Israeli duo brings dark comedy born of Oct. 7 to Pittsburgh

In a war of narratives, two Israeli actors are hoping to conquer with punchlines.

Roy Horovitz and Hadar Galron, creators of “The Final Final Solution,” a play exploring life’s complexities post-Oct. 7, are bringing their work to Pittsburgh on Feb. 18 for an evening of laughs and tears.

Less an emotional dichotomy than a singular expression of attitude, the show speaks to the Jewish spirit, the artists told the Chronicle by phone from Israel.

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“Laughter is a psychological survival mechanism,” Horovitz said. Whether it “makes it more bearable or makes it make a bit of some sense,” laughing helps people not only confront horror but move beyond.

“Throw anything at us — the Holocaust — and we find the punchline,” he said. “This is very typical to our way of surviving.”

“The Final Final Solution” features staged vignettes and songs, performed by Galron and Horovitz, interspersed with documentary footage from Oct. 7.

Written by Galron, the work, which oscillates between caustic, chilling and hysterical, represents her immediate reaction to Hamas’ assault on Israel.

“It hit me at the core,” the Israeli academic, stand-up comic and award-winning writer said of the attack. “When something so violent breaks out, the first thought of any parent is, ‘How am I going to take care of my kids?’” As parents, an unspoken covenant is established from “the day they’re born that our love will keep them safe, and even we get to believe in that.” However, after the events of Oct. 7, “I suddenly felt that I’d failed my kids — that we’d done something really wrong — and that I can’t promise them what I wanted for them.”

Fear ignites various responses; for Galron, the first was physical, she said. “My body knew before my mind that I was really stressed in the motherhood way, because my menstruation stopped on the seventh of October, 2023, and did not come back since.”

The next response partnered mind and body, she said. “For a very long time, I did not eat any meat or even fish because there was something so terrifying in the way the people were butchered.”

Consumed by thoughts, Galron turned to a familiar outlet: composition.

“Since the seventh of October I’ve been writing myself out of my mind or into my mind more,” she said. “That’s my way of exploring myself and trying to  understand what’s going on with me, what’s going on with me in all the senses.”

Galron called her mind a “bit crazy,” and said her writings post-Oct. 7 were often comedic. “My protection is humor.”

Horovitz knew this about his Bar-Ilan University colleague, so when an opportunity arose to develop a new work about Oct. 7 he reached out.

The offer, Horovitz said, came during an Albanian theater festival in 2024. While he was there, directors of an Estonian festival that welcomes shows from conflict zones worldwide approached him and said they’d never featured an Israeli production. They asked him, he said, whether he had anything in mind.

Horovitz returned to Israel, reached out to Galron and told her they had six months to assemble a production because he’d already “sold it.”

Galron used the opportunity to pair earlier compositions with new writing. She began practicing alongside Horovitz, who served as director. Once complete, they brought the show to Estonia, then Hungary.

Welcoming “The Final Final Solution” to Pittsburgh was imperative, Classrooms Without Borders founder and executive director Tsipy Gur told the Chronicle. She worked with the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh to co-sponsor the show, which will be held at Congregation Beth Shalom.

Following its Pittsburgh performance, “The Final Final Solution” is headed to Chicago. By the time it reaches the American stages, more than two years will have elapsed since Oct. 7. Still, Horovitz isn’t worried that material concerning the war’s beginning feels dated.

“Oct. 7 is what triggered it, but we went way beyond this point to dealing with antisemitism and boycotting, and the hypocrisy and double standards of the world, and the ignorance and people getting their information just from TikTok,” he said. As for the play’s material, “I count on the antisemites to keep it relevant. For as long as they exist, I think it’ll stay relevant.”

Another mechanism for keeping things fresh is revision. Since the initial drafting, Galron and Horovitz have added jokes, tweaked barbs and introduced new means for sounding alarms.

After President Donald Trump came to Israel in October, Horovitz and Galron inserted a quip about his visit to the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo.

The joke, as Horovitz recounted for the Chronicle, begins with Trump leaving the site and a new cage being erected. What’s more impressive than the cage, though, is what’s inside: a lamb and a wolf. Given the unusual nature of the pairing, people ask Trump how he did it. The president replies, “It’s very simple. Every day a new lamb.”

The countless jabs and jests filling “The Final Final Solution” aren’t intended to obfuscate the work’s depth, the Israelis said.

The show is a “dark comedy” that fuses hilarity with heartrending pain. If an attendee isn’t certain whether to laugh or cry “then we’ve done it,” Galron said, because sometimes those reactions “can really be on the same spot.”

Still, complexity and confusion are not the same.

“In a way, this is a war of narratives because so much of it is on social media, and so much is out there,” she said. “There are things that you can argue about. You don’t know what river and what sea; you don’t know where this space is. But there are things that are true, and the only things that are very, very, clear are the people who are dead, are the people who are injured, are the people who have no homes left. How are we telling ourselves this story in order to be stronger? How are we telling ourselves the story of this past, and connecting the dots right back to at least 80 years ago — if not further back — so that we understand where we’re headed?”

Like the play itself, the questions should lead to a conclusion that extends beyond comedy, Galron said. “Don’t be afraid to speak your truth. Don’t be afraid to be who you are.”

“The Final Final Solution” will occur Feb. 18 at 7:30 p.m. at Beth Shalom Congregation, 5915 Beacon Street. Tickets are $18 for an adult and $5 for a student. Registration available at cwbpgh.org/event/the-final-final-solution. PJC

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.