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the worlds of myth, the grotesque, and fantasy. They were characterized by brilliant dialogue,
extensive vocabulary, and allusions to different cultures and exotic locations. Aloni directed
many of his own plays, the most prominent of which were
The American Princes
(Season The-
ater, 1963),
The Bride and the Butterfl y Hunter
(HaBima, 1967), and
Aunt Lisa
(Bimot, 1969).
The main revolutionary of Israeli theater was Hanoch Levin, who rose to prominence fol-
lowing the Six-Day War. In 1969, when the feelings of excitement surrounding the military
triumph were still reverberating, Levin tried to undermine the general sense of euphoria. He
and a group of students produced a satirical evening at the Bar-Barim club in which they at-
tacked the political and military establishment and mocked the pathos and sentimentalism
that characterized the literature and most of the journalism of the time.
One of Levin's famous plays,
You and Me and the Next War
, is an antiwar satire in the
traditional style of political cabaret. Levin presents this war, and all the wars of Israel, from a
pacifi st and an antimilitaristic point of view. Levin disconnected the theme of war from the
historical Israeli context. This satire evoked a very emotional public debate, which followed
Levin's works for many years.
You and Me and the Next War
and
The Queen of the Bathtub
portended the satiric, antiheroic attitude of the 1970s and the 1980s.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Israeli theater also gradually moved away from the original
tradition of the HaBima and Cameri theaters, both in Tel Aviv, with many small theaters
considered avant-garde and daring starting to develop. Gradually, the small theaters' innova-
tions were refl ected in the big theaters. Besides small theaters established in the 1950s, such as
Do Re Mi, Zutta, and Zavit (Angle), new theaters became very active. Among them were the
Onot (Seasons) Theater, with Nissim Aloni as a central player; Bimat HaSahkanim (Actors'
Stage), with Oded Kotler and a group of actors; and Bimot (Stages), with Ya'akov Agmon.
In addition, Israeli poets and playwrights began to translate the classic plays of Shakespeare,
Molière, and Chekhov into Hebrew, which created a new reservoir of drama, both classic and
modern.
Realist Theater
The drama of the 1960s, especially before 1967, was escapist. The drama of the 1970s, on the
other hand, crashed into harsh reality following the Yom Kippur War and tended to be natu-
ralistic and satirical. A bitter doubt about the national purpose was emerging in intellectual
and artistic circles, and the theater was a leading forum in which to express this doubt. Criti-
cizing the life of the individual in favor of the collective — communal life was an absolute value
in the early years, as expressed in such plays as
He Walked Through the Fields
—was beginning
to become outdated, and criticism of the collective was losing its social taboo.
The Haifa Theater, under the management of Oded Kotler and Nola Chelton, contrib-
uted to this shift during the mid-1970s. This theater became a platform for the expression of
what was known as “the second Israel.” Productions featured Middle Eastern and North Af-
rican Jews, Arabs, and other such characters for the fi rst time. Chelton also recruited Tel Aviv
University theater students to embark on special projects — for example, living in deprived
communities and producing docudramas. Chelton's work at the Haifa Theater produced a
