In the weeks before the festival, that first production drew fire when several dozen artists (Caryl Churchill, Wallace Shawn, Lynn Nottage and Taylor Mac among them) signed a letter protesting the play on the grounds that the Israeli government had helped sponsor it and that the companies involved had performed in Israeli settlements within the occupied territories. That this protest came at a moment in which a bipartisan coalition of United States senators had recently proposed legislation threatening fines for participating in a boycott of Israel suggests how fractious these issues remain.