Between Jerusalem and Athens

by Nurit Yaari

• ISBN13: 9780191063602
• ISBN10: 0191063606
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2018-11-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press Academic UK

Summary

How does a theatrical tradition emerge in the fields of dramatic writing and artistic performance? How can a culture in which theatre played no part in the past create a theatrical tradition in the modern world? How do political and social conditions affect the encounter between cultures, and what role do they play in creating a theatre with a distinctive identity? This volume attempts to answer these and other questions in the first in-depth study of the reception of ancient Greek drama in Israeli theatre over the last 70 years. Exploring how engagement with classical culture has shaped the evolution of Israel's theatrical identity, it draws on both dramatic and aesthetic issues - from mise en scene to 'post dramatic' performance - and offers ground-breaking analysis of a wide range of translations and adaptations of Greek drama, as well as new writing inspired by Greek antiquity. The detailed discussion of how the performances of these works were created and staged at key points in the development of Israeli culture not only sheds new light on the reception of ancient Greek drama in an important theatrical and cultural context, but also offers a new and illuminating perspective on artistic responses to the fateful political, social, and cultural events in Israel's recent history.

Author Biography

Nurit Yaari, Professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts, The David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University

Nurit Yaari is Professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts within the David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University. She previously held a Visiting Professorship at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) in Paris. She has published widely in Hebrew, English, and French on contemporary French theatre, Israeli theatre, and on the reception of Greek tragedy in Israeli theatre and modern dance, including the monograph Le theatre de Hanokh Levin: Ensemble a l'ombre des canons (Editions Theatrales, 2008), and the edited collection Inter-Art Journey: Exploring the Common Grounds of the Arts. Studies in Honor of Eli Rozik (Sussex Academic, 2015). Professor Yaari is also currently serving as an artistic consultant for the Khan Theatre of Jerusalem.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
List of Illustrations
1. Introduction
Between Athens and Jerusalem
Weaving together histories and traditions
Israeli theatre and its audiences
A survey of scholarship
Scope of the study
Book structure
2. Habima: Outsidedness as a catalyst of creativity
First encounters with the Greek Classical repertoire
In lieu of summary: The Nissim Aloni effect
3. The Cameri: In search of local theatrical identity
A Modern Hebrew theatre in Tel Aviv
Summary
4. Experimentations: Putting the aesthetics of performance into practice
Aryeh Sachs: Experimenting with ritual theatre
Yossi Yizraely: Experimentations with stage imagery
Edna Shavit: Experiments with Classicism
Summary
5. Aristophanes and the Occupied Territories
Text and socio-political context
Hanoch Levin: Contention, defiance, and protest
Summary
6. The Trojan War and Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Theatrical responses to the Six Day War (1967)
Theatrical responses to the Lebanon War (1981)
Summary
7. Lysistrata: Between entertainment and protest
Lysistrata on the Israeli stages
Summary
8. Nissim Aloni: Oedipus Tyrannus in an immigrant society
The myth of King Oedipus: Migrant and autochthon
Summary
9. Hanoch Levin: From ancient myths to modern tragedy
Israel in the aftermath of the Six Day War (1967)
Levin's dialogue with Euripides
Levin's dialogue with Aeschylus: The Moaners (1999)
Summary
10. Classical presences and 'post dramatic' performances
Ruth Kanner: Processing communal grief
Troy revisited in the third millennium
Ilan Ronen: Theatre as a memory machine
Rina Yerushalmi: Lessons of the past
Hanan Snir: From politics to psychodrama
Summary
11. The Classical tradition in university theatre
First encounters: Sophocles' Antigone (1969)
From theory to practice: Yizraely reads Aristotle
Research and practice: Greek tragedy
In lieu of summary: The General and the Sea (2015)
12. Israeli theatre: A snapshot of today and future prospects
Appendix: Performances of Greek and Roman drama in Israel
Endmatter
Bibliography
Index