Levin, Hanoch
LEVIN, HANOCH
LEVIN, HANOCH (1943–1999), Israeli playwright, poet, and theater director. Levin was born in Tel Aviv, the city in which he lived most of his life and in which he died at the age of 56. A most prolific writer, he wrote 58 plays in different dramatic genres, two books of prose, The Eternal Patient and His Beloved and A Man Stands Behind a Sitting Woman, two collections of satirical sketches, several songs including "Mah Ikhpat la-Ẓippor" ("What Does the Bird Care") and "The Gigolo from Congo," and a book of poems, The Life of the Dead.
Levin grew up in a Tel Aviv milieu characterized by acute differences – between native-born Israelis and new immigrants, between rich and poor, Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, Jews and Arabs – differences that became more acute after the Six-Day War (1967). These differences and the feelings they provoked became the fuel for his theater, the target of his fierce socio-political criticism. Levin started his theatrical career with satires: short satirical sketches and poems that he wrote during his studies at Tel Aviv University (1964–67). These were published on the back cover of the students' journal Dorban. In the political satires that followed, You, Me and the Next War (1968) and Ketshup (1969), Levin attacked the arrogance of Jewish society in Israel after the victory of 1967. He juxtaposed the voice of the individual soldier who wanted above all to come home alive with the military discourses of the politicians and generals. In all of these sketches Levin was sending a prophetic warning about the tragic results for Israeli society of the occupation and colonization. The two productions, performed in front of small audiences, got mixed responses. Levin caused a public outcry with his Malkat ha-Ambatiyah (Queen of the Bathtub) directed by David Levin, his brother, at the Cameri Theater in April 1970. From the first performance on, reactions were violent inside and outside the theater. Levin was accused of slaughtering the "sacred cows" of Israeli society, mainly the Israeli army, war widows, and bereaved parents, and of destroying Jewish solidarity during a state of war. In response to the pressure exerted from all quarters – actors at the Cameri, audiences, journalists, and political figures – the play was stopped after 19 performances.
Solomon Grip (Open Theater, Tel Aviv, 1969), Ḥefetz (Haifa Municipal Theater, 1972) and Ya'akobi and Leidenthal (Cameri Theater, 1972) marked the emergence of a new genre, that of tragi-comedy. These plays dealt with the desires and misfortunes of insignificant people, descendants of the "heroes" of Mendele Mokher Seforim and Shalom Aleichem, Gogol and Chekhov, trying to live meaningful lives in their poor, unnoticed neighborhoods. In the following tragi-comedies, Young Vardale (1974), Kroum (1975), Popper (1976) Rubber Merchants (1978), Winter's Funeral (1979), Suitcase Packers (1983), The Labors of Life (1989), The Hesitant (1990), The Wondrous Woman Within Us (1994), and The Whore from Ohio (1997), Levin excavated the anxieties and fears, the hopes and disillusionments, the humiliation and subjugation that reign in the relationships between man and woman, mother and son, parents and children, among friends and family members. His comedies were constructed of short scenes, where the characters tried to communicate in short, lean dialogue and sentimental song. His comic style, impregnated with grotesque and satirical elements, represented the characters' inner voices as conversations and their vain efforts to fulfill their desires as Sisyphean tasks.
In 1979 with the performance of Execution at the Cameri Theater, Levin announced a new direction – mythological plays where he explored the dramatic strategies of tragic writing. Under this broad rubric there appeared plays based on the mythological traditions of Western civilization: The Sorrows of Job (1981), The Great Whore of Babylon (1982), The Child Dreams (1993), Open Mouth (1995), and Decapitation (1996); others were based on new readings of Greek tragedy: The Lost Women of Troy (1984), Everybody Wants To Live (1985), The Man with the Knife in the Middle (1990, unperformed), The Emperor (1996, unperformed), The Weepers (2001); still other plays were readings of Christian tragedy: Salvation (1993, unperformed), Chlodog the Miserable King (1996, unperformed). In some other plays Levin represented modern existence and the modern conscience in terms of modern mythological metaphors. These include The Dreamer (1983), Rape Trial (1989, unperformed), Those Who Walk in The Dark (1997), and Requiem (1998). Shifting between Greek myth and biblical stories enabled Levin to examine the Jewish God through the eyes of a pagan. Thus, despite the fact that he defined God as "a collector of stamps with rare misprints" (The Sorrows of Job) or as the symbolization of pure chance, Levin was still able to present him not as a cruel or compassionate God, but as an alienated onlooker observing the downfall of man. Levin employed the mythical format as both a legitimate way of representing reality and a primary poetical way of describing man's earthly existence. In these plays, the only meaningful associations were those between the subject and the forces which determined his existence, his destiny, and his death. They alone were responsible for his suffering and his destruction. Human existence became, in these plays, a spectacle in which Man examines his most firmly held beliefs and discovers his own fragility. The dramatic situations illustrate the gradual abasement of the human protagonist: the dissolution of his familiar boundaries, followed by the loss of his dignity and self-esteem and culminating in his isolation and annihilation. However, Levin's theater is characterized by a constant search for a special balance between the violent deeds enacted or recounted on the stage and the compassion embedded in the poetic text. This balance constitutes the important components in Levin's concept of modern tragedy.
Levin began his directing career at the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv when he directed Ya'akobi and Leidenthal in 1972. Subsequently the Cameri Theater became his "home," though he later directed in most of the established theaters in Israel. Levin was known for his long collaboration with actors and theater artists. In the 21 plays he directed, he worked again and again with the same actors – Zaharira Harifai, Yosef Carmon, Albert Cohen, Gita Munte, Itzchak Chizkiya, Sasson Gabai, Rivka Gur, Michael Koresh, Dror Keren, Yehudah Almagor, Dinah Blei, Sandra Shoenwald, and others. He also worked with stage designers Ruth Dar, Moshe Sternfeld, Roni Toren, and Rakefet Levi, and composers Alex Kagan, Poldi Shatzman, Uri Vidislavski, and Yossi Bin Nun. All these theater artists contributed to the emergence of Levin's unique theatrical language, to the spectacular and meaningful metaphors on stage that enhanced the poetic words of his texts. Levin's The Labors of Love, Selected Plays (2003) is available in English.
bibliography:
E. Brown, "Cruelty and Affirmation in the Postmodern Theatre: A. Artaud and H. Levin," in: Modern Drama, 55 (1992), 251–77; M. Handelsaltz, Ha-Te'atron shel H. Levin (2001); R. Feldhay Brenner, "The Terror of Barbarism and the Return to History, Between the Text and the Performance of Murder by H. Levin," in: Hebrew Studies, 43 (2002), 153–86; D. Urian, "The Arab in H. Levin's Works," in: Hebrew Studies, 43 (2002), 217–32; N. Yaari and S. Levy (eds.), H. Levin: The Man with the Myth in the Middle (2004); Z. Caspi, Ha-Yoshevim ba-Ḥoshekh (2005).
[Nurit Yaari (2nd ed.)]