All About Jewish Theatre - Hanoch Levin. Five years and still dead

In "You and I and the Next War," the satire that (along with "Queen of the Bathtub") made Hanoch Levin such a well-known name in Israel, there are two skits about coping with death. The Widow Robinson, the character in the skit of that name, receives a visit from her comforters who expect her to be in mourning and remain faithful to the memory of her husband, who had died five years ago. The visitors are surprised to discover that it is the widow (and the orphan) who understand that life must go on.

In "Max Guttman Meets the Fat Singer Bolivia," the singer Bolivia, who performs for the soldiers, asks after Max's brother. "He died," he answers. She tells about the efforts she has made for the sake of the soldiers and again she asks after the brother. "He's dead," replies the soldier. "This is already the fourth time you've asked." "The fourth time and he's still dead?" she wonders. "With not much sorrow, and not gloomily bereft ... Time buries sadness alongside the dead" (as in the words of a song in "Ketchup." It is not by chance that Levin's only book of poems is "The Life of the Dead," and it is not by chance that several of his poems deal with the routine of life after death.

Hanoch Levin died five years ago today, after a serious illness. During the period of his illness he continued to work on plays, including the writing and the direction of "Requiem" and "The Weepers," two plays, the main, if not the only, theme of which is "how to die." He began to cast and direct the latter play from his hospital bed and it was produced after his death under the direction of Ilan Ronen.

If throughout his life Levin scrupulously maintained a separation between his work and his life (this is just one of the points of similarity between him and Samuel Beckett, who obstinately refused to interpret his works and enclosed himself within a circle of anonymity that only a few very fortunate people could enter), when his illness became known - and especially after his death - this dividing line was both emphasized and blurred. Suddenly it was difficult to relate to the body of his work in a way unconnected to his death; the group of artists and friends who were in the circle that was close to him during his life, was left in possession of the secret, if there was a secret.

Deep impressions

Even five years ago it was perfectly clear that Levin's work had left behind deep impressions on Israeli society. In all of his writings, both satirical and dramatic, he dissected Israeli society and described it in detail: the crudeness, the insensitivity, the interpersonal violence, the oppression, the gluttony, the intolerance and the cruelty. He wrote about people who enjoy feeling superior and causing pain, who thrive on this and who love to harass their interlocutors and haggle with them for the sake of the haggling.

Perhaps more importantly, he revealed the basest of motivations, and released his characters and his audiences from inhibitions. Hanoch Levin's characters - and ultimately, the society that watched them - have no shame and take pride in their hypocrisy, their contradictions and their failings.

In a certain sense, the average Israeli is a "homo levinicus," and this also applies to people who have never seen one of Levin's plays. There is hardly a situation in Israeli life today, at a personal, social, political or economic level, that cannot be encapsulated in a quotation from the writings of Hanoch Levin.

Unlike many other writers, it appears Levin did not leave behind drawers full of shelved works. During the last years of his life, with the help of Mulli Melzer and Dani Tracz of Sifrei Tel Aviv, Menachem Perry and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 17 volumes of his work have been printed: 11 volumes of his plays, two volumes of prose, two volumes of skits and songs, a volume of poems and a volume of "last works." There are also two children's books.

The interesting question is which of the plays of Hanoch Levin have been performed by the Israeli theater since his death. Or more precisely - what hasn't been performed. The Cameri Theater, which for a significant part of Levin's artistic life was his home port, has established an institute for Israeli playwriting that bears his name (thanks to which the text of the play is printed in some of the programs for plays that are performed at the various theaters today). The Cameri has continued to perform "Requiem," which by any measure is a splendid theatrical monument to Levin's work. It has produced "Weepers," has presented a new version of "Kroom," has put on an evening of "Cabaret Levin" and has put on a reconstruction-homage of "Ya'akobi & Leidental," directed by Yosef Carmon, with Tiki Dayan, Rami Baruch and Dror Keren.

Insofar as is known, there are plans afoot to put on a revival of "You and I and the Next War," under the direction of Edna Shavit and with the participation of actors from the original 1969 production - Batsheva Zeisler, Shifra Milstein, Rami Peleg and Gad Keinar.

But every theater person and Levin aficionado knows that at his death he left behind at least 25 plays that were never produced on stage during his lifetime. Of them, only two have been put on posthumously: "Single Guys and Gals," directed by Eldad Ziv, and "Romantics," directed by Micha Levinsohn, with Zaharira Harifai, Yosef Carmon and Gabi Amrani.

The first of these plays is a kind of comedy-farce about Tel Aviv singles; the second completes the splendid trilogy, which is perhaps the most concentrated and masterly distillation of the Levinite world, that began with "Ya'akovi & Leidental" and continued with "Rubber Merchants."

