The Kishon look: The third annual Israeli Comedy Festival

They say that comedy is tragedy plus time. That sagacious view of how temporal gaps can allow us to joke about cataclysmic events that were anything but funny to those who experienced them informs the programming of this year’s Ephraim Kishon Israeli Comedy Festival, due to run for five days in the capital, August 18-22.

The third edition is based at its perennial anchor of Mazia House and the Incubator Theater company, with shows and other slots lined up at other venues around town, such as Nocturno, the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio, and Holtzer Books. It takes place close to the centenary of the birth of the eponymous satirist who – to use an overused epithet – was a legend in his own time. Kishon wrote close to 50 books, nine plays, and five movies, including the quintessential Israeli satires Sallah Shabati and The Policeman, in 1964 and 1971 respectively, which were nominated for Oscars for Best Foreign Film and won Golden Globe awards.

Almost 20 years after his death in Switzerland, where he spent much of his time in his later years, one wonders what Kishon might have said and written about the current human tragedy and political quagmire. Founder-artistic director of the festival Yiftach Leibovitch believes that Kishon would not have balked at finding insightful and illuminating humor, even in these most trying of times. “Good comedy needs a strong dramatic root. Good comedy is based on great drama,” Leibovitch observes. Sadly, this country continues to have its fair share of that.

“We have that in place,” he adds with a wry smile. “Comedy has a lot of satire and parody, and we have works that address the here and now. Our aim is to engage in the here and now and to create art.” That sounds like an attempt to grapple with the tougher sides of life in an artistic and, if possible, entertaining way without looking to sidestep the issues at hand. “I don’t think that provides escapism, but you can get that if you are looking for it.”

The artistic director says the festival is about anything but throwaways designed to elicit cheap laughs and/or thrills. “We basically believe in creating good quality art, which is intelligent and challenging and also raises a smile. Perhaps laughing out loud is not appropriate right now, but a smile is fine.”

Kishon, one presumes, would have gone for that wholeheartedly. “We close the festival with a 100th birthday celebration for him,” Leibovitch notes. It’s a shame Kishon won’t be there in corporeal form. “I think it is a match made in heaven,” Leibovitch chuckles. “As a big fan of his, part of the time [in the run-up to the festival] I thought about what Ephraim Kishon would have written about this period of time. It is an honor and also a great responsibility to look at the situation through his eyes and figure out how we, contemporary artists, convey our own viewpoint on what is happening.”

That inevitably takes on shades and nuances as it filters through the Kishon prism. “We examine how we think about ourselves in this whole situation.”

Leibovitch offers programmatic collateral

“There is an event at the festival called “The Sweet Revenge of Picasso’s Sweet Revenge.’” That feeds off a book Kishon published toward the end of his life, in 2004. It was not an instant bestseller and, in fact, drew flak aplenty.

“Kishon wrote a book called Picasso’s Sweet Revenge, which got revolting criticism,” he explains. “The book is a critique of modern art. He weighs into modern art in his own witty style, and it was very poorly received here.”

That historical and societal backdrop provides a fertile springboard for earnest artistic and comedic endeavors. It is also a freewheeling affair with a bunch of stand-up comedians offering non-PC-compliant observations about the current socio-political lay of the land.

“These are all top comics, like Guy Adler and Carmel Zaig,” says Leibovitch. As any jazz musician will tell you, you generally need a solid melodic base before you fly off in some improvisational direction or other. The Kishon art critique sequel has a crafted structure in place. “There is a designer who creates six works of art, and the stand-up comedians will encounter them for the first time, on the stage.”

The comics will go with their professional flow. “They will make humorous comments about the works and will expound on why they are sublime creations.” That, says Leibovitch, is in keeping with the Kishon way. I asked whether the seminal Israeli satirist hedged his bets at all when it came to airing his views. “Was he cautious? I think he liked to express his opinion and didn’t limit himself in any way in that regard.”

‘State pardon’

That did not come without a price.

The Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor lived the majority of the last two decades of his life in peaceful rural Switzerland due to his unpopularity in the mostly Left-leaning Israeli media and his sense of not being fully embraced by Israeli society as a whole. Indeed, he was probably better known and more admired abroad than in the country where he made his home shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel. And that was notwithstanding his highly successful directorial contributions to the aforementioned Oscar-nominated movies, which, presumably, would have made him, as the first Israeli filmmaker to achieve international success, a national hero here. Kishon also won a slew of Israeli literary awards, as well as the 2002 Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

Typically, Kishon couldn’t pass up a golden opportunity to take a caustic political stance and poke a finger in the chest of the then-Left-wing hierarchy: “I’ve won the Israel Prize, even though I’m pro-Israel. It’s almost like a state pardon. They usually give it to one of those liberals who love the Palestinians and hate the settlers.”

