Hanoch Levin: Selected Plays One, Paperback

'Hanoch Levin is the modern world on the stage - his version of the modern world with all its hideous but hilarious but contemptible but unavoidable contradictions and ironies and tragedies and pleasures, his world but also ours, even if we rarely chose to acknowledge it. He is the joy of Israel but also its agony, likewise of Palestine, likewise the weakness of the oppressor and the strength of the oppressed, the east but also the west, today but also yesterday but also antiquity. He is a quarrel in a bedroom but also the violent political thrashings about of a nation in turmoil. He is the citizen and the refugee, the lost and the found, the owner occupier and the homeless. The size of his voice is XL, even XXL. His plays offer a huge challenge to our theatres - actors, directors, producers, funders, audience - and therefore we/they need to emulate his courage and put them on the stage. We badly need to hear what he has to say.' David Lan Hanoch Levin was one of Israel's leading dramatists. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1943 and studied philosophy and literature at Tel Aviv University. At first he wrote poetry, but later concentrated on the theatre. He became resident playwright of the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv and also worked with Habimah, Israel's national theater. His work includes comedies, tragedies, and satiric cabarets, most of which he directed himself. In addition, he published five books of short stories and poems, and a book for children. He received numerous theatre awards both in Israel and abroad--most notably at the Edinburgh Festival--and his plays have been staged around the world. Levin was awarded the Bialik Prize in 1994. Levin died of cancer on August 18, 1999. He continued to work even in the hospital, nearly to his last day, but didn't have time to finish the staging of his play The Crybabies. During his lifetime he composed 63 plays and directed 22 of them. Plays One contains the plays Krum (1975), A Winter Funeral (1978), The Torments of Job (1981), Suitcase Packers (1983) and The Labour of Life (1989).

Hanoch Levin was born in Tel Aviv on December 18, 1943 and died of cancer on August 18, 1999. Wrote plays, sketches, songs, stories and poetry, and also directed most of his own plays. During his work as a playwright and stage director, he developed a unique dramatic and theatrical language, created by combining poetic written text and images designed with the actors and set designers, costume and lighting, composer and choreographer. His plays are characterized by his ability to combine the work of different artists and have always been a celebration of words and visual images, based on a great love for the theater and all who take part in the performance. Levin left a spiritual - artistic legacy, which includes 56 plays (except for his political satires, only 33 of his plays were performed in his lifetime), two books of prose, two collections of sketches and songs, a book of poems and two books for children. In 1999, the last year of his life, he took care to publish all his works.