Pre-quel and Se-quel do an Interview
Yuval Steinberg and Ben Sgerski are the creators of the new play "Pre-quel and Se-quel Inherit a Cult," recently staged by the "Work Group" ensemble. A disturbing comedy about members of a pagan cult that worships ventilators, and the camera crew that tries to document them against their will. We asked Ben and Yuval to meet and talk about a comedy that goes beyond the boundaries of realism. They were very excited, because they had heard a lot about one another and had always dreamed of meeting.
Ben: This issue is dedicated to absurd, fantasy, and nonsense. Where do you think our play fits in relation to these categories? Yuval: I think it contains elements of each. For instance, the parts depicting the daily routine of the cult members definitely lean toward the nonsensical, but the play doesn’t fully commit itself to any one of these categories.
Ben: I think the perception of terms like "absurd" or "nonsense" in Israeli society is different from their dictionary definitions. When the media defines a comedy as nonsense, they usually mean: "It doesn't deal with what the Prime Minister said this week, or ethnic background, or your mother-in-law."
Yuval: Not dealing with your mother-in-law is indeed absurd.
Ben: In that sense, our show completely departs from topicality and immediate realism.
Yuval: Regarding the fantasy element, I feel like our show immerses the audience into a different world, at a time when there's a wave of independent plays leaning toward a "documentary" style—there's a current stance that because reality is so extreme, it surpasses any imagination.
Ben: They clearly haven't seen Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
Yuval: To me, that's an anti-imagination movement, and our show is on "Team Imagination." In our play, the fictional world swallows the documentary world whole. It's a bit of a Trojan horse. The show starts with a documentary aesthetic, and very quickly, the fantasy takes over the theatrical event.
Tzachi: To me, good theater is dead theater.
Yuval: Shut up, Tzachi, get out of our faces and don't come back without the egg rolls.
Ben: What I find interesting is that Hebrew theater actually rests on very impressive foundations of fantasy and imagination. It’s built on The Dybbuk and The Golem trilogy, and then Levin, Aloni, Shabtai, and Mundi—fantasy was right at the center. And at some point, I’m not sure when, the boundaries narrowed significantly.
Yuval: Because politics surrendered to populism, current events became the hallmark of comedy. It gradually became what the audience expects to get. People got addicted to reality.
Ben: There’s also an interest from the marketing machine here. To convince someone to write about your show, it has to be an excuse to deal with a more important issue, or a brave confession about your biography, or a basis for a conversation about the issues of the day. A fantastic tale can also address our reality in its own way, but it's a less flashy connection, so it's less lucrative. Unfortunately, that's what we like to do.
Tzachi: Here are your egg rolls. Are you planning to clear out the space anytime soon? My crew is arriving shortly. Luckily for us, they ate at home.
Ben: Luckily for us?
Tzachi: Luckily for us.
Yuval: So we’ll just add that we’re perform—
Tzachi: Shhhhhhhhhhh. We are very lucky.
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