For over three decades, Bezalel Aloni was recognized in Israel and around the world as singer Ofra Haza’s manager and producer. In the early 1970s, as director of Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood, Aloni discovered the young and talented Haza. He later managed her solo career, which included major musical achievements in Israel, Europe and the US, and accompanied her until her tragic death at the beginning of the millennium. In January 2023, Haza was placed at 186 on Rolling Stone magazine’s ‘200 Best Singers of All Time’ list and was crowned Madonna of the Middle East.Footnote 1 While Aloni’s and Haza’s joint career during the 1980s and 1990s is well documented and known to the general public, the time they shared at Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood, a community-based theatre, is less so, even forgotten.
In this paper, I return to the 1970s and attempt to reread the activity of Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood as a unique theatre in the field of community-based theatre in Israel. I point to three interrelated factors that account for this group’s distinctiveness: first, it was an independent theatre, which did not benefit from public subsidies; second, its performance repertoire shifted from a politics of distribution to a politics of recognition; and third, its transition from amateurism to professionalism. I view this rare and unique status as an alternative to the principle model of community-based theatre in Israel, which has developed over the years until today.Footnote 2 I examine these three factors in the theatrical and historical–political contexts of the period. Notwithstanding its close association with the two others, the most significant factor is the second one – the political, thematic and stylistic transitions in the theatre’s performance repertoire – and this therefore is the focus of this paper. However, I first contextualize the HaTikva neighbourhood to provide a historical perspective and social framework for the activities and dynamics of this community-based theatre.
HaTikva neighbourhood: context
HaTikva is a working-class neighbourhood in southern Tel Aviv. In Israeli discourse, it has become synonymous with a Middle Eastern neighbourhood, embodying both the stigma of poverty and crime, and the vibrant culture of Middle Eastern markets, restaurants, music and football. It was established in 1935 by a group of Tel Aviv municipal employees, most of whom were sanitation workers of Yemenite-Jewish origin. Although they were employees of the Tel Aviv municipality, the municipality initially refused to incorporate the neighbourhood into the city. It was only after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 that HaTikva neighbourhood was annexed to Tel Aviv. As a result, the neighbourhood lacked urban planning and was densely populated, with inadequate physical infrastructure such as proper sewage and drainage systems. This situation led to frequent flooding from the nearby ravine during rainy winter days.
Even after the neighbourhood’s annexation to Tel Aviv, the municipality did not improve its conditions. Consequently, during the 1960s and 1970s, HaTikva became synonymous with poverty, crime and drugs, establishing a stigma that persists to this day. However, because the neighbourhood was built independently by its residents rather than by the establishment, it developed an active neighbourhood committee and a strong social network of mutual aid. Additionally, HaTikva is home to the Bnei Yehuda football team, which has achieved significant successes, including winning the national championship and the State Cup. Therefore, in the 1960s and 1970s, HaTikva exhibited a complex mix of challenges and communal strengths:
A duality began to develop among the veteran residents. On one hand, they felt a strong sense of belonging to the neighbourhood, which allowed them to express the culture in which they were educated. On the other hand, they felt burdened by the stigma associated with the neighbourhood. This ambivalence led them to emphasize their belonging to Israeli society and to highlight the positive aspects they saw in the neighbourhood and its residents.Footnote 3
Establishing independent community-based theatre
In the early 1970s, a new phenomenon emerged in Israel – community-based theatre associated with Mizrahim (Jews whose origin was in Arab and Muslim countries) from low socio-economic backgrounds located on the peripheries of Israel’s major cities, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.Footnote 4 One of the more renowned groups was Bezalel Aloni’s Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood. In her analysis of the history of the Mizrahi community-based theatre, Shulamit Lev-Aladgem claims that these theatres were part of the Mizrahi struggle, which reached its climax in the 1970s.Footnote 5 Inspired by the Afro-American movement, Israel’s Black Panthers were a protest movement of young Mizrahim from disadvantaged backgrounds which originated in Jerusalem and spread across the country. The movement took action against the socio-economic and cultural suppression of and discrimination against Middle Eastern and North African Jews in Israel,Footnote 6 and was the radical political inspiration of the Mizrahi community-based theatre during this decade.
Situated in south Tel Aviv, HaTikva neighbourhood comprises mainly disadvantaged Yemenite and Iraqi Jews. From a young age, Aloni, an Israeli of Yemenite descent, acted in youth and children’s theatres, including HaOhel Theatre, at the time a well-known repertory theatre in Tel Aviv. In the 1960s, Aloni published two books of poetry and a play, for which he was awarded the Ministry of Culture Commendation Prize for Original Play in 1969. He worked as a counsellor for at-risk youth in Tel Aviv and was well acquainted with the suppression and hardships the Mizrahim faced. Like other Mizrahi directors of community-based theatre in this period, he too was interested in bringing about social change through theatre:
In my youth, I acted in various plays and participated in radio dramas, but I was very attracted to directing because of the amazing opportunity it presented to take advantage of the stage to say something weighing on the heart. I was a young man with clear political opinions, and I wanted to change things. I was a political type and I cared very much about the mess corrupt politicians had brought upon our parents.Footnote 7
Thus Aloni formed a troupe of young adults in their twenties and established Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood, which operated between 1971 and 1978.Footnote 8
As an independent unsubsidized theatre, Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood was (and is still considered) extraordinary compared to community-based theatre troupes, which until today are formed and subsidized by the establishment in frameworks such as community centres, schools, youth clubs, senior citizen centres and so on. Neither Tel Aviv’s municipality nor the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Ministry of Education or any other public entity agreed to subsidize the troupe’s activity. Even Beit Barbur Community Center, which was built adjacent to HaTikva neighbourhood, demanded payment for rehearsal space. As a result, Aloni was forced to conduct rehearsals at his home – first in his living room and later in the bomb shelter in the building’s basement. The performances were mostly commissioned by schools, kibbutzim and soldiers. At the same time, Shimon Menachem, manager of Tzavta Theatre Club in Tel Aviv, waived the venue’s rental cost and redirected the income from ticket sales back to the troupe.