In these two plays, the theatergoer could come to know Levin's theatrical world, but those were not the mythical, sublime and tragic plays that were perhaps Levin's greatest goal and aspiration as an artist. This is the most complex dimension in his works - beginning with "Execution," his play that is most deserving of a renewed confrontation, through "The Trials of Job" and "The Great Whore of Babylon," and one of its peaks is in the play "The Weepers," which dealt with the difficulties - and perhaps the impotence - of the theater, as an art, in grappling with life and death.

It appears that during his lifetime, too, Levin had difficulty finding the actors who would realize this theatrical vision and these plays of his - those that have been performed and those that have not - are still waiting for a redeemer on the stage.

Laughter and trembling

Part of Levin's theatrical world is still waiting to be discovered, but with respect to its mapping, impressive efforts have been made since his death. Many people are engaged in this research work. At least two books have been devoted in their entirely to Levin's work: "Laughter and Trembling," by Haim Nagid and "The Erotic Word," by Noam Yuran. But two researchers deserve special note: Nurit Yaari and Shimon Levy, both of the theater department at Tel Aviv University. They have curated an exhibition about Levin's works at the university gallery and recently edited the book "Hanoch Levin - The Man with the Myth in the Middle" (Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, in cooperation with the Zagagi Foundation). The book is a collection of articles that place Levin in theatrical and philosophical contexts (including an article by Yitzhak Laor, whose doctoral thesis on Levin is due for publication; Laor is one of the few people who, according to him, had the privilege of discussing the personal and research aspects of his work with Levin).

In my opinion, the most important part of the book, at the level of a true memorial project, is the detailed bibliography that documents everything that Levin wrote, all the productions and everything that has been written about Levin, in Hebrew and other languages, about individual plays and his oeuvre as a whole. This is of special importance, as so far the academic publications (articles and books) have related only to research writing and have totally ignored the journalism, including theater criticism and even news reports and articles, which are essential to the understanding of Levin's satires and their reception.

In this book, journalistic references are still missing from the footnotes to the academic articles, but the bibliography definitely shows that Levin is a part of the Israeli world in the deepest sense - also by virtue of the items in the daily press (more than 2,000 articles, news reports and reviews), which have sometimes formulated insights that are also worthy of academic attention.

Even five years after his death the question that came up during his lifetime still arises: If he is such a great and special artist, how is it that the world has not yet discovered him? From the bibliography mentioned above it emerges that that some of Levin's plays have been translated into 12 languages, including Chinese and Yiddish, and there are also special projects to publish his plays in French (three volumes) and in English (a selection of his plays translated by Barbara Harshav, was published by the Stanford University Press, 2003).

The problem of Levin's existence (or rather the lack of it) on theater stages has a lot to do with the fact that he is a poet, an Israeli playwright and a universal artist. His language demands translation by a poet. There are more markedly Israeli playwrights whom theaters abroad are glad to absorb, as material that is in part documentary, in part political and in part exotic. Levin competes for the universality niche with the greatest of classics - the Greek playwrights, Shakespeare and of course Samuel Beckett. There has not yet been a masterpiece production of a play by Levin on the stage of any of the leading theaters in the world, in any language. Perhaps this is yet to happen. But it is worth remembering that Beckett's plays, too, did not become classics of the modern theater in a single stroke. This takes time and trickles down slowly, and even when it happens, the result does not become evident all at once. Nor is this the index of quality.

And in the meantime, "Requiem" is still firmly ensconced in the Cameri's repertoire. The play is rarely performed in the running repertoire, but from time to time it is revived for trips to international festivals, in Hungary or China. A large part of the original cast still performs in the play, in large and small roles, and when it is performed here in Israel, its reverential treatment as a special work - one might almost say a secular sacred text - is evident.

One of the changes in the casting is that the role of the Old Woman, which was originally played by Zaharira Harifai, is now played by Gita Munte, herself a Levin veteran. In her death scene in the play, she stands on the stage, before the three cherubs take her to the World of the Dead and says: "Silence has fallen on the house. And it has gone dark. It is the day that has gone dark, perhaps I have gone dark ..." and then she makes a horizontal gesture in front of her face, in a wonderful moment of silent theater that means that this is happening now, "and from the short sleep with a dream, I have gone to the big sleep, about which I will not be able to say anything."

Contact:

The Institute of Israeli Drama in memory of Hanoch Levin
at The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv
30 Laonardo da Vinci Sreet
P.o.box 23097,Tel AVIV,64369,Israel
Phone: 972-3-6951188
Fax: 972-3-6060956
E-mail: drama-in@zahav.net.il
Contact Person: Roni Aldea-Coordinator