Levin, Hanoch 1943-1999

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LEVIN, Hanoch 1943-1999

PERSONAL: Born 1943, in Tel Aviv, Israel; died August 18, 1999. Education: Studied philosophy and literature at Tel Aviv University.

CAREER: Dramatist.

AWARDS, HONORS: Israel theater prize, 1997, for Murder; Best Play of the Year designation (Israel), 1999, for Requiem.

WRITINGS:

IN HEBREW

Ya'akobi and Leidental, University Publishing Projects (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1974.

Vardale's Youth, University Publishing Projects (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1974.

Solomon Grip, Popper, University Publishing Projects (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1977.

Uncle Max's Journey, University Publishing Projects (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1982.

Everybody Wants to Live, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1985.

The Eternal Invalid and the Beloved, Hikibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1986.

What Does the Bird Care?, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1987.

Hefez and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1988.

The Rubber Merchants and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1988.

Job's Passion and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1988.

The Labor of Life and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1991.

A Man Stand behind a Seated Woman, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1992.

The Gigolo from Congo and Other Stories, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1994.

The Whore from Ohio and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1995.

Rape Trial and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1997.

The Happy, Cheerful Cock, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1999.

Those Who Walk in the Darkness and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1999.

The Perpetual Mourner and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1999.

To Hold on and Never Let Go and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1999.

Funeral and Other Plays, Hakibbutz Hameuchad (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1999.

PRODUCED PLAYS

You, Me, and the Next War, 1968.

The Queen of the Bathtub, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1970.

Heffetz, produced in Haifa, Israel, 1972.

Yaakobi and Leidental, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1972.

Varda 'le's Youth, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1974.

Krum, produced in Haifa, Israel, 1975.

The Rubber Merchants, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1978.

Winter Funeral, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1978.

The Execution, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1979.

Job's Passion, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1981.

Solomon Grip, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1981.

Yakish and Poupche, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1982.

The Great Whore from Babylon, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1982.

The Suitcases' Packers, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1983.

The Lost Women of Troy, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1983.

Everybody Wants to Live, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1985.

Yakish and Puptche, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1986.

Beaten and Defeated, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1988.

The Labor of Life, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1988.

Schitz, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1989.

The Gigolo from Congo, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1989.

The Hesitator, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1990.

Hops and Hopla, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1991.

The Dreaming Child, produced by in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1993.

The Wonderful Woman inside Us, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1994.

Mouth Open, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1995.

Beheading, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1996.

Those Who Walk in the Darkness, produced in Haifa, Israel, 1998.

Murder, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1998.

Funeral, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1999.

Requiem, produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, 1999.

Also author of play The Whore from Ohio. Levin's work has also been translated into French, German, and Arabic.

SIDELIGHTS: Considered one of Israel's leading dramatists, Hanoch Levin wrote more than fifty plays in his lifetime, thirty-four of were performed on stage. Levin was the recipient of numerous theatrical awards both in Israel and abroad. His work is known for its characteristically sharp wit, though his themes are consistently depressing and dreary.

Levin's earliest works, especially You and Me and the Next War, are considered by many modern Israelis as prophetic. His career began in the late 1960s, when he wrote a series of satirical revues and cabarets in which he attacked the atrocities of the 1967 war, postwar euphoria emergent throughout Israel, and the dangers of military occupation. Although he was instantly recognized as an emerging talent, Levin's use of satire created intense resentment from the audience, and censorship forced him out of mainstream theater.

The 1970s saw Levin's work turn away from the overtly political to more subtle, provocative alternatives. And while his characters remained suggestive of stereotypic perceptions, the offensive aspects of such stereotypes were modified. Plays from this era include Heffetz and The Rubber Merchants. In Modern Drama essayist Erella Brown wrote, "Almost every conceivable bodily secretion and every imaginable form of torture are gradually brought into the scene, usually in the least expected circumstances so as to create the most disagreeable response. Levin has a keen eye for small details and an unusual ability to enlarge little disgusting details to the colossal measures of the sublime." Brown noted that by the end of the 1970s, Levin not only returned to his earlier repulsiveness, but surpassed it. For example, in his 1981 play Job's Torments, his main character is "speared via his anus and experiences a via dolorosa of tortures leading to his death, while the stage becomes increasingly soiled with vomit, blood, and other repulsive waste material." Levin repeatedly used such shock techniques to move his audience.

In an attempt to get his audience to see things his way, Levin sometimes refused to name his characters. Rather, as in Execution, he called them what they were: Cold Sweat, Fear Shuttering, and Sweet-Bitteris-Death. Levin wanted his drama to portray cruelty and violence in the light in which it happened; sometimes that meant foregoing names that might somehow cloak their vulgarity.

One of Levin's most highly acclaimed plays, and one of his last, is Murder. This drama, set in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, explores man's capacity for murder. In the first act three soldiers brutally torture and kill a young boy. It is clear that they are both repulsed and excited by their actions. In Act Two the grief-stricken father takes his revenge on a young newlywed couple because he mistakenly believes the groom to be one of his son's executors. Act Three presents the audience with a harmless voyeur who falls victim to a senseless murder. In a review for Back Stage West, Kristina Mannion wrote, "In this final act … we face Levin's ultimate metaphor: In becoming desensitized to violence and the concept that murder can be a solution, man has made himself a dispensable commodity." Director Omri Nitzan told Ilene Prusher of the Christian Science Monitor, "The playwright's intention was to take aside all the piles of words, explanations, justifications, theological quotations, and political speeches from both sides and to look at the bare phenomenon and to call it by the unmerciful name, murder. Not war of freedom, or justice, or self-defense, or jihad."

Levin's final work, Requiem, was produced at Tel Aviv's Cameri Theatre, as were the majority of the rest of his plays. Requiem is based on three stories by Anton Chekhov. As always, Levin explores the topic of death in both its physical and spiritual form, and here he gives it a comedic treatment. Written during Levin's own battle with cancer, Requiem is the only play in which his characters accept and even embrace death, rather than run from it.

Levin died of cancer on August 18, 1999. He was fifty-six years old.