Given that Tzavta, a small theatre of some 200 seats in central Tel Aviv, was a lodestone for media people, artists, politicians and cultural trendsetters, the troupe enjoyed widespread media coverage, which in turn attracted audiences from beyond HaTikva. Critic Emanuel Bar-Kedma described the Mizrahi audience in positive terms as ‘responding spontaneously, directly, and in a crude, direct and often vitriolic manner to what was happening onstage. In time, the audience became an asset – for a sincere and immediate connection between the theatre and life.’Footnote 9 Aloni insisted on conducting an open discussion with the audience after each performance, which in fact generated a dialogue between middle-class Ashkenazim (European Jews) and Mizrahim on issues of inequality, suppression and discrimination.Footnote 10 These charged debates on the one hand reflected the depth of the chasm between the groups, their prejudices and their racist attitudes, while constituting, on the other hand, an opportunity for the kind of communication that would normally not evolve given the physical distance and everyday power struggles between the two populations.
On the one side, the troupe’s financial independence liberated it from the institutional censorship which was often imposed on subsidized community-based theatres.Footnote 11 This enabled the troupe not only to choose the plays’ content and style, casting and manner of production autonomously, but also to freely express its opinions in the post-performance discussions. On the other side, it constantly faced financial difficulties given that its income was based solely on ticket sales and that some of its artists worked on a volunteer basis.
The political: from distribution to recognition in the repertoire
In terms of repertoire, Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood was also an exception among community-based theatres of the 1970s. While other troupes’ repertoires consisted solely of protest plays, Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood’s repertoire shifted from plays protesting the socio-economic suppression of Mizrahim to musicals based on the heritage of Yemenite Jews (the ethnic origin of most troupe members). All the troupe’s plays were written and directed by Bezalel Aloni.
Its initial repertoire consisted of protest plays: Perahim MiPlastic (Plastic Flowers) (1971), Hashud Tamid Hashud (Once a Suspect, Always a Suspect) (1972) and Sambusak, Matai HaBihirot (Sambusak, When Are the Elections) (1973). During the ceasefire following the 1973 War (the Yom Kippur War), Aloni, a reserve soldier at the time, was authorized to round up his Theatre Workshop and, together with Rami Danoch and Ahuva Ozeri, known Yemenite singers at the time, to entertain soldiers with songs and skits. As a result of his participation in the fighting and later entertaining the troops, after the war Aloni decided to change the theatre’s repertoire, shifting toward musicals based on Yemenite-Jewish heritage, including, Ahava Rishona (First Love) (1974), Vehutz Mize Hakol BiSeder (Besides, Everthing’s Alright) (1975) and Shir Hashirim BiSha’ashuim (The Song of Songs with Delight) (1976). The songs from these shows were released on records and broadcast on the radio.
Focused on the present suppressive circumstances of their life experiences as young Mizrahim living in HaTikva neighbourhood, the three pre-war protest plays were documentarian in nature. The onstage protest was direct, unapologetic and provocative. In contrast, after the war, the musical plays, featuring Jewish-Yemenite heritage, highlighted a community with a rich history and culture rather than the evasion and marginalization by the mainstream Israeli culture and education system of the Mizrahim. How can one understand this thematic and stylistic shift in the repertoire from social protest to these musicals? Why does this shift occur after the 1973 War, and why was this the only theatre group in the arena of community-based theatre that made this transition, while the rest continued the line of protest in the repertoire?
Lev-Aladgem perceives the political aspect of Mizrahi community-based theatre as a struggle between two major forces.Footnote 12 The superior force was reflected in the establishment’s budgeting of these theatre projects and in its attempts to normalize their Mizrahi participants by modelling them in accordance with the norms of the veteran middle class, which largely comprised European Jews. This force was met by the Mizrahi participants’ attempts to challenge, protest and subvert the establishment from below. Unfortunately, as Lev-Aladgem demonstrates, these protest theatres, which were funded by the establishment, did not last long due to their commitment to protest. The establishment exerted pressure on the directors to alter the content of the performances, leading to frequent resignations and, in many cases, the disbanding of the troupes. Although Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood was independent and free from censorship, it struggled with material resources and ultimately leaned towards entertainment, as I will elaborate further.
Lev-Aladgem proposes three models for determining the theatres’ political level: the protest theatre of the 1970s which was characterized by its direct and abrasive opposition to the socio-economic suppression of the Mizrahim; the cooperative, folkloristic and entertaining celebratory theatre of the 1980s, which dealt with ‘positive’ aspects of the community and nostalgia; and the subversive theatre of the 1990s, which interwove the personal and the political, particularly within groups of Mizrahi women.
Understanding the shift from protest theatre to apolitical, folkloristic and entertaining theatre as characterizing the community-based theatre of the 1980s, Lev-Aladgem notes that Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood preceded this transition by almost a decade. Beyond classification, however, she explains the reasons neither for this transition nor for why this troupe differed from other community-based theatres in the field. I argue that Lev-Aladgem neglects to see the ‘political’ in the repertoire change given her binary distinction between political ‘protest’ and apolitical ‘celebration’. To my mind, the explanation for the troupe’s abandoning protest theatre is related to the Israeli discourse on national identity, an issue which caused public upheaval and social crisis following the war. During October 1973, Israel was caught off guard when Syrian and Egyptian forces attacked its northern and southern frontiers. At the beginning of the fighting, when enemy forces had the upper hand in military as well as territorial terms, Israel suffered many casualties. It was not long, however, before Israeli forces compelled their opponents to retreat. Although the war ended with Israel’s victory, its vast number of casualties and wounded, paired with a sense of confusion among Israel’s political and military leadership, raised public protest against government malfunction. In short, there was a sense that the country had lost its way.
