Theatre in Israel
by Shosh Weitz
Two productions of note on the Israeli stage this
past year were Retzach ("Murder,"), a biting
political drama by Hanoch Levin, and "Mister Wolff," a
local adaptation of an entertaining English play. "Retzach"
was greeted with rapturous critical acclaim, both because of the
subject matter and the political courage displayed by the theatre,
but also for the quality of the production: it was also extremely
popular with audiences. On the other hand, "Mister Wolff"
was considered by the critics to be flawed and over-commercial. These
two plays, both put on by the Cameri Theatre have been very
successful at the box office, and they highlight the major dilemma of
Israeli theatre in the second half of the 1990s and probably into the
next century: how to hold on to existing audiences, and particularly
how to lure new and younger audiences to theatres.
At first glance, the 1990s
have been a good decade for the Israeli theatre. In each year since
1990, the ten public theatres have produced about 140 plays and sold
about a million and half tickets. Dozens more productions have been
shown at theatre festivals by fringe theatre and by children and
youth ensembles. A survey conducted by the Central Bureau of
Statistics in 1992 showed that every third person in Israel attended
a play at least once a year. The same statistics, however, indicate
that since 1970, the number of people going to the theatre has
declined by 15 percent. The decline is most conspicuous among the
educated young. In 1970, 64 percent attended the theatre
"several times" a year, while in 1990, this figure had
dropped to 29 percent. Thus, although the theatre is still a very
popular medium, it is groping for ways to break through to the
younger generation that clearly prefers other types of entertainment.
"Gorodish," an
original Israeli drama dealing with a disgraced war hero, at the
Cameri, and "P.S. Your Cat is Dead," an imported commercial
success at Habimah,
represent two different solutions to the problem. The first continued
the tradition of theatre engagé taking a position on current
issues. "The Dead Cat" had no such ethical or artistic
pretensions. Its only goal was to provide entertainment for a young,
hedonistic audience. However, this polarization between the socially
committed and the professionally entertaining type of production is
not new in Israeli theatre and has, in fact, marked it from the
beginning. The Hebrew theatre has always seen itself as an
artistic-social institution where at times the artistic goal
superseded the social, and at others, the demands of time and place
overwhelmed the artistic criteria. In fact, this oscillation can be
seen as one of its major characteristics.
In the early years of
statehood, the theatre’s social role took precedence over its
artistic function, and the theatre concentrated on Israeli plays that
dealt with the burning issues of the day. The Ha’aretz theatre critic, Nahum Gamzu, writing on Yigal Mossinsohn’s "In
the Wilderness of the Negev," commented that, although the play
was flawed and at best a piece of journalism, its relevance was
praiseworthy. He added that when the curtain came down, he felt such
an identification with the characters that he felt like leaving the
theatre, joining the fighters and weeping on the grave of the hero,
Uri, who had fallen in battle.
The playwrights, mostly of
the Palmach generation
(Moshe Shamir, S. Yizhar,
Hanoch Bartov, Aharon Megged,
Yigal Mossinsohn, Yehudit Hendel and others) expressed the national
consensus. The voicing of extremist socio-political positions, at
times censored, was usually limited to the fringe theatres which
blossomed from the early 1950s to the late 1960s. However, even on
the fringe, the consensus was maintained, and the "revolt"
usually went no further than the adoption of avant garde modes such
as the Theatre of the Absurd, which was popular at the time in Europe
and the USA.
In the eyes of the Israeli
audience, who has always wished to see itself and its problems on
stage, the secret of the theatre’s success lies in the strong links
it forges with society. The audience is willing to be provoked, but
only within limits. It is open to controversial and critical theatre
but only as long as it stays within the national consensus. Theatre
thus faithfully reflects the changes wrought in Israeli society from
its early days, including the rupture in the consensus beginning with
the Six-Day War of 1967 and the
subsequent occupation of the territories.
