Ways of Unseeing: Glass Wall on the Main Stage

WAYS OF UNSEEING: GLASS WALL ON THE MAIN STAGE TAL ITZHAKI In the 1970s and 1980s, the familiar uniforms of Israeli soldier characters profusely crowded the Israeli stage, both in contemporary Israeli plays (such as Platoon 3 Unit 1; Attrition; Sanjer; Fog; and many others), and in modern interpretations of classical drama, from Trojan Women to The Comedy of Errors or The Merchant of Venice. To these one should add, of course, topical satires such as Hanoch Levin’s The Patriot. The theatres' props and costume departments routinely stocked a host of uniforms and military weapons. Some Israeli actors used to claim they were spending more time in uniform on stage than during their active military service. Murder by Hanoch Levin (1998) must have been the last play to have been presented on the main stage (that of the Cameri theatre) in which one could watch a theatrical representation of Israeli soldiers killing a Palestinian, and Palestinians killing Israelis. Except for nudity or explicit sexuality, the theatrical treatment of the Israeli army's dignity and morality proved a favorite target of censorship. The banning of Itzhak Laor's Ephraim Returns to the Army (1984), and the subsequent celebrated court case, led to the official abolishment of censorship of stage plays in Israel (1991). The play concerned itself with IDF soldiers in the occupied territories: now it is probably the only play every first year law student can quote, but no theatre student has ever read. Throughout the intifada (the Palestinian uprising) and since, even though official censorship was abolished, the local war and the occupation progressively disappeared from the main stages of the Israeli theatre. Themes of war were still there, but not their visual image: the familiar images of the local, recognizable war have almost totally disappeared from the dramatic visual culture. At the same time, one could hardly see, for a long period of time, any Arabs on the 98 Tal Itzhaki Israeli stages, either as dramatic characters or as actors performing them. With a few exceptions, this is an ongoing predicament on the main stage of the established Israeli theatre. This brief account is an attempt to understand the position of the mainstream theatre at this time and place as a manifestation of a cultural choice: of things we (namely, the wide audience of the Hebrew theatre) want to see, and others we do not care to look at. This situation has developed a complex system of self-censorship imposed by degrees and hierarchies. We have no officially forbidden themes or privileged information prevented by law from frequenting the public stage, yet certain issues or images have gradually become marginal, unimportant, insignificant, and finally invisible. There does not exist any longer an official censorship on stage plays in Israel. We experience a golden age of documentary Israeli and Palestinian films (commonly accounted for by film makers as “a heaven for documentaries, since we live in hell”). And yet we manage not to see the concrete images of war, the suffering, the pain. We know they are there, somewhere, but we don't care to watch it on stage. The wall we keep building up to these very days between ourselves and the Palestinians forms the ultimate image, following years of unseeing. Photographers, artists, designers, have all reacted en masse to this monstrous monument of alienation. My personal feeling has been for some time now that the wall should be the only proper set for any play we present – particularly as political performances are concerned – until the real one is demolished. And still, I can state with confidence that most Israelis have never seen, nor are able to draw, the outlines of the wall on the Israeli map. Speaking of the country map, a central icon and constituent of our national identity, let one enquire how many Israelis have seen, over the last decades, the pre-‘67 borders map? The pre-‘48 map, or our country map in Arabic, is something most of us have never seen, at least those of us who were born after 1948, the year the State of Israel was established. In his excellent, low-keyed and moving documentary film about the lost houses of Israeli Palestinians, The Key, actor-director Salim Daw stops his car for a moment beside the road, to consult the map. The camera wanders in to a close up on the map. This, I think, was the first and last time I have ever saw “our” road map in Arabic. I still wonder where he got it. .

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