The war incited both critical discourse regarding Israeli, Jewish and Zionist identity and the realization that the fundamental values of the Israeli state and its society required re-evaluation. Old controversies spiked and gave rise to the formation of two opposing extra-parliamentary political movements: the ultra-nationalist right-wing religious Gush Emunim (‘Bloc of the Faithful’), whose aim was to annex the occupied territories and thereby render Israel a less democratic and more Jewish state, and the liberal left-wing Shalom Achshav (‘Peace Now’), whose objective was to reach a peace agreement with the Arab states and the Palestinians in return for Israel relinquishing hold over the occupied territories. Despite their obvious ideological differences, these movements were alike in that they were both elitist and as such ignored the Mizrahi ethno-class issue, the combustible charge of which preceded the war. In my view, Bezalel Aloni attempted to participate in the new Israeli discourse on Israel’s identity from his Mizrahi standpoint by using theatre to present a critical historiography of the Zionist metanarrative shared by Gush Emunim and Peace Now. Thus his plays that dealt with Yemenite heritage constituted a critique of the establishment’s discounting of the Yemenites contribution to Israeli culture and its society during the war on the one hand, and their marginalization on the other.
In addition to reasons related to shifts in Israeli discourse after the war, Aloni encountered increasing material difficulties because the theatre was not subsidized. Unlike the protest theatres that were subsidized but shut down after one or two productions by the establishment, Aloni sought the continuity of the theatre, aiming to attract an audience while maintaining the troupe’s social vision. Therefore the style was primarily entertainment/musical in nature, with content focusing on Jewish-Yemenite history and folklore, subtly and humorously echoing political statements. In this way, Aloni managed to draw audiences and survive financially without losing the troupe’s social vision.
As Aloni recollects, the war gave rise to new thoughts about protest:
Our first plays were sort of protest symposiums, it was like spewing blood … three and a half years of pure protest … And suddenly the war broke out and after October we could no longer argue. The feeling was that our protest was dwarfed. We were sick of the symposiums; we didn’t want to go on. The war had taken its toll. The pain was a different pain.Footnote 13
Aloni goes on to explain the shift in the theatre’s repertoire as a result of the crisis:
I saw my father who had come on foot from Yemen through Saudi Arabia to Israel. I saw the immigrants who came from Yemen to Yavniel [a town in the north of Israel]. The past troubled me. I also wanted to go back to a big theme, like the [famous] poet Shalom Shabazi [an eighteenth century Jewish-Yemenite poet] … We believe we are not the only ones interested in a return to our roots; we know that others are interested too.Footnote 14
Aloni describes his desire to present onstage the waves of Yemenite-Jewish immigration beginning at the end of the nineteenth century as part of the Israeli historic legacy. Aloni’s desire is a historical–political one, and from this standpoint, I argue, Lev-Aladgem’s distinction between political protest and apolitical celebration in the group’s repertoire is misguided. In fact, it was the political factor in the repertoire that changed. In the post-war performances, the Mizrahim’s cultural–historical foundations, mainly the legacy of Yemenite Jews, are highlighted in their content simply because most of the troupe’s members were of Yemenite origin. The political not only reveals the socio-economic suppression of the Yemenite Jews in the present, but also cautiously points to the cultural suppression of their historical legacy. The performances displayed the Yemenite-Jewish culture that had been relegated to the margins of Israeli society and culture. Another reason was financial. Considering that the group was not subsidized and relied mainly on ticket sales for its survival, the shift to musical plays, as Aloni notes, proved a lucrative source of income as these plays drew large audiences with a penchant for musical performances that dealt with their heritage.
In Nancy Fraser’s terms, Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood’s repertoire went from a politics of redistribution to a politics of recognition.Footnote 15 According to Fraser, the difference between politics of redistribution and politics of recognition is solely for analytical purposes, while, in most cases, the struggle of different groups for social justice combines the two. A politics of redistribution points to social injustices rooted in society’s political economy, such as employee exploitation, their economic marginalization to low-salary and less prestigious jobs and their deprivation of a proper material standard of living. A politics of recognition, on the other hand, is derived from cultural–symbolic injustices related to representation, interpretation and communication – for instance, one’s being subjugated to interpretation and communication hostile to their culture, non-recognition of one’s culture as worthy and valuable, and one’s being subject to ridicule and disrespect toward one’s group by way of stereotyped representation and stigmas.
While protest plays deal with issues of just distribution, social-economic injustice, and political suppression in daily life, the post-war plays dealt with the recognition of the Mizrahim’s cultural contribution and their heritage vis-à-vis the mechanisms of exclusion that were imposed upon them, which marginalized their culture. The heritage plays enabled the historical exploration of the state-imposed mechanisms which justified discrimination and injustice in the name of the orientalist and Eurocentric Zionist ideology – an ideology that negated the Mizrahi identity, culture, heritage and contribution to Israeli culture. The political aspect arising from the troupe’s complete repertoire reveals how issues of redistribution and social justice, as well as issues of cultural recognition and identity, are interwoven to create a complex and critical image of Mizrahim in Israel. The post-war crisis enabled the troupe to provide a profound perspective on Mizrahiness that oscillates between redistribution and recognition and their interfaces.
