About Hanoch Levin

Born in Tel Aviv on 18 December 1943 and died of cancer on 18 August 1999.

Hanoch Levin wrote plays, sketches, songs, stories and poetry, and also directed most of his own plays. As a student at Tel Aviv University (1964-1967) he published satirical pieces in the students’ newspaper. His first plays, too, were political satires, a trenchant criticism of the triumphal euphoria that gripped Jewish-Israeli society after the Six-Day War.

In parallel with his political satires and in fact as the beginning of an additional dramatic form developed by him, Solomon Grip was produced by the Open Theatre in 1969. It was the first in a series of comedies that focus on the desires and suffering of sad characters in the social framework of a couple or a family in a housing project or any other type of city neighborhood.

In 1997, with the Cameri Theatre production of The Execution, a new direction became evident in Levin’s work: the mythological plays. These are based on central myths in Western culture, like The Torments of Job. In this play Levin develops a dialogue with the principal symbols and fundamental patterns of Western culture while attempting to write a modern tragedy and dramatically reshape human suffering.

Israeli literary, theatre and cultural critiques acknowledged Levin’s qualities many years ago, in that he is one of those writers who gained an abundance of reviews. Only a few were negative while the overwhelming majority were more than favorable. More comprehensive academic critique of his work has also recently begun to develop, from the standpoint of its social statement, its unique language and particularly from the standpoint of the rare relationship between categorical, blunt violence totally lacking in self-pity, and infinite tenderness, compassion, and perhaps even a facet of refined and completely non-establishment spirituality.

Nurit Ya’ari, Shimon Levy

Photo Pesi Girsch