Hanoch Levin

Vocation

Notable

Traits

Hanoch Levin was Israel's most prolific and controversial playwright whose dark comedies of great psychological insight and poetry both shocked and entranced his audiences. He wrote 63 plays, of which 34 were produced, the majority of those at the Cameri Theatre, in his home city of Tel Aviv. He was also a theater director, an author and a poet, but he is best known for his plays. His first two plays were scorching satires. You, Me And The Next War (1968), criticised Israeli smugness after the 1967 war and predicted that such an attitude would lead to another war. His next play, The Queen of The Bathtub (1970), lampooned the then prime minister, Golda Meir, and included such absurd characters as "Lord Keeper of the Enema". Performed at the Cameri, it created uproar. The government threatened to withdraw the theatre's subsidy and, after 18 performances, the play was closed. Death, torture and humiliation became recurring themes in Levin's creative world. In Hefetz (1972), for example, a bold, young bride stands on top of a building and pushes her parents' elderly tenant to his death. This play, which was a critical success, launched a new era in Israeli theatre. A macabre, allegorical black comedy, it describes an immature society that is always rushing ahead without pausing to consider those around it. Driven by ambition, there is no room for real emotions. From Hefetz onwards, only Murder (1998), which once again both attracted and repelled its large audiences, resembles his early satires in style and content. Otherwise, Levin's plays are anything but overtly political. Yet they are still rooted in Israeli society. Levin's major concern for the past 15 years was with death, both physical and spiritual. From Everyone Wants to Live (1985) to his last work, Requiem, the message is that we might want to live, but there is no chance whatsoever. So the characters, who once did all they could to remain alive, come to accept death. Levin was married twice and had four children. He died of cancer on 18 August 1999. Link to Wikipedia biography