Aloni attempted to combine these issues of redistribution and recognition. While criticizing the Zionist narrative, he did not call for its abolishment, but rather aimed to extend it by integrating the Mizrahi narrative within it. Aloni’s criticism focused on the problematic Zionist notion that it was necessary to erase Jewish diasporic identity for the purpose of forming a new Jewish culture. Therefore, from Aloni’s standpoint, the solution was to challenge this idea by replacing it with an inclusive national foundation that allows for some aspects of diasporic Mizrahi culture to exist, and become recognized, as part of the national identity. This does not mean the consolidation of a separatist Mizrahi identity, but rather its incorporation within a new Jewish–Zionist–Israeli identity. Put differently, it means rendering the Mizrahim part of the Zionist narrative not by erasing their identity, but rather by recognizing them and giving them equal status, which would lead to the abolishment of economic and social inequality.
Politics of distribution: protest theatre
Plastic Flowers presents the severe social problems in HaTikva neighbourhood related to housing, employment, crime and neglect. In its programme, the play was described as follows: ‘The play raises, in a simple and realistic manner, the problems of the low-income neighborhood, a refugee camp within the Green Line, and the government’s attitude toward it’ – a provocative comparison between Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied territories and the poverty-stricken neighbourhood in south Tel Aviv. In discussing the play’s central motif, Aloni claimed, ‘All of the promises made by public officials, including those brought to the Knesset [Israeli Parliament] by or with the help of HaTikva representatives, are merely plastic flowers.’Footnote 16 On another occasion, he added,
If one buys plastic flowers, they bring death and stagnation into their home. The lesson is that any attitude toward the ethnic gap and the youths coming from these low-income neighborhoods is a ‘plastic’ one. And it does not matter what colour it is … the attitude is artificial.Footnote 17
The play shifts between a melodramatic plot about winning the lottery and satirical group scenes about the neighbourhood’s problems. An old man wins the lottery and hides the ticket in a vase containing plastic flowers. Halamish, a municipal building inspector and neighbourhood resident, issues a demolition order for the old man’s house as part of his plan to steal the ticket. In the meantime, Shumel, the old man’s son and a released prisoner, accidently uses the lottery ticket as rolling paper for his cigarette. The play ends with a parodic funeral for the lottery ticket, which is burned and turns to ashes. The characters also include Sasson, the only university student in the neighbourhood, and Abu Nahum, a Member of Parliament (MP) and neighbourhood resident who is expected to represent his neighbours in the Knesset.
The different Mizrahi characters represent different ways of coping with the neighbourhood’s social predicament. The Ashkenazi establishment is situated offstage, as sort of puppet operators who affect the Mizrahi characters onstage. The old man represents first-generation immigrants – a lost generation whose hope for change rests on luck, and who do not take any steps toward social change. Shumel, his criminal son, represents the second generation, which goes in and out of prison, and is like a lifeless plastic flower with no future. Although managing to socially mobilize, Sasson, the student, separates himself from the group and avoids harnessing his education for the benefit of his neighbours’ struggle against social injustice. Likewise, the politicians who grew up in the neighbourhood are presented in a critical light as cooperating with the establishment. Sami Shalom Chitrit, a historian of the Mizrahi struggle, explains the phenomenon thus:
We can discern the emergence of two approaches adopted by Mizrahi political participants. One involved those who identified with European Zionism, its values and its state, with whom they collaborated while accepting its basic cultural assumptions in the hope of integrating with it (people in this category will be referred to as identifier–collaborators or ICs). The other, a critical approach, of protest and alternative approach, involved those whose ideological goal is social and cultural integration based on equality. On this axis, in the tension between these two extremes, Mizrahim have acted since that time, and more clearly and extensively since 1948, in the new political system under the sovereign European Zionist regime.Footnote 18
In Chitrit’s terms, Halamish, the municipal inspector who patronizes the neighbourhood residents, is an identifier–collaborator (IC); he is hostile toward them, and issues both a foreclosure and a demolition order for the old man’s house, citing unpaid municipal taxes, while the municipality has invested nothing in the neighbourhood and its residents. When he learns of the old man’s win, he plans on stealing it, but does not succeed, which reflects his opportunist and establishment-minded attitude as an IC motivated by his own personal gain rather than by the collective social agenda. MP Abu Nahum is also an IC. The residents who elected him demand that he resolve their socio-economic difficulties. However, when he speaks before the Knesset, his speech proves irrelevant and ironic as it identifies with the suppression of other nations while avoiding the problems his own neighbours face:
Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Knesset, distinguished cabinet members, honored guests. With blood and fire. We must not give up. All of the striking and raging riots in Ireland, and the civil war in Bangladesh, will not prevent our complete identification! The silent Jewry [in the Communist dictatorships] must roar and howl. Greater Israel.
This is an associative, absurd and irrational speech, filled with clichés and pathos, about Israel’s foreign policy and its concern for Jews around the world that has nothing to do with the de facto hardships of his neighbourhood, and with steps necessary to rectify them.
Speaking to a neighbourhood resident, Halamish speaks the play’s opening sentence: ‘Are you looking for justice or the future?’ In other words, do we want a common struggle for social justice or is each individual interested in their own financial future? This question resonates throughout the play until its answer is revealed in the final scene of the funeral for the lottery ticket – in terms of sheer luck, winning a monetary prize is not a realistic option for rightful distribution of resources. Rather, the poor must unite in solidarity and fight like the Israeli Black Panthers. Indeed, the residents come together and recite a blessing in unison:
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord, He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high, high, high above and doesn’t see us here so far below, beware of the poor, for they will beget sons of the poor, and now for our many transgressions – we have become panthers.
