DUALIDARITÄT

A phone call under rocket fire

Shortly after October 7, 2023, a German playwright calls the Israeli author Avishai Milstein. It's about a big project: An evening of solidarity is to take place at her theater. She has good news for him: the artistic part of the evening will include a staged reading of one of the author's texts. During the phone call, Milstein is sitting in the shelter of his Tel Aviv apartment due to rocket fire and doesn't understand everything the dramaturge is saying. But he is very happy about the interest and solidarity. The dramaturge corrects him: "It's not about solidarity. It's about dualidarity - solidarity with both sides. An imam and the chairman of the local Jewish community are due to speak on the planned evening. The dramaturge only has one small problem: if they read a text by him, the Israeli author, then they also need a text by a Palestinian author. Preferably one from Gaza. Could Milstein perhaps help her find one quickly? Otherwise the whole evening won't work...

No contemporary playwright writes with as much wit and precision about German perspectives on Israel as Avishai Milstein. The mini-drama, commissioned by the Institute for New Social Sculpture, develops at breakneck speed from a comic text to a dismaying stocktaking of the German theater scene's callousness towards Israeli society after October 7th.