Lilian Barreto on the publication of the British Anthology of Levin’s Plays

On March 1st, at the start of the Corona outbreak, right before everything closed down, I travelled to London to launch the project initiated by the Hanoch Levin estate− the publication of a selection of Hanoch’s plays in new English translations.

It all began when my friend, the Palestinian theatre director Amir Nizar Zuabi, introduced me to the British playwright and producer David Lan. Lan (who served as the  renown artistic director of the Young Vic theatre in London, and is the recipient of the Olivier Award for lifetime achievement of 2018), saw a production of Schitz in Belgium. After the show, he wanted to read another play by Hanoch, and we didn’t have a good English translation to send him.

For years we deliberated over the translation of the plays into English. Hanoch is difficult to translate, and especially into the English language. We had long hoped that one day Hanoch’s work would come out in Britain, but we knew that it would be a complex project. We knew it would require finding suitable and excellent translators, securing funding, getting a good agent who would not allow the project to lie in a drawer, finding a British publisher that would take on the project despite not being well-acquainted with the works, and also, building Hanoch’s reputation as an internationally recognized playwright and as one of the great dramatists of the world theatre.

Despite all of these difficulties, we felt that the time had come to move with this complicated project forward, and we were determined to see it through.

We began in 2016 with four plays and finished in 2020 with a full anthology of 15 plays in three volumes. The anthology came out with the British publisher Oberon Books. The plays were translated by Jessica Cohen (a recipient of the Man Booker prize), Professor Evan Fallenberg, and Naaman Tammuz. Lee Nesher and Frank Leland translated the play, Requiem.

On March 3rd, as part of the National Theatre of London’s “Platform”, on the set of the play Death of England, we launched the anthology. The event was held in the Dorfman auditorium and was attended by the director of the National Theatre.

Five British actors performed monologues and scenes from Hanoch’s plays, all in heart-fluttering English and Welsh accents. David Lan led a fascinating panel discussion with directors Vitak Tracz, Ari Folman, and Amir Nizar Zuabi, and the evening ended in an atmosphere of great excitement with a toast in a pub near the theatre. 

The task of making the Hanoch Levin estate into one of the most important in the world of theatre has involved years of work. If I had to say what has made it special, I’d say it’s the people that have accompanied him, and us, on this journey. Those that loved Hanoch, and those that fell in love with his work over the years, their unceasing support for Hanoch and his art, as well as for us as his family. All of these are what enabled us to cultivate the estate over the years and to turn it into what it is today.

Photo: Nir Segal