In Chitrit’s terms,Footnote 19 the play aspires to disregard the politicians’ IC approach in favour of a radical politics like the Black Panthers’.
The discussions that took place after the performances were particularly heated and controversial, so much so that they were mentioned in the press. Journalist Michael Ohad wrote, ‘The argument surrounding the play’, which he had witnessed between the actors and Ashkenazi students in the audience, ‘lasted longer than the play itself’;Footnote 20 while Yair Amikam identified an undertone of hatred and contempt for Ashkenazim in the play and rejected its judgemental message:
The play is divided into scenes, and most of them are designed to represent those outside of the neighbourhood in a ridiculing light, as if they were infused with hatred. It is doubtful whether the radical approach of those responsible for staging Plastic Flowers will result in a solution to their problems.Footnote 21
These reactions from the audience reflected the Ashkenazis’ overriding avoidance of taking responsibility for the social injustices within Israel’s public spheres.
Once a Suspect, Always a Suspect deals with the discriminatory and oppressive attitude of the police toward youths from HaTikva neighbourhood. Orientalist stereotypes pervade the police, who suspect these youths without cause, arrest them, and beat and abuse them. In a similar vein, released prisoners are presented as repeatedly subjected to police harassment while lacking adequate support and rehabilitation programmes. The play consists of different scenes, each demonstrating a particular related situation. As Aloni recalls, ‘A group of felons from the neighbourhood approached me and suggested that we present their problems onstage, as a play.’Footnote 22 Aloni was also motivated to call attention to this issue by cases of police harassment directed at innocent Mizrahi youths doing social-activity volunteer work.
Aloni wanted the actors to be released prisoners who would candidly and authentically convey their story, on the one hand, and their criticism of the police and judicial system, on the other. However, near the play’s premier date, the police, apparently deliberately, arrested the actors, and Aloni had no other choice but to recruit the actors from Plastic Flowers. Thus reality proved what the play aspired to communicate about police suppression against Mizrahi youths. The scenes demonstrate police harassment against young Mizrahim, and frequent arrests made despite the lack of any evidence. The play was well received and awarded the Kinor David prize in the category of outstanding theatre of the year. Aloni notes that this prize represented ‘the first official recognition of my struggle to find a solution for the social-gap problem in Israel’.Footnote 23
Israel’s minister of police and high-ranking officers, residents of HaTikva, and released prisoners, upon whose stories the play was based, all attended the gala performance at Tzavta on 2 October 1972. The discussion after the play was agitated and revolved around the issue of police responsibility, its racist profiling of young Mizrahim, and its withholding of rehabilitation from released prisoners who deserve it. This was the first time that police and neighbourhood residents had conducted a face-to-face dialogue on these issues. Police representatives were forced to provide answers and face the harsh onstage criticism directed at them in the play. Put differently, the community-based theatre managed to bypass the hierarchal demarcations of social reality between young Mizrahim and police and judiciary representatives by fostering an encounter which put the questions of social justice on the agenda. In Jill Dolan’s terms, the play succeeded in creating a utopic–performative moment, a situation which had not yet existed in the social reality – on the one hand essentially utopic, but realized in a theatrical event on the other.Footnote 24 This utopic performative provides a sense, albeit temporary, of a desired state of equality and attentiveness between the two parties.
The gala performance of Sambusak, When Are the Elections, took place on the symbolic date of International Workers Day, 1 May 1973, five months before the war. The play deals with the exploitation and false promises of politicians gearing up for the elections in late 1973. This is a political satire in which DDT,Footnote 25 the exploitative and corrupt party member, makes pre-election promises and lies to the neighbourhood residents, jointly referred to as sambusak, a Middle Eastern pastry that can be filled with either savoury or sweet filling. This epithet is a metaphor for the Mizrahi politician who is filled with false promises of rectifying the Mizrahim’s social circumstances. Another character, Professor Esther Wolpowitz, who represents the academic world, comes to the neighbourhood to conduct a pre-election poll. At first, she attempts to provoke the locals, but DDT bribes her, and she ends up serving the interests of the establishment.
In the opening scene, DDT turns to God and says, ‘God give me the strength to continue fooling the people so that they continue to be stupid and leave the party in power … I don’t care about the state, as long as things continue to be good for me.’ When he meets the neighbourhood Sambusaks, he fills them with promises; however, when they express their distrust, he showers them with money to placate them. He follows this success with a speech underlined with false pathos: ‘Dear citizen, the national security situation is getting worse, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For the sake of the state, latecomers will be fined an arrears tax of 60 percent.’ Taking this line to absurdity, DDT demands money for swimming pools, villas and even toilet paper for the rich. In metaphorical terms, the Sambusaks are emptied of their filling; they not only return the money but remove their clothes as well. Naked, they revert back to their original state of destitution and exploitation. This scene critically repeats the infamous words of then minister of defense, Moshe Dayan, against the Mizrahi struggle: ‘one cannot raise two flags at the same time – both the flag of national security and the social flag’.
The Sambusaks unite and as a political Mizrahi bloc strive to join the decision makers responsible for the distribution of the budgetary pie. This image calls to mind the Israeli Black Panthers’ slogan: ‘Either the pie is for everyone, or there won’t be no pie.’ DDT negotiates with the bloc’s leaders, demand that they are appointed as ministers in government offices – the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Housing. Attempting once again to bribe them, DDT is met with resistance. The Sambusaks tie him to a chair and seize government control. This ending is characteristically performative–utopian because the establishment of a Mizrahi political bloc that revolts and takes control of the government is the heart’s desire of the artists onstage, and perhaps of the Mizrahim in the audience, albeit it far from coming to fruition in reality.
