performer when"turmoil surrounds her wherever she goes."

The trial, which is expected to end this week, caused a minimum of turmoil.

The only noteworthy anti-Redgrave picket was Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who distributed leaflets outside a theater where she was participating in a benefit, "Boston Against Blacklisting." Though Dershowitz, a renowned civil libertarian and supporter of Israel, defended Redgrave's right to perform, he also supported the orchestra's right to "exercise its freedom of association by refusing to perform with a P.L.O. collaborator."

If the First Amendment's armor was being put on by each side, the case was also marked by ironies that cut both ways: the B.S.O. invoking ignorance to protect artistic expression and Redgrave crying blacklist, even though she urges that British artists boycott Israel by not appearing there. For the jury and the judges who will probably review the case, a central conundrum is: If Redgrave has the right to engage in radical activism to dramatize her political beliefs, does her employer have a right to sever relations with her in order to protect itself from the consequences of that activism? --ByMichaelS. Serrill.

Reported by John Kennedy/Boston

With reporting by John Kennedy/Boston