Yehoshua Sobol

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Yehoshua Sobol (1996)

Yehoshua Sobol ( Hebrew יהושע סובול, also Joshua Sobol , born August 24, 1939 in Tel Mond , League of Nations mandate for Palestine ) is an Israeli playwright and writer .

Life

Yehoshua Sobol is the son of Eastern European immigrants . He was initially active in the Jewish socialist youth movement HaSchomer HaTzair and lived in a kibbutz from 1957 to 1965 . He studied literature and history at Oranim College in Israel, then from 1965 to 1969 philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and conceptual analysis at the École nationale d'informatique . Sobol first appeared as a playwright in 1971 with The Days to Come at the theater in Haifa , a play about old age. Sobol was also Artistic Director at the Haifa Municipal Theater from 1984 to 1988. In 1988, after the premiere of his play “The Jerusalem Syndrome”, violent arguments and protests broke out across Israel , whereupon Sobol resigned as artistic director of the theater and from then on devoted himself only to writing. For a while he lived in London and Paris. Sobol's first novel “Schweigen” was published in 2001, his second novel “Whisky's Fine” was published in 2005. Yehoshua Sobol is married to the set and costume designer Edna Sobol, with whom he has two children. His son Yali Sobol is a rock singer.

International career

Sobol's international career as a playwright began in 1983 with “The Soul of a Jew” (“ Weininger's Night ”), a play about the Jewish philosopher , suicide and misogynist Otto Weininger . The world premiere at the theater in Haifa in October 1982 was invited to the opening of the Edinburgh Festival in 1983 and was awarded the Critics' Prize there. Peter Zadek brought the play to the Hamburger Schauspielhaus in 1986 , a Viennese version came out in 1988 under the direction of Paulus Manker at the Vienna Volkstheater and was also made into a film.

Sobol's piece “Ghetto”, which Peter Zadek staged at the Volksbühne in Berlin, was a global success in 1984 . The play deals with the fate of the Jews in the Vilnius ghetto during the German occupation in World War II, but is by showing the confrontation between the “left” intellectual Herman Kruk, who belongs to the socialist “ Bund ”, and the “right” chairman of the Judenrat in the Vilna Ghetto Jacob Gens , who was close to the group around Vladimir Jabotinsky , describes, indirectly interpretable as a parable of the then current Israeli policy. The play was voted the best play and best performance of the year by Theater heute . The German performance, staged as a musical by Zadek , helped the singer Esther Ofarim to make a comeback and made the actor Ulrich Tukur (as SS officer Kittel) a star. The Israeli clarinetist Giora Feidman first became known to a larger audience in Germany through his participation in the Zadek production. “Ghetto” has been translated into more than 20 languages, performed in over 25 countries and has received numerous awards. With the pieces “Adam” (1989) and “Underground” (1991) it forms the ghetto trilogy . “Ghetto” was filmed in 2006: Ghetto .

In 1996, Sobol and Paulus Manker created the polydrama “Alma - A Show Biz to the End” , an interactive theatrical journey through the life of the artist museum Alma Mahler-Werfel , in which the audience wandered through the scenes of their lives up close. The performance became a cult piece and toured Vienna, Venice, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Semmering, Berlin, Jerusalem and Prague in over 500 performances in 23 years, and was also made into a film in 1998.

With “iWitness” in 2003, Sobol addressed the history of conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter in the Third Reich and drew parallels with young soldiers in the Israeli army who refuse to serve in the occupied territories - an extremely virulent topic in Israel. The world premiere at the Cameri Theater Tel Aviv (director: Paulus Manker ) made the actor Itay Tiran a star.

Works

Plays

Novels and short stories

  • 1964 The deeds of the fathers (Les actions des Pères)
  • 1965 After the war (Après la Guerre)
  • 2001 Silence
  • 2005 Whiskey is fine too (Whiskey's Fine)

Scripts

  • T'en fais pas! (TV)
  • Christmas 1972 (TV adaptation)
  • La veille des vingt (TV adaptation)
  • The Last Worker (TV adaptation)
  • Freud's last Dream (Movie)
  • Zemlinsky (movie)
  • Ghetto (movie)

Theater forms

Sobol realized a number of theater projects whose special spatial solutions open up new forms of theatrical experience:

The polydrama

Yehoshua Sobol on the polydrama:

A polydrama is a drama that consists of several interwoven storylines that take place and are played in parallel in different locations.
A polydrama is a theatrical journey because it leaves the beaten path of conflict and situation based drama and uses the possibilities of a travel drama in which the protagonist is not trapped or involved in a single plot or conflict , but rather traveling on a road that is open on all sides, falling in love and falling in love with people, who appear and disappear again and for a few moments cross the travelers' route.
The observer of a polydrama is invited to leave the motionless posture of the observer of a conventional drama and replace it with the activity and mobility of the traveler. Therefore, the viewer becomes a companion to the characters traveling through this journey - drama, who chooses the events, the path and the person he follows after each event, and thereby builds, destroys and recreates his own version of the polydrama .

bibliography

Hebrew (selection)

  • 2005 Whiskey's Fine, novel, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 2002 The Masked Ball, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 2000 Silence, novel, published by The New Library, Tel Aviv
  • 1999 Alma, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1996 Village, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1991 Solo, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1990 Underground, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1990 Night of the 20th, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1989 Adam, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1987 The Jerusalem Syndrome, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1985 The Palestinian Girl, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1984 Ghetto, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1982 Soul of a Jew, a play, published by Or, Am, Tel Aviv
  • 1976 Night of the Twentieth, a play, - published by Proza, Tel Aviv