Bezalel Aloni describes the reception of the three protest plays and how different responses reflect the different positions in Israeli redistribution politics at the time:
It caused provocation in three different audiences – the spectators in development towns and poor neighbourhoods identified with the situations presented onstage and saw the plays as if taken directly from their own life experiences, as a means of expression. The ‘establishment’ theatre audience thought we were from another planet or that what we were communicating was simply not true. Others disavowed us, referring to us as suffering from a variety of ‘complexes’. And there were those for whom the plays were wake-up calls. The audience, which I would call the third – the people who pull the strings – did not make an official response. But there were those that came to me personally and tried to persuade me to shut the play down. To silence the public interest that began to arise. They said to me: If you have problems, let’s solve them between us.Footnote 26
Politics of recognition: heritage theatre
First Love (1974) deals with Yemenite Jews’ first big love for the Holy Land that combines songs and scenes depicting aspects of their heritage. Aloni is the son of parents who made their way on foot from Yemen in the 1930s. ‘After the Yom Kippur War’, he recalls, ‘I felt a need to do something else. And then my mother asked me, “Why don’t you do a play that tells the story of all the aliyot (Jewish immigration waves) of Yemenite Jews to Israel and about the poems of Rabbi Shalom Shabazi?”’.Footnote 27 Aloni was also motivated by the academic discourse he encountered at a conference on Mizrahi Jewish heritage which largely employed stereotypical perceptions to discuss cultural histories. Thus, in Aloni’s words, ‘My protest today is against the discrimination of [Middle] Eastern Jewish culture, and in these terms, the new play has something to say.’Footnote 28
The scenes are arranged in chronological order, from the first wave of immigrants who travelled on foot in 1882 until the time the play was produced. In the first scene, the Yemenites are forced to found the village of Shiloach on the outskirts of Jerusalem because the city’s Jewish residents forbid them to enter its gates. Subsequent scenes illustrate the discrimination against Yemenites by Ashkenazi farmers in northern agricultural settlements. From an orientalist-stereotyped viewpoint, the Yemenites were perceived as natural labourers satisfied with little, in contrast to the Ashkenazi Zionist workers who were perceived as ideological and worthy of high wages. In another scene, a Zionist immigrant from Eastern Europe encounters Yemenites who are already assimilated in the country. The latter perceive the young man as the embodiment of Zionism and implore him that when the history of Zionism is recorded they will ‘not be forgotten’. However, the end of the play is a return to its 1970s present, in a scene in which a young university graduate Yemenite woman from HaTikva neighbourhood asks her parents for their blessing as she plans to marry an Ashkenazi man. This is an integrative ending in which the young Israeli generation, Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, is imagined as one family that remembers its past and all its complexities. Following the identity crisis of the Yom Kippur War, national unity was perceived as an important value. From the standpoint communicated in this play, national unity is only feasible once society recognizes the Mizrahi cultural heritage as well as the Zionist historical injustices it suffered. Only then would it be possible to create that Mizrahi–Ashkenazi family.
The combination of sketches and songs was continued in the troupe’s next production, And Besides, Everything’s Alright (1975). Some scenes dealt humorously with the everyday life of HaTikva residents – work, housing and marital relationships – alongside songs from Yemenite heritage. Music critic Yossi Harsonsky highlighted the music as the most effective aspect of the performance:
The attempt to revive the folklore by way of authentic pronunciation is apparent. In several songs, there is a natural distancing from the original and a quite successful attempt to fuse cultures, with the help of the singers, including Ofra Haza, Michael Sinwani and Moshe Arrusi, who genuinely breathe the Yemenite musical heritage.Footnote 29
Hence the recording of the show’s soundtrack combined ancient Yemenite liturgical poems and new songs inspired by Yemenite heritage to create a unique musical–cultural effect.
The Song of Songs with Delight (1976) is a contemporary adaptation of the biblical Song of Songs. King Solomon falls in love with Shulamit, a young woman from an impoverished Jerusalem neighbourhood who is in love with a shepherd. Shulamit is forcefully taken to the palace, where she fiercely wards off the king’s councillors, who pressure her to enter the king’s bed. But the rebellious Shulamit is preoccupied with the difficulties her disadvantaged neighbours face, the cavernous social gap between the magnificent palace and her distressed brothers and sisters, and the fact that, due to the king’s extravagant lifestyle, the economic and domestic problems of the kingdom are neglected.
This turn to a biblical drama is not surprising given that the Zionist perception of the Yemenites was as an ethnic group closer to the ancient biblical Hebrews than to European Jews. Theatre and dance artists were often influenced by, and sometimes even cast, Yemenites as romantic orientalist representations of the ancient Hebrew during the first half of the twentieth century.Footnote 30 In contrast to this Zionist orientalist perception of the Yemenites, Aloni stressed the present-day social message alongside a repertoire of Yemenite songs. Thus he invoked the Yemenites’ ‘ancient Hebrewness’, but at the same time drained its romantic dimension to highlight the motif of social injustice.
Despite the severity of the play’s content and message, its style was comic and light, as journalist Amalia Argaman noted: ‘This is not a protest play. Its language is not pithy and sarcastic; it does not shoot arrows in all directions. And still – the principle of touching upon and presenting troubling social issues through the grotesque is preserved.’Footnote 31 Ofra Haza, who played Shulamit, sings the theme song ‘The Song of Songs with Delight’ at the Mizrahi Song Festival, and as a result it became a hit on the radio.
These three plays were performed in large theatres, and as publicity grew through records and radio broadcasts, the audiences grew as well. Aloni used music – which stressed the uniqueness of Yemenite Jewry and its demand for recognition – to shift between the scenes’ light-hearted and humoristic atmosphere on the one hand, and their poignant social message. In this sense, Aloni navigated between coping with the financial difficulties of an independent theatre and its social–cultural agenda; that is, the Israeli social discourse on the fundamental questions of Israeli identity from the Mizrahi standpoint.
