Clear the stage for German-Israeli couples

 

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be amazed – Israeli director Avishai Milstein is presenting “Love Hurts” in Karlsruhe and Tel Aviv.

 

Avishai Milstein is one of Israel’s best-known directors. In September and October 2015 he will be presenting 12 German-Israeli love stories with three Israeli and three German actors on stage at Teatron Beit Lessin in Tel Aviv and Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe.

Mr. Milstein, your German-Israeli play “Love Hurts” is subtitled “To love and be unable to forget”. What exactly are you showing?  

Real love stories between Germans and Israelis. I have put a selection together that offers a good cross-section: funny, touching and sad. Neither old nor young couples have an easy time of it.

You spoke to 40 German-Israeli couples…

…more or less all of whom I found on Facebook!

So more the young generation?

Not at all. I spoke to 40 very different couples and recorded 80 hours of material, before deciding upon 12 stories.

Love stories between Germans and Israelis – let’s start pragmatically: Which language is spoken in the play?

English, German, Hebrew, a mix. There are couples who speak hybrid languages to this day, for instance Hebrew peppered with German words. The play is also in three languages with subtitles, to keep it as authentic as possible.

So the stories are authentic?

Not entirely. I tried to keep to the original recordings as much as possible, but dramaturgy comes before authenticity. I had to fabricate some moments or shorten monologues. I create plays, not documentaries.

Can you give us an example of a love story?

There was a German woman in Jerusalem on a scholarship in 1960. An Israeli took her home on his Vespa. She fell pregnant that night, because as a German she couldn’t say “no” to a Jew.

Incredible! I’d love to hear another one.

The German actor who falls in love with an Israeli dancer and moves to Israel with her. But he can’t speak Hebrew and is only ever cast as the exotic blond. So he stays at home while she works. He lives out his longing to be on stage in acted-out bedtime stories for his children. These minutes are the sole remains of his career in Germany. But he now has a family. In Germany it was the other way round. This inner conflict is everyday reality for many binational couples. Neither old nor young couples have it easy. Many relationships hit the rocks.

Would there not have been a good role for the “exotic blond” in “Love Hurts”?

No, all the stories are anonymized. There will be three German and three Israeli actors on the stage. A story often starts as a narrative and becomes narrative theatre.

How do you know the stories are true?

I didn’t hire a private detective, but I do have a good gut feeling about it and I know the Germans and Israelis pretty well, too.

Are there certain characteristics typical of German-Israeli relationships?

It is a big problem in everyday life if a German woman doesn’t convert. That really was always an issue among the 40 couples.

But that doesn’t just apply to Germans and Israelis, does it?

The specific problem between Germany and Israel is concealing a collective wound. When the couples first get together there is a feeling of great relief that everything seems to be working. But the point comes when the wound gapes open. German-Israeli relationships are essentially like German-Swedish or Israeli-American ones. Only in this case the one grandfather slaughtered the other grandfather. That is the minor major difference. Incidentally, one of the actors says that on stage.

Are you still talking about the stories on the stage or your own life?

Both. I am a child of Holocaust survivors.

You personally talk of your love-hate relationship with Germany …

That’s why it is so easy for me to connect with these dialogues.

How does that affect you personally?

I’m not shocked when I hear about anti-Semitic parents. If you want to live or experience the German culture you have to accept these phenomena and not permanently ask yourself: What is more important, German culture or German anti-Semitism?

And instead?

The answer lies in my first experience with Germans, when I was 16 and went to Frankfurt on a youth exchange programme. I grew up with stories about this great evil, but in Germany I encountered no such evil. That was one of the most important moments of relief in my entire life. This feeling of liberation repeatedly brings me back to Germany, the place where the evil melted away before my eyes. Inwardly I’m still looking for that summer.

Why is it still a love-hate relationship?

Since that time I’ve also been arguing with Germany! With work, with women. I tend to improvise. Germans plan.

Was that also the case during your collaboration with the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe for this project?

Absolutely! My work is work in progress, not a fixed play. Ideally I wouldn’t have the stage set built three months in advance either. Germans are great partners, but they have a very different energy.

 

“Love Hurts” will premiere on 3 September 2015 at Teatron Beit Lessin in Tel Aviv. The German premiere will take place on 1 October 2015 at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. The production is being supported by the Goethe-Institut Tel Aviv and Israeli Foreign Ministry.