Patron walks out of Sydney Festival show and cuts ties

A major Sydney Festival Jewish supporter who withdrew her backing after attending a flagship performance says the experience brought an abrupt end to a relationship she had built with the festival over more than two decades.

Jacqui Scheinberg, a founding member of the festival’s Director’s Circle and an inaugural member of its philanthropy committee, told J-Wire she left a performance of Nowhere partway through after finding its political content confronting and distressing.

The solo work, written and performed by Khalid Abdalla, is promoted by Sydney Festival as an “anti-biography” that weaves together personal memory and global politics. According to the festival’s program notes, Nowhere draws on Abdalla’s own life and family history, reflecting on revolution, counter-revolution, friendship and loss, and situates those experiences against major world events, including the conflict in Gaza.

Scheinberg told JWire she expected the work to be challenging but was unprepared for what she described as repeated accusations that Israel was committing genocide and comparisons she regarded as equating Israeli actions with the Holocaust.

“I expected it to be confronting,” she said. “What I didn’t expect was how unrestrained it would be. Nobody seemed to think there was any line.”

In an opinion piece published in today’s Australian Financial Review (AFR), Scheinberg wrote that such comparisons amounted to Holocaust distortion and were particularly offensive given the timing around International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Scheinberg said she expected Nowhere to be confronting and found much of the performance watchable as it dealt with life in Egypt, but said the tone shifted decisively towards the end. She told J-Wire she left the theatre a few minutes into the final section, after what she described as repeated and unrestrained accusations against Israel.

While she did not stay for the closing moments, Scheinberg watched it on the monitor in the foyer. She later heard from others who remained that the final few minutes were “simplistic and hectoring”, a turn she felt transformed the work from challenging theatre into something far more troubling.

She has heard that other people also walked out of performances. While much of the audience appeared enthusiastic, she said that the response itself was unsettling.

“It’s become fashionable, almost obligatory, to applaud this kind of rhetoric,” she said. “I find that terrifying.”

The experience was especially painful, Scheinberg said, because of her deep and longstanding relationship with the festival.

“For more than 20 years, Sydney Festival felt like a family,” she said. “I toured with them, hosted functions at my home, and spent years in conversation with senior staff, particularly during difficult moments for the Jewish community.”

She pointed to the festival’s handling of the 2022 boycott over a Sydney Dance Company work as evidence of that earlier care. The controversy centred on a $20,000 contribution from the Israeli Embassy, which Scheinberg stressed was routine festival funding.

“At the same time, long-standing support from a Chinese airline worth hundreds of thousands of dollars attracted no protest at all,” she said. “That double standard was glaring.”

She described the 2022 BDS attack as “very aggressive” but said the festival responded “with grace and care”, strengthening trust with the Jewish community rather than eroding it.

Scheinberg said that in recent years the festival had also included Israeli choreographers and dancers, sometimes without publicising their nationality, which she viewed as quiet inclusion rather than tokenism.

She noted that festival leadership reached out after the December 14 Bondi terror attack and that Bondi was acknowledged at opening events.

Beyond the content of Nowhere itself, Scheinberg raised concerns about Abdalla’s activities off stage. She said that during his festival-funded visit to Sydney, he was involved in sessions promoting strategies for running effective Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns against individuals.

She drew a clear distinction between political speech within a theatrical performance and off-stage activist training.

“Those are different things,” she said. “That crossed another line.”

In the AFR, Scheinberg confirmed she had withdrawn all future financial support for the festival, saying she no longer felt safe in a cultural space that, in her view, normalised language that demonised Jews.

She told J-Wire she had been transparent with festival leadership throughout and had informed them that her column was forthcoming.

Asked how she now feels, Scheinberg said the overriding emotion was sadness.

“This was a really positive and important part of my life,” she said. “Walking away feels like losing something that mattered deeply to me.”