Janice Weizman: Who was Hanoch Levin?
Jessica Cohen: He was, and probably still is, Israel’s
best-known playwright. If you stopped someone on the
street and asked them to name one Israeli playwright,
the name that they would most likely come up with
would be his, which is interesting because he was also
controversial, both politically and in terms of his aes-
thetics. He was not a mainstream kind of creator. He
was very far on the left—that’s the way he first became
famous. Right after the ’67 war, when he was really
young, he put on a series of satirical political sketches
that, due to the controversy they caused, were subject to
a lot of public criticism and protest and ultimately taken
off the stage. He was always on the margins politically,
but he nevertheless became Israel’s national playwright.
Evan Fallenberg: He’s often called the Beckett of Israel,
or the Pinter of Israel.
Weizman: Could you say a little about his work and his
dramas in particular?
Cohen: They’re hard to categorize, which is one of the
reasons that I think they haven’t done well in America. I
know that in literature, American audiences want things
to be labeled. They need to know which shelf to put it on
in a bookstore, and the same goes for plays. They figure,
“I’m going to see a comedy, it’s going to make me laugh.”
But those aren’t the kind of plays that Levin writes. Even
his “tragedies” have comic elements in them, and his
comedies often have pretty sharp social commentary or
political aspects, so they’re hard to fit into one box. So,
for example, you’re translating a play, and it appears to
be working in a certain genre, and then, boom, he twists
something. Just when you feel, okay, I get this, I know
what’s happening here, he turns something around.
Fallenberg: They’re “genre-bending.” For example, one
of the plays we’ve just finished working on called The
Lamenters—it’s a tragedy, if you go by the classic defini-
tion, but it’s also quite funny. It has a lot to do with the
staging and the actors, but also because that is what
Levin intended.
Weizman: What is it about Levin’s dramas that strikes
such a strong chord with Israeli audiences?
Fallenberg: They’re intriguing because they’re us. They
are our less attractive aspects, our insides, our bodily
functions, our stupid thoughts, our culture. Pickled her-
ring shows up in almost every play we’ve done. There’s
something Jewish, something Polish, something Middle
Eastern about the plays. He’s very good, in the way of
great literature, at taking something specific, which is
typically Israeli, and then making it universal.Cohen: A lot of people have said things like the rea-
son he’s so successful in Poland is because he’s really
a Polish playwright. But what to me seems so Israeli
about his plays is this incredible blend of seriousness
and dismissiveness. Often the types of conversations I
have with people here, the reason that I enjoy talking to
people when I visit the country, is because you can find
yourself speaking with people about philosophy and
capitalism and democracy, these really big themes, and
people are really serious and thoughtful about them,
but then almost in the same breath, someone will make
some comment about how stupid everything is, or start
talking about food, and it’s all there, all at the same time.
That’s how people’s minds really work, except in more
refined cultures we’ve learned how to divert the way we
talk and the things that we talk about into what is appro-
priate for the setting and the context and the crowd. But
Israelis aren’t like that.Fallenberg: In the West, speech is moving farther and
farther away from thought.Cohen: Exactly. For example, I could be talking about
Kant, when suddenly this thought about pickled herring
comes into my mind, and with Levin, that’s the thought
that’s going to come out in his dialogue. In Walkers in
the Dark, he embodies that idea in the actual characters;
for example, you have, “The thought about pickled her-
ring” or “The thought about”—what was it?Fallenberg: Pyramids.Cohen: Exactly. These thought-characters are all over
the place, not communicating with one another, and
somehow it all comes together.Levin is very good, in the way of great
literature, at taking something specific,
which is typically Israeli, and then
making it universal.WORLDLIT.ORG 43