The rift in the consensus
began with Hanoch Levin’s biting satire, "The Queen of the
Bathtub," performed at the Cameri, which was forced to close
almost as soon as it opened. Bowing to violent public pressure, the
theatre’s board decided not to violate its audience’s wishes, or,
as actress Orna Porat put it: "We cherish freedom of speech, but
we cherish our audience more." The Cameri, together with
Habimah, has toed that line ever since.
The group which stretched
the national consensus to its limits was the Haifa Municipal Theatre,
which, in the 1970s and 1980s, mounted several plays that challenged
government policy both in the political and the social arenas. Many
of these were documentaries or semi-documentaries and their artistic
value was minimal. But they gave vociferous expression to ideological
positions that aroused fierce public debate and often resulted in
political or financial pressure being brought to bear on the theatre.
This flourishing period in
the Haifa Theatre was a particular boon for a new and young
generation of writers who today constitute Israel’s foremost
playwrights, including Hanoch Levin, Yehoshua Sobol, Hillel
Mittelpunk and others. It also gave voice to the attitudes of a young
audience which identified with attacks on the values of the founding
generation and rebelled against the concept of paying the price of
the nation’s wars with its life. In retrospect, however, it seems
that although the Haifa revolt stretched the limits of the consensus,
it did not actually break it.
The social crisis of 1977
and the rise of the Likud
political party, both events which transformed the face of
Israeli society and redefined the national consensus, also brought
about changes in the theatre. The political reversal was expressed by
an ever-increasing pressure on theatres to moderate their message, an
influence which reached its peak at the end of the 1980s. The Arabic
stage of the Haifa Theatre was closed down, and plays containing a
particularly strong anti-establishment statement, such as
"Ephraim Goes Back to the Army," which drew an analogy
between the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the Holocaust,
were rejected by the theatre. The situation came to a head in 1988
with the closing of Sobol’s "Jerusalem Syndrome" in the
wake of which the theatre management resigned.
The closing of
"Jerusalem Syndrome" which, ironically, took place during
"Original Play Week" in Israel, is only one aspect of the
change that has left its mark on theatre to this day. The other is
the "Les Misérables" syndrome. Mounted by the Cameri in
1988, the world-famous musical inaugurated the concept of the
"professional" theatre. A huge success with the audiences
and critics alike, it was greatly admired for its professional
standard and wealth of technical effects. "Les Misérables"
drew audiences from all walks of life, even those who are not
normally theatregoers. Over the next three years, the main theatres
competed with one another in mounting large spectacles, the most
"populist" of which was Ephraim Kishon’s "Salah
Shabati" at Habimah.
It might be said that 1987-8 saw the swing of the pendulum in Israel
from the social to the artistic and professional theatre.
The first half of the 1990s
was a period of complacence and plenty. Repertoires were built to
satisfy audiences wishing to see well-performed, easily-digestible
and "respectable" plays. One example of this can be seen in
the wave of Tennessee Williams and Arthur
Miller plays from the 1950s that enjoyed revivals in 1990-1992.
Realistic and innovative in their time, they are now accessible and
classical. The same swing of the pendulum left its mark on Israeli
drama. In 1990, Oded Kotler, the man who initiated the Haifa revolt
in 1970, stated that the "political era" of Israeli theatre
was over. Today, he said, an original Hebrew play must be, first and
foremost, well-written. An even more extreme expression of this
attitude was voiced by Gary Bilu, then artistic director of Habimah,
when he claimed that the Hebrew play was "backward" and
that only artistic criteria, i.e., the skill of the playwright
regardless of subject or profundity, should be at issue when
considering a play for production. In other words, the Israeli
theatre of the early 1990s, conformed to Susan Bennett’s
description of western bourgeois theatre as an institution whose
repertoire is aimed at "middle-aged and middle-class"
audiences ("Theater Audiences," New York, 1992).
The truth of this statement
is reflected not only in the repertoire, but also in the nature of
Israeli theatre audiences, marketing strategies and the playwrights.