In the stark light of day

Like practically every cultural exercise here since Oct. 7, the tremors of that physical and emotional earthquake ripple across the Israeli Comedy Festival lineup. There are, unsurprisingly, quite a few works that have reality vis-à-vis dreams, as well as rude awakenings, sewn into their story lines. Among the mammoth 60 events due to take place across the five-day agenda are half a dozen original works, all of which, in some form or another, reference the divide between hope and the flipside inescapable cold light of day.

Cevice, written by Or Yisraeli and directed by Ella Nikolayevski, tells the sorry tale of Alona, who – eventually – has her childhood naïveté decimated and subsequently has to grapple with a catalog of challenging existential developments. “This is a play about a woman going through a midlife crisis. She has just separated from her husband. They have an adolescent son, and the tooth fairy appears to make her childhood wish come true,” Leibovitch explains. The latter sounds nice until we learn that the time-lapse is not exactly to Alona’s advantage. “The fairy grants Alona’s wish and turns her into a mermaid. That leaves her stuck in the world as a mermaid. We also learn something about the realms of fairies. Fairies, it seems, actually exist.”

That may very well be a matter of faith, and Cevice inevitably brings the audience face to face with the facts on the ground. “Basically, Cevice talks about the disintegration of the home, the lack of control, and reality and dreams.” Sounds painfully true to our current circumstances. “Yes, it is relevant,” Leibovitch sighs, “and this is an exceptional team of artists.” It often helps the bitter pill to go down when it is served up in deftly fashioned packaging.

There are more sobering epiphanies on the cards in the festival program. Shebura (Broken), for example, is described as “not a normal show, rather an event that strives to test the boundaries of a live show.” The work, written by Binyamin Yom Tov, Daniel Magon, and Shani Shabtai, centers on a fragile lass with a messiah complex who sets off with a couple of pals for a rollicking night on the town, which gradually fizzles out.

“This is a story of a fantasy that disintegrates into reality and blurs the demarcation line between a stage show and a party that continues on until the last person breaks.” The reality-versus-dream-fantasy leitmotif is clearly front and center here too. “This talks about the crisis in the girl’s life, and the crisis in our lives,” Leibovitch adds, somewhat superfluously.

Anti-aging also mines the disillusionment seam. The festival textual complement calls it “a story about an exhausting and fun journey through loneliness, love, father figures, and dreams.”

The artistic director also figures on the creator roster with Conversations with the Barman. “This is a show that has been running for quite a few years in Tel Aviv, which has been sold out and features all sorts of stars,” he notes. The basic plan of action has a bunch of actor-comedians sitting around a bar in an actual watering hole and engaging in satirical-humorous repartee. The likes of showbiz celebrities Shlomo Baraba and Doveleh Navon have put in appearances over the years.

“There are monologues and dialogues about life, and in general,” says Leibovitch. He also confesses to having an ulterior motive behind the programming decision. “I wanted the actors to come to Jerusalem, to meet a Jerusalem audience and for the Jerusalem audience to meet them,” he laughs. Notwithstanding its vintage, Leibovitch says he is looking forward to seeing how the show at Nocturno pans out. “It changes every time. I am curious about the direction it will take this time out.”

With all that quality entertainment on offer, along with screenings of Kishon movies; Poetry Slam on love and war; an appearance by Dr. Rafi Kishon, who will enlighten the audience about his famous dad; concerts; and free activities for families, I wondered whether Leibovitch expects to see audiences leave feeling better about themselves and life in general. “I believe in the power of art to move people, make them laugh, and produce a tear or two. I hope that all the events will move the heart. That is important to me.”

As befitting this most emotive and trying juncture in our history, Leibovitch says he is looking to provide us with substantial fare and a meaningful experience. “This is not the time to try to make people laugh hysterically. But I do want to provoke thought and move people. Laughter is also one of the ways we express our feelings. It is enjoyment. As an artistic director, I want to feel movement in my heart. That is what I look for in works. I believe all the works in the festival will do that.”

There never seems to be a shortage of poignant and emotive real-life raw material for artists to work off, but wouldn’t it be nice to have less of the traumatic stuff to fuel the creators’ efforts? 

“I wish that next year we will have fewer topics to discuss and that everyone returns home safely and soon, and we can all laugh together, not cry.”■

For tickets and more information: did.li/XnSCN and did.li/q2XlC