From amateurship to professionalism: the troupe’s break-up
As a result of the changes in its repertoire, the troupe’s production values rose from those of a community-based amateur theatre to those of a more professional theatre. Throughout the years it existed, the troupe benefited from wide newspaper publicity despite its being a community-based theatre. Because of the post-war performances’ musical nature, Aloni managed to sign contracts with several leading record labels, record three albums and distribute them to local radio stations: First Love, produced by CBS (1974); And Besides, Everything’s Alright, produced by Hed Artzi (1975); and Atique Noshan (Old Antique) produced by The Brothers Reuveni (1976).
Appearances on radio and television were significant achievements considering that in the late 1970s there were no commercial channels in Israel, and public radio and television rejected Mizrahi culture. As a result, popular Mizrahi singers were broadcast on a handful of radio channels, disparagingly referred to as the ‘Mizrahi ghetto’. Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood was no exception in this sense, and its music was also broadcast on these channels. The troupe’s singers, Michael Sinwani and Ofra Haza, participated in the Mizrahi Song Festival, produced by Israeli Television, and became popular ‘stars’. The troupe even shot a television show featuring stories and songs about Yemenite Jewry in the framework of a series on Israeli heritage. Together, these events fostered the troupe’s exposure to a wide audience. In fact, these were Aloni’s first steps in his transition from being a director of protest theatre to becoming an entrepreneur in the cultural domain, as well as Ofra Haza’s musical producer and manager in Israel and around the world.
Nicholson, Holdsworth and Milling argue that ‘the term “amateur theatre” refers to companies of people who make theatre in, with, and for their local communities for love rather than money’.Footnote 32 In other words, the difference between amateur theatre and professional theatre consists in the following: in amateur theatre the actors lack formal artistic education, and their motivation is the enjoyment of and passion for doing theatre, not livelihood. Thus, as this grows, it addresses and attracts a specific community, not a general audience. These parameters are analytical only, because in actuality there may be differences in levels of talent, education and motivation between amateur theatres. It is possible, therefore, to outline a continuum between the amateur and the professional based on the parameters mentioned above. In most cases, in an amateur theatre that exists over a long period of time and constantly produces a variety of performances, its participants’ abilities and skills will improve, and sometimes this process causes a shift in their motivation and in their audience appeal. In other words, it is possible that as a result of prolonged work, amateur actors, in accordance with their talent, may come close to a good professional level. Likewise, professional development and sophistication bring about a transition from an amateur theatre for a specific audience to one geared toward a broader public.
Despite the fact that community-based theatre is, by definition, amateur theatre, Aloni aimed for a certain professional level. He preferred not to recruit adolescents, but rather eighteen-year-olds and older who were committed to the theatre. The participants were talented amateurs and some of them even reached a professional level. Likewise, Aloni not only wrote and directed these plays, but also acted in them, and in doing so was able to improvise, support the actors and even be their role model. In my opinion, this tendency toward professionalism might, paradoxically, explain the troupe’s break-up.
In an interview before the war, Aloni claimed that he ‘was not interested in turning the actors into professionals. Their candor was one of the theatre’s assets.’Footnote 33 When asked whether professional actors could not communicate the social message better, he replied, ‘[professional] actors would play the role in a technical and alienated manner; for our guys – it’s more than a role’.Footnote 34 Aloni’s words resonate with Brecht’s idea that simplicity is the origin of critical and candid acting, dealing with complex social realities:
The first thing that strikes one about a proletarian actor is the simplicity of his playing … We speak of simplicity when complicated problems are so mastered as to make them easier to deal with and less difficult to grasp. A great number of seemingly self-contradictory facts, a vast and discouraging tangle, is often set in order by science in such a way that a relatively simple truth emerges … I am not speaking just of the plays but of those who perform them best and with the liveliest concern.Footnote 35
Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood was characterized in fact as ‘rough theatre’, whose purpose is to provoke the audience at the expense of aesthetics, as Brook explains:
The Rough Theatre is close to the people … It is usually distinguished by the absence of what is called style … Putting over something in rough conditions is like a revolution, for anything that comes to hand can be turned into a weapon. The Rough Theatre doesn’t pick and choose: if the audience is restive, then it’s obviously more important to holler at the troublemakers – or improvise a gag – than to try to preserve the unity of style of the scene.Footnote 36
Indeed, journalist Michael Ohad saw brashness and social provocation in Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood: ‘This is a primitive amateur theatre, in the good sense of the word, capable, in contrast to many professional theatres, to drive the audience mad and provoke volatile arguments.’Footnote 37
Rough and simple acting in community-based theatre tends toward what Bert States calls a collaborative mode of acting. The amateur actors do not attempt to camouflage themselves within the character and do not focus on their abilities and talents, but rather stress their connection with the audience, which comprises family and community members. The amateur actor communicates the following message, ‘Theatre says to the spectator, “Why should we pretend that all this is an illusion? We are in this together. We are doing this for you.”.’Footnote 38
The collaborative mode of acting is enabled, among other things, by the fact that the audience is already acquainted with the amateur actors. This familiarity not only creates a sense of closeness, but also reflects the audience’s prior acquaintance with the actors as members of the community. Quinn argues that the audience’s public knowledge regarding a famous actor gives rise to celebrity acting – that is, the spectators’ reception of the character is impacted by public knowledge and in fact causes a blurring of the boundary between reality and fiction. According to Quinn, a similar mode of reception occurs in school plays and folk drama, given the audience’s prior familiarity with the amateur actors in these genres.Footnote 39 Carlson expands on this approach, claiming that the audience’s memories of amateur actors’ previous performances influence how the same actors are received in the present.Footnote 40 He called this phenomenon ‘ghosting’. The amateur actor and the dramatic role are in constant tension, merging and colliding in the spectator’s consciousness. The actor is not only absorbed into the character but also always present alongside it.
