Lazaretto

“Citizens of Tel Aviv, there is no cause for alarm, we are aware of the situation and making the utmost effort to resolve it as quickly as possible. Soldiers have been positioned around the city for your protection. Do not attempt to leave the city.”

It is a stormy winter in Tel Aviv, the highway is flooded, and one night all of the bridges leading into the city collapse. Within 24 hours, a barrier wall is erected along Tel Aviv’s southern border and the heart of the city is cut off from the rest of Israel. The TV and radio are restrained by a gag order; telephone and internet services are cut off; food and essentials are running out, and the government’s only announcements are vague messages to stay indoors and remain calm. The city’s residents are thrust into a state of extreme uncertainty—a quarantine without signs of a plague, or a siege without the echoes of war— and move from their typical blasé attitude to existential despair, and the realization that they must take matters into their own hands.

Lazaretto is a term for a quarantine station for people suspected of carrying infectious disease. It is also the name of a café in Tel Aviv where playwright Laydik Brod and his circle of artistic friends meet every day, to try to piece together what has happened, what it all means, and how it relates to their shared history and ultimate destiny. As days turn to weeks, they cope with food shortages, suspicions and rumors, and the rise of two renegade factions, the Jackals who wish to enforce a rule of law and the neo-homeless, outsiders stranded in the city, who have become increasingly hostile and desperate.