Translations

The Night of the Twentieth

  • English and French: The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, Tel Aviv 1978
  • Spanish: Dept. de Educacion - Organizacion Sionista Mundial, Jerusalem 1977

Weininger's Night (Soul of a Jew)

  • German: Translated by Ingrid Rencher, edited by Paulus Manker, with essays by Joachim Riedl and Nike Wagner and texts by J. Amery, S. Freud, A. Gerber, A. Hitler, E. Lucka, K. Lueger, J. Moser, J. Le Rider, H. Rodlauer, F. Salten, A. Schopenhauer, A. Strindberg and S. Zweig. In the appendix: Unpublished texts by Otto Weininger, illustrations by Alfred Kubin, Europa Verlag, Vienna 1988
  • English: International Theater Institute, Tel Aviv 1983
  • Spanish: Rio Piedras, Barcelona 1984
  • French: Cahiers Bernard Lazare, Paris 1991
  • Hungarian: Nagyvilag, Budapest 1988

ghetto

  • German: Translated by Jürgen Landeck, at the facility of Peter Zadek and Gottfried Greiffenhagen , Quadriga, Berlin 1984
  • English: Tel Aviv, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, 1986
  • English: Nick Hern Books, London 1989
  • French: La Manufacture, Lyons 1986
  • Italian: plural, Naples 1988
  • Norwegian: Det Norske Teatret, Oslo 1985
  • Turkish: Can Yayinlari, Istanbul 1994

The Palestinian Girl

  • German: Litag Theaterverlag, Bremen 1988
  • English: Loki Books, London

solo

  • English and French: Cierec, Saint Etienne

Alma - A Show Biz to the End

  • German: Translated and edited by Paulus Manker, with historical photos from the possession of Alma Mahler-Werfel, Vienna 1998

Silence, novel

  • German: Luchterhand, Munich 2001; Paperback: 2003
  • Dutch: Byblos, Amsterdam 2002

Whiskey is fine too (Whiskey's Fine), Roman

  • German: Luchterhand, Munich 2005

The Merchant of Stuttgart (Unearthing Suess)

  • German: Translated by Sophie Waal and Ingrid Rencher, Litag Theaterverlag, Munich

Productions

Yehoshua Sobol often appears as a director of his own plays, especially in his world success Ghetto, which he staged several times himself, but also in plays by George Tabori and Shakespeare .

  • Ghetto. Theater Essen 1992
  • Adam (part of the ghetto trilogy), Mannheim, 1993
  • Shneider and Shuster, Basler Theater, 1994
  • Nice Toni, The Khan & The Jerusalem Theater, September 1994
  • Gens (short version of the ghetto trilogy), Weimar 1995
  • Alma, Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv, December 1998
  • Ghetto, Washington DC 1995, Wesleyan University Theater November 2000, Haifa Municipal Theater January 1998, Hartke Theater, Dortmund 1993, Schauspiel Essen 1992 and Bremen
  • Goldberg Variations (George Tabori)
  • The Merchant Of Venice (Shakespeare), Illinois Shakespeare Festival 2002
  • IWitness, Theater St. Gallen , 2004
  • Ghetto. City Theater Klagenfurt 2008

Awards

  • 1976 Night Of The Twentieth, David's Harp Award, Best Play of the Year
  • 1976 Night Of The Twentieth, David Pinski Award
  • 1979 Homewards Angel, David's Harp Award, Israel's Best Play of the Year
  • 1980 The Last Worker, David's Harp Award, Israel's Best Play of the year
  • 1982 Weininger's Night, David's Harp Award, Israel's Best Play of the Year
  • 1983 Weininger's Night, Meskin Award for Best Play of the Year
  • 1983 Weininger's Night, Edinburgh Festival: Critic's Award for Best Play
  • 1983 Weininger's Night, Time Out London: Best Play of the Week
  • 1984 Ghetto, David's Harp Award, Israel's Best Play of the Year
  • 1985 Ghetto, Theater Today German Critics' Choice, Best Foreign Play
  • 1986 The Palestinian Girl, Issam Sirtawi Award
  • 1989 Ghetto, The Evening Standard award for Best Play of the Year London
  • 1989 Ghetto, The Critics' Circle London Theater Awards, Best New Play
  • 1990 Ghetto, Laurence Olivier Awards, Award Nomination, Best Play
  • 1995 Ghetto, Mainichi Art Prize, Best play of the year, Tokyo, Japan
  • 1996 Ghetto, Yumiuri Shimbun Grand Prize best play of the year, Tokyo, Japan
  • 1996 Ghetto, Yoshiko Yuasa Prize, Best play of the year Tokyo, Japan
  • 2001 Silence, Sapir Award Nomination, Best Novel of the Year
  • 2003 Rosenblum Award for The Contribution to Israeli Theater
  • 2013 Gold Medal of Merit of the State of Vienna

literature

  • Matthias Morgenstern : Theater and Zionist Myth. A study of contemporary Hebrew theater with a particular focus on the work of Joshua Sobol. Tübingen 2002.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sobol, Yehoshua
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sobol, Yehoshua
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli writer and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Tel moon