University of Chicago Press Wanderers – And Other Israeli Plays (In Performance)

This is an anthology of seven contemporary Israeli plays, written by established and emerging Israeli playwrights and theatre creators. The collection offers a look into the variety of Israeli drama, theatre, and performance, reflecting central questions of identity in Israeli society. The anthology will include a substantive introduction discussing the theatrical contexts of the plays and some of the major issues that Israeli society deals with nowadays, an overview of the dramatic and theatrical work of the playwrights and an analysis of the plays.Joshua Sobol's "Wanderers" is a reconstruction of the life story of an Israeli double agent who goes through an identity crisis; Hanoch Levin's "Walking in the Dark" is an existentialist play about the Walking Man who takes a late-night walk in the city, unable to decide whether to visit his sick mother or not (the city and the night turn into the endless space of the mind; and, Yossefa Even-Shoshan's "The Maiden of Ludmir" examines the place of women within orthodox texts and social structures.Taher Najib's "In Spitting Distance" tells the story of an actor who lives in the West Bank but holds an Israeli passport and tries to fly from Paris to Tel Aviv one year after 9/11; Tamir Greenberg's "Hebron" depicts the mythic scale of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Ruth Kanner's "Disgust" is a documentary performance and search into the personal and social concept of 'disgust' and is based on interviews with passersby; and Tamar Raban and Guy Gutman's "Old Wives' Tales" is a performance piece that takes place in a real yet fictional patisserie. Hanoch Levin (d.1999) is one of Israel's most worldly renown and influential playwrights, Joshua Sobol is one of Israel's world-acclaimed and senior playwrights, Tamir Greenberg is a well-known poet, Yossefa Even-Shoshan is an innovative feminist playwright, Taher Najib is an actor and a playwright, Ruth Kanner is one of Israel's leading experimental stage directors, Tamar Raban is leading performance artist and theatre creator, and Guy Gutman is a director and sound and stage designer.