'This is a historical Israeli play': Spectatorship, ownership and the israeli localizations of Salomé

This article traces the reception of Oscar Wilde's play Salomé in Israeli theatre by focusing on the engagement of two artists - writer and translator Pinchas Sadeh and theatre director Ofira Henig - with the play at two different periods. In Salomé, Wilde utilizes his perception of Judaism, as well as the Song of Songs, for the creation of a theatrical space in which spectatorship and ownership are subverted and displaced. At the same time, ironically, the biblical and 'Jewish' presence in the play was fundamental for claims of ownership made by some in Hebrew and Israeli culture, asserting that the play somehow belonged to Hebrew culture and the Land of Israel. Despite these claims, the actual reception of Salomé in Israeli theatre proved that the play's 'belonging' was far more tenuous. The article examines how the tensions between the seen and the unseen, between owning and disowning and between placement and displacement play out - in almost opposite directions - in Sadeh's ideological reasoning for translating Salomé and in Henig's production of it.