The Israeli playwright and director Hanoch Levin (December 18, 1943 Tel Aviv – August 18, 1999) was one of the most original and most innovative writers of his generation.
He wrote plays, sketches, songs, stories and poetry, and directed most of his own plays.
His plays are characterized by his ability to combine the work of different artists and they have always been a celebration of words and visual images, based on a great love for the theater and all who take part in the performance.
Levin’s artistic credo was based on a constant urge to criticize Israeli society and its mainstream ideology while simultaneously confronting the basic human and existential issues of life and death.
A whole generation of Israeli theatre audiences and artists has grown up on Levin’s performances with all their paradoxical complexities.
Levin left a spiritual – artistic legacy, which includes 56 plays, two books of prose, two collections of sketches and songs, a book of poems and two books for children.

The Child Dreams

Written in 1986 and premiered at Habima – Israel National Theatre in 1993, “The Child Dreams” is considered to be one of the most poetic texts that were performed on the Israeli stage.
The first drafts of the play were titled “The MS St. Louis – Death Chants” and as the name suggest, Levin initially wrote an historic text based on the true events of the St. Louis: a vessel that sets sail from Hamburg to Cuba, on May 13, 1939 – with 937 German-Jewish refugees, following the violence of Kristallnacht. The refugees were denied entry to Havana. They then attempted to find refuge in other ports but were denied entry to the United States and Canada. Sailing back to Europe, the refugees were accepted in several countries, yet ultimately, many perished in the Nazi concentration camps of WWII.
The finished play drifted away from an attempt to write an historic piece and became much more poetic, open and dreamy text.
The play unfolds the journey of a mother and her child to find asylum; after an army killed the Father and send them for exile, leaving their home behind. To the big ocean of the unknown they go, bagging for a safe shelter at a poor isolated island – willing to give up everything but life itself. Waiting for redemption in whatever form or shape it might appear in.

On Dreams and Childhood
“The magic of sleep: a person is sleeping, it’s a child,
and a sleeping child is the essence of childhood.”

In the current global reality, it is easy to be caught up by the political imagery and moral code that this text opens up. The human flow of the refugee crisis around the world has offered graphic images and moral dilemmas for continents, states and individuals – how should one react to this reality? What is the true motive for reaching out and what is the price for doing so?
All of those questions have driven us to choose this play, at this time for this city.
The deeper you dive into Levin’s words the further you distant yourself from those questions. It is almost easy to forget that this play is about a dream. And about a child who dreams this dream.
Who is this child? And why is he dreaming this dream?
The concrete imagery of Levin text, the cruel reality that has been explored in this journey gets an infinite face through the lenses of a dream.
The self and the outside reality blend together – dream and awakeness merge.
“I have had a dream – past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream” (Midsummer Night’s Dream: W. Shakespeare)

Itai Doron