Ramat Gan acting school to perform an Australian fable about humanity’s end

In Hibernation, a dystopian theater performance that takes the climate crisis challenge head-on, Australian playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer asks: What if the whole human race could go to sleep for one year? 

Translated into Hebrew by Adiel Cohney and Dor Yardeny, this is the first time the Australian production is shown here. The audience sees how politics gets done in Canberra and witnesses Australian policy implemented worldwide – impacting lives in Columbia and Nigeria.

“We live far away from the rest of the world and want to connect with it,” Australian-born Cohney told The Jerusalem Post, “so yes, Australians think about the rest of the world more than say – Americans.”

Hibernation is a rare chance to see Australian characters on stage. Yardeny inhabits the role of Warrick, the fictional minister who pushes forth the idea governments around the world should spray a sleeping gas called 54e to the air, and put their citizens to sleep during 2040 for one year. An avid hunter who speaks bluntly, Warrick sees this policy as a way to let nature rest and produce new white rhinos for people like him to kill for sport.

Originally suggested by Emily, a scientist (Gal Madmoni), Warrick steals her idea only to eventually be blamed for much of the unforeseen damage it caused. She suffers too, her husband Pit (Yuval Endeweld) being one of the few humans not effected by 54e. During the year Emily and the whole city slumbers, he meets a woman who – like him – is awake, and leaves his wife for her.

Kruckemeyer’s vision stretches for years; the audience is offered much more than seeing a new policy put to motion. Humanity sees the emergence of large dog packs, set loose by their former masters during the year of sleep for fear that man’s best friend would eat its slumbering pal after a week of starvation.

In the play, their are more consequences than benefits from putting people to sleep

FIRES CLAIM many more lives than normal due to all the firemen being asleep. The oceans teem with fish, but humanity, on a whole, decides to continue plundering the seas for protein with one difference – the novel solution becomes a global Shnat Shmita. Like the seventh year that, under Jewish law, Jewish farmers must offer the earth to rest, the world adopts one year of sleep for every nine years of hunting, fishing, and polluting.

“Relationships is what captures the audience to what is going on the stage,” Yardeny told young viewers after the performance. “If you don’t show what is going on between two characters, there is nowhere to escape to.”

Costume designer Vadim Keshersky created military-style coveralls all actors wear and slowly peel off as time passes. Director Igor Berezin avoided over-the-top acting: Actors do not pretend to speak Spanish-accented Hebrew during the Columbian scenes to demonstrate to us where the scene is happening. Instead, we are offered a very normative examination of a crisis that impacts all.

“The poet Shaul Tchernichovsky famously wrote that man is the imprint of the landscape of his homeland,” Cohney told the Post. “I truly feel at home whenever I see the red dirt of Australia or a Eucalyptus tree.” As an actor, he lauded Berezin for accepting his suggestion Australians speak in a different way than Israelis or even other English speakers.

“In the play, Kruckemeyer has a character accompanying a statement with a question mark,” Cohney explained. “Australians tend to tilt their voice a bit and place a question where one may not be needed. We are a culture that questions its own statements, this was something a little tricky to present in Hebrew.”

On the heels of a scathing State Comptroller report in which Matanyahu Englman highlighted the government’s failure to address Israel’s climate crisis, the Beit Zvi acting school presents an Australian theater piece that takes this matter head on.

‘Hibernation’ by Finegan Kruckemeyer will be offered daily until Tuesday, April 2. Most performances are held at 7:30 p.m. – check exact hours before arrival. Tickets range between NIS 50-60. Call (03) 579-9290 to book. Beit Zvi Theater, Shu’alei Shimshon 2, Ramat Gan. Roles alternate between acting students. Hebrew only.