Drawing on the characterization of amateur acting as rough, with a tendency toward the collaborative mode and the actor’s ghosting, Kuftinec argues that its reception involves a constant duality between the actor and the character. She points to the construction and lack of stability between the actor’s identity and the fictional character in community-based theatre. She writes,
The fact that community performers are generally untrained in the ‘method’ of psychological realism keeps them from ‘disappearing’ into the characters that they play … every time these actors opened their mouths, they told us, ‘This is who I am’ … by remaining outside the roles they perform, these actors call forth the constructed nature of character and the instability of representation … Through their lack of experience, their physical and emotional awkwardness, community actors are present as both actor and character, community member and artist … A gap opens up, suggesting the elusiveness of the ‘real’ identity of the actor. He or she is authentically performing neither character nor social role.Footnote 41
Following Kuftenic, Lev-Aladgem underscores the strong connection between the amateur actor and the character, whether they are playing a role they are familiar with or one they yearn to play in social reality. Thus, in most cases, the acting is energetic and powerful, and a type of unity is formed between the two. Lev-Aladgem calls this unity ‘mediated authenticity’,Footnote 42 given that acting involves unstable and malleable construction and representation, on the one hand, while creating an authentic and expressive impression, on the other.
After the war, the professionalization of Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood was not sympathetically received. Journalists and critics appreciated the ‘mediated authenticity’ and the simple rough acting of the group, and they expressed reservations about the professionalization processes that, in their view, undermined the unique performance of these amateur actors. Journalist Idit Neeman was conflicted regarding the new direction the company had taken after the war:
There are those who claim that Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood is already showing signs of becoming bourgeois, commercial and ideologically askew from its original line. They’re already producing a record based on their new programme, First Love. They no longer conduct discussions after the performances.Footnote 43
It is no wonder that this professionalization led to tension between the social agenda and the passion for creativity, on the one hand, and the aspiration to make a living from working in the theatre, on the other, certainly for actors who came from a low social–economic background and saw the theatre as a source of social mobility. The actors expressed their concerns:
The troupe’s actors aspire to be a good theatre, while preserving its uniqueness. How is this done? It’s difficult. How to preserve the innocence and candour for long without standing still? To become a professional theatre without being ‘professional’? … There’s an option for a simple solution. Ofra Haza and Michael Sinwani became ‘stars’. There is an option to open a management company and present them as disco singers or moonlighters, with or without the other backup singers. But the actors rejected this proposal completely. This was not the purpose of founding the Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood and as long as its ‘leader’, Bezalel Aloni, does not loose his vigour, they’ll follow him, and will maintain the troupe’s unity and distinctiveness.Footnote 44
At this stage, the actors also began to receive a certain salary for their performances, which increased the tensions between their social engagement and their desire to earn a living from their art. Aloni explained that as the troupe’s popularity grew, so arguments erupted more frequently: ‘With the success of First Love, the difficult period began’, describing intrigues, gossip and envy among the singer and actors. As a result, Aloni wrote, ‘[I] was forced to use all of my diplomatic skills, a talent I was not especially good at, to maintain a pleasant atmosphere’. However, despite this attempt to maintain unity, ‘those members left and became hired moonlighters’.Footnote 45 Michael Sinwani, who left the company, cited financial discrepancies, to which Aloni responded, ‘It is painful. Every case of slander is troubling. Whoever makes claims about finances can turn to Yinon Haramati [the theatre’s accountant], and whoever makes claims regarding fraud should call the police.’Footnote 46 As a result, most original cast members in the last production, The Song of Songs with Delight, were replaced. Despite slight variations in the cast for each production, there was a core group of actors who led the troupe, including Michael Sinwani, Benny Etzioni (musician), Yair Aloni, Rafi Aminoff and Ofra Haza. However, in the last production, the core of the group disbanded, and the cast was mostly changed, except for Ofra Haza, who became the star of the troupe. After this production, the troupe broke up. At this point, Aloni and Ofra Haza became a duo who found their way to the mainstream music world and whose careers peaked with Haza’s success in the international arena, which lasted until her premature, tragic death at the beginning of the millennium.
Conclusions
Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood shaped an alternative model in the field of community-based theatre in Israel, an independent, extra-establishment theatre free from establishment censorship. Likewise, this theatre expanded the political from redistribution to recognition and emphasized the role of the connection between these two viewpoints in understanding the ethnic/social-class issue in Israel while penetrating the national media. This move occurred due to the company’s professionalization, but also led to its break-up. Bezalel Aloni, as a director of community-based theatre, comes across not only as an activist, like other directors of the period, but also as a critical entrepreneur in the cultural domain.
Community-based theatre projects around the world are typically subsidized by public or private agencies, leading to an inherent tension with the subsidizer. This tension often arises from conflicts over the content of performances and operational methods. At times, there is a desire to break free from the constraints imposed by the ‘patron’. The Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood presents an intriguing case study of how community-based theatre can maintain independence. While free from censorship, it faces financial constraints. These limitations may push it in an entertainment-oriented direction. Community-based theatre endeavours to strike a delicate balance: aiming for broad audience appeal through entertainment while retaining a political undercurrent in its repertoire. This transition often sees the director shift from an activist role in protest theatre to that of a cultural entrepreneur and producer. Maintaining this balance requires skilful navigation and the ability to sustain the troupe over the long term amidst these conflicting forces.
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