The majority of theatre-goers are subscribers, or people who have
obtained tickets through their staff organizations who offer
"culture" to their members. The "young"
playwrights of the 1970s are still in their prime and as yet no
significant younger generation has replaced them. One result is that
young audiences flock to stand-up comedy shows, a genre that has
begun to flourish in Israel and has been legitimized both in the
press and on television.
On the face of it, the
picture is bleak. Israeli theatre seems to have lost its uniqueness,
and its manifest ageing and fossilization resembles that of western
theatre as a whole. However, over the last two years and the
influence of left-of-centre forces, there has been a cautious swing
back to a national-social agenda. The Cameri recently mounted a
hugely successful series of Hebrew dramas. Oded Kotler, who in 1990
proclaimed the death of the documentary, directed a play, now in its
third season, based on a real-life rape case that sent shock waves
through Israeli society. Six out of the ten shows on the list of most
successful plays, published in 1996 by the Public Council for Art and
Culture, were local works dealing with socio-political issues. A good
example is "Retzach" which speaks to the heart of young
people because of the political stances taken and its style. Another
case in point: Hillel Mittelpunkt’s "Gorodish,"
demonstrates both the continuity and the change evident in Israeli
plays of the mid-1990s. On the one hand, it deals with a
socio-political subject; on the other, it is well-written and
excellently directed and acted, and is performed on a large stage
abounding with technical effects. Taking the cult of the hero as its
theme, "Gorodish" traces the downfall of a Six-Day
War hero to humiliation and disgrace in the Yom
Kippur War. However, while attacking the myth of the macho hero,
it also harks back to Israel’s heroic period. Thus it satisfies
both the older members of the audience who come to the theatre to
look back with nostalgia at the days of heroism and splendour, and
the younger audience who see in it a reflection of their service in
the army. In other words, "Gorodish" is a sophisticated
example of the combination that has worked so well throughout the
history of Israeli theatre. Other recent productions are no
exception. They take on accepted targets such as religious fanaticism
("Fleischer" and "Sheindele") or petty corruption
("The Inspector-General";) they are easily understood and
they give the audience the feeling that it is seeing itself reflected
on stage. The Israeli theatre, thus seems to have returned to the
bosom of consensus and to the heart of the social establishment. Once
again it seems that the formula for success is to mix relevance with
accessibility – to which now is also added professionalism. As it
worked in the past, so it will probably work in the first decade of
the next century. But to keep it from expiring with the middle-aged
generation to which it caters, it is also crucial to open up channels
of communication with the younger generation.
We began this survey with
"Mister Wolff," representing the "professional"
approach. This play was mounted not because of its quality but
because its language and style, appealed to and addressed the younger
generation, and the popularity of the show would, indeed, seem to
indicate that the Cameri had found the right way to revitalize its
audience. But, in this writer’s opinion, the price is too high. By
compromising the artistic quality of its productions, a theatre
forfeits the ethical justification of its existence as a formative
public-social institution. Moreover, the younger generation does
attend quality plays which appeal to them, either on the grounds of
their relevance or because of their innovative modes of expression.
Again, the best example is "Retzach," which speaks to the
heart of young people because of the political stances taken and its
style.
At the same time, there have
been successful avant garde productions of Shakespeare mounted by the
Itim Company, directed by Rina Yerushalmi. "Hamlet" and
"Romeo and Juliet" are not easy to comprehend, but the
style is contemporary and the codes that the audience is asked to use
in deciphering them are taken from the storehouse of images of the
world today – the world at the eve of a new century.
While it is impossible to
prophesy, it is my belief that Israeli theatre at its best will
continue to thrive. I believe that even in the 21st century, Israelis
will want a living theatre, one alert to society and responsive to
its problems. They will want a theatre that constantly renews itself
technically while maintaining a high artistic and professional level,
and most of all, one that is always on a quest for the right, but not
necessarily the easy, way.
Sources: Israeli
Foreign Ministry |