Anthology of Israeli Drama for the New Millennium

“Few barometers of the climate of a society are more sensitive than the theater. The stage reflects the prevailing issues and attitudes that define a society’s life at a given era, the values that shape and characterize it, and the joys, aspirations and problems of its people. It represents the variety of its population and the reasons people are drawn to live there, or to leave. The stage gives life to their dreams and sings their songs and tells their stories. It speaks their language … It is just here that we monolingual English-speakers who would become acquainted with Israeli drama, and through it, modern Israel, are stymied. Without a command of Hebrew, we are lost even before we get to an auditorium in Acco or Tel Aviv. This is the breach into which Michael Taub has energetically stepped. He has already opened doors for us with his two fine collections of translations, Modern Israeli Drama (1993) and Israeli Holocaust Drama (1996). Now we have his splendid new selection of plays written in the 1990s. These works address burning issues of a fiery fin-de-siecle. They revivify events that foreign media coverage cannot or does not report. They reveal attitudes and conflicts, satisfactions and achievements that escape the radar screens of international attention. Most satisfyingly, the plays in Israeli Drama For the New Millennium join Taub’s earlier volumes in enabling us to appreciate the parallels and startling contrasts between the Israeli stage and our own. We owe Michael Taub a debt of gratitude for providing us new understandings and hours of reading pleasure.” – Professor (ret.) Ellen Schiff, author of From Stereotype to Metaphor – The Jew in Contemporary Drama and editor of Awake and Singing – 7 Classic Plays from the American Jewish Repertoire, and Fruitful and Multiplying – 9 Contemporary Plays from the American Jewish Repertoire

“This will be an extremely useful volume. Like those in his earlier volumes, this selection covers a wide range of topics and styles, giving a very good idea of the varied nature of today's drama in Israel. This book is particularly valuable because not many Israeli plays are translated into English, and Anglophone readers have been denied an insight into what is happening on the Israeli stage.” – Glenda Abramson, University of Oxford

“Michael Taub again shows his uncommon flair for language and editorial style in his latest selection of plays publishes in the 1990s. With the publication of Israeli Drama for the New Millennium, Taub will make accessible to American reader the dramatic representations of events, which have animated the Israeli scene in the last decades of the past millennium … The six plays featured in this collection, … create a superlative panoramic view of Israel and the pressing issues with, which the Israeli citizens need to contend with every day. Michael Taub shows here fine editorial and translating skills. Taub [also] shows a sturdy and skilled hand on the pulse of the Israeli dramatic arts … Beyond providing us with excellent new reading, Michael Taub opens new vistas for the study of the Israeli drama at the graduate and undergraduate level. His subtle editing makes reading these plays in translation a true pleasure. Most importantly, in the true spirit of Walter Benjamin, Taub engages us and makes us forget that we read mere translations. As a result, he provides the performing arts in the United States with new, interesting plays, which can be successfully staged here.” – Dr. Gila Safran Naveh, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati

"Recommended. Collections supporting Middle Eastern literature and studies; all levels." - CHOICE

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Hanoch Levin: Everybody Wants to Live, 1985
Motti Lerner: Exile in Jerusalem, 1990
Ilan Hatzor: Masked Faces, 1991
Yigal Even-Or: Fleischer, 1993
Joshua Sobol: Village, 1997
Edna Mazya: The Rebels, 1998
Appendix

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