Hanoch Levin was one of Israel's most prominent dramatists, as well as a theater director, author and poet. He is best known for his dozens of plays, written between 1967 and 1999, the year he died of cancer at the young age of 55.

     His rich and diverse theatrical writing is usually divided into four major groups: the mythical plays, the family and neighborhood plays, the political plays and the music plays. Levin's plays were performed all over the globe – in China and the United States, in South Africa and Poland, in Denmark and in many other countries.

     Levin wrote Shitz in 1974, directly after the Yom Kippur War. The play takes place between two wars – the first very "successful," the second disastrous. Two elderly parents eagerly want to marry off their daughter. Prince Charming arrives and accepts the bargain, and soon the younger generation plots to get rid of the parents. However, the older generation isn’t leaving so easily.

     Shitz is a hilarious, painful tragicomedy with songs, combining family affairs with the shifting environment of the nation's politics. The family and the nation mirror each other – as the bulimic hunger for money and success grows bigger and stronger, the morality of this family and society deteriorate faster and faster.

     The production I directed premiered at The Cameri Theater –Israel’s largest theater and Levin's artistic home since the 1980’s.

-- The Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv, 2011