"Leviathan. The Final Act"

This work reflects my experience as a theatre production designer and takes the form of a sketch for a possible stage set. At the center of the composition is the “belly of the whale,” interpreted as a prison-like structure. In the biblical narrative, this space represents isolation, given to Jonah not as punishment but as a forced pause — a moment in which a person, deprived of movement, is left alone with the need to reconsider his mission and its meaning. In my work, I aim to show how the story of Jonah today has lost its status as a sacred text. It is perceived as a tale, almost naïve, essentially a puppet theatre performance in which the myth has been translated into a conditional stage language. What remains of it is a rusted stage set: fragments of a structure without a stage, actors, or audience. The philosophical meaning of the myth no longer operates — it survives only as a material memory of a once-performed story. Against this background, the sparrows become the only living presence. In Ashkenazi literary tradition, they are sometimes interpreted as a symbol of the small and vulnerable existence of the Jewish people. Thus, the work records the disintegration of the myth into theatrical traces, leaving in this emptied space a minimal, almost vanishing but still living gesture of presence.