Greetings
Hadar Galron
Artistic Director
When Peace Breaks Out
I had written a completely different introduction to this year’s program, but instead, I find myself writing about the guest everyone wants but nobody trusts. War doesn’t knock. It kicks the door down at dawn, shatters the windows, makes itself comfortable in your living room and bedroom.
But Peace? Peace is the guest we’re all suspicious of. What does he want now? Whose side is he on? How long is he gonna stay?
Since October 7th, 2023, we’ve all been creating on edge, performing on edge, living on edge for two years. The stage has felt both too small for everything we need to say, and the only space big enough to hold it.
But here’s what we know in theatre that the rest of the world forgets: peace isn’t the absence of conflict. It’s the presence of dialogue. It’s the exhausting, exhilarating work of bridging. It’s swallowing your ego. It’s choosing to be smart rather than right. It’s holding two contradictory truths in the same breath and letting them coexist in the same scene, on the same stage, in the same sentence. We do that every night. When characters who have every reason to walk away choose, against all logic, to stay.
This year’s Isra-Drama program is vital – not in the self-important way programs claim to be vital, but in the actual sense: full of life, necessary, urgent. Productions that ask the questions we’re all asking. Work that refuses easy answers because easy answers are lies. Theatre that understands peace is harder to stage, harder to believe in – but no less real for all that difficulty.
I invite you to look through the program. Feel it. Then come sit in the dark with strangers, and remember that we’ve been gathering like this for thousands of years, trying to make sense of being human together.
See you soon. We’ll leave the lights on.
Hadar Galron
Artistic Director, Isra-Drama
www.hadargalron.com
Hadar Galron
When Peace Breaks Out
I had written a completely different introduction to this year’s program, but instead, I find myself writing about the guest everyone wants but nobody trusts. War doesn’t knock. It kicks the door down at dawn, shatters the windows, makes itself comfortable in your living room and bedroom.
But Peace? Peace is the guest we’re all suspicious of. What does he want now? Whose side is he on? How long is he gonna stay?
Since October 7th, 2023, we’ve all been creating on edge, performing on edge, living on edge for two years. The stage has felt both too small for everything we need to say, and the only space big enough to hold it.
But here’s what we know in theatre that the rest of the world forgets: peace isn’t the absence of conflict. It’s the presence of dialogue. It’s the exhausting, exhilarating work of bridging. It’s swallowing your ego. It’s choosing to be smart rather than right. It’s holding two contradictory truths in the same breath and letting them coexist in the same scene, on the same stage, in the same sentence. We do that every night. When characters who have every reason to walk away choose, against all logic, to stay.
This year’s Isra-Drama program is vital – not in the self-important way programs claim to be vital, but in the actual sense: full of life, necessary, urgent. Productions that ask the questions we’re all asking. Work that refuses easy answers because easy answers are lies. Theatre that understands peace is harder to stage, harder to believe in – but no less real for all that difficulty.
I invite you to look through the program. Feel it. Then come sit in the dark with strangers, and remember that we’ve been gathering like this for thousands of years, trying to make sense of being human together.
See you soon. We’ll leave the lights on.
Hadar Galron
Artistic Director, Isra-Drama
www.hadargalron.com
Shimrit Ron
Director, The Hanoch Levin Institute of Israeli Drama
Noam Semel
Chairman
Isra-Drama 2025: Reinventing Ourselves
Generally, when I think about the people who organize international festivals and cultural events, the usual issues come up – the artistic program, relevance, logistics, food, transport... But if you happen to be Israeli, and have to produce the International Exposure of Israeli Theatre every year in November, there is a very good chance that you will encounter surprises: on 6 October 2023, we sent out the program, we were so excited, just one day before the massacre; last year, about 40 guests had already made arrangements to come here, in spite of the war, but just one evening of exchanging rocket fire with Iran persuaded the airlines to suspend all flights to Israel; and every time we finally managed to put together a program, thanks to the creative forces of the theatre artists here, who continued to articulate their perspective, their ability to survive in the face of their own personal experiences, and to convey their painful and incisive messages – every time this happened, we suddenly found ourselves charged with the surprising task of packaging the program in an online version, filming cultural programs, and endeavoring to challenge the world’s patience and interest in order to remain relevant.
This year, the war suddenly ended. Literally in the space of a few days. The living hostages, for whose return everyone had been waiting, all came home in one go; and evacuees from Israel’s north, south, and center are slowly starting to rebuild their lives. After two years of living with the sirens, running to bomb shelters and protected spaces, black humor, and demonstrations – suddenly Tel Aviv is back to normal, offering a wealth of culture and food, and we are delighted to host you here without the need to explain what you have to do if and when a siren sounds.
The program, quite naturally, includes several plays engaging with the war and the personal experiences of the creators. For example, Shura: The Mission of Identifying Life by Roee Joseph, which describes his experiences as a reservist Military Police Criminal Investigation Division investigator tasked with identifying fatalities of the massacre; in Everything Remains Alive, a Japanese folktale by Dana Keila and Yarden Gilboa, a loving wife sets out on a journey in search of a cure for her husband who returned from the battlefield an angry man; and My Red Nose by Ilya Domanov of Malenky Theatre, which presents October 7 from the perspective of medical clowns at Barzilai Medical Center, who, with the doctors and nurses, faced an endless flow of casualties and desperate families searching for their loved ones.
And alongside these plays, there is also an abundance of puppet theatre, comedies, dramas, performance shows, Kafka seasoned with artificial intelligence, stage adaptations of films and Jewish myths, as well as an interactive performance invented by Danielle Cohen Levy, and inspired by the life of Alexei Navalny.
Because even in times of war, even when it hurts, even when uncertainty rises – people continue going to the theatre, as they have always done (or so it seems).
We hope you enjoy the program, that it inspires you and raises questions; and invite you to meet with creators and directors of cultural institution who could be your partners in future collaborations.
The era of surprises is over (at least for now), and we invite you to join us in an era of dialogue and partnerships.
Shimrit Ron
Isra-Drama 2025: Reinventing Ourselves
Generally, when I think about the people who organize international festivals and cultural events, the usual issues come up – the artistic program, relevance, logistics, food, transport... But if you happen to be Israeli, and have to produce the International Exposure of Israeli Theatre every year in November, there is a very good chance that you will encounter surprises: on 6 October 2023, we sent out the program, we were so excited, just one day before the massacre; last year, about 40 guests had already made arrangements to come here, in spite of the war, but just one evening of exchanging rocket fire with Iran persuaded the airlines to suspend all flights to Israel; and every time we finally managed to put together a program, thanks to the creative forces of the theatre artists here, who continued to articulate their perspective, their ability to survive in the face of their own personal experiences, and to convey their painful and incisive messages – every time this happened, we suddenly found ourselves charged with the surprising task of packaging the program in an online version, filming cultural programs, and endeavoring to challenge the world’s patience and interest in order to remain relevant.
This year, the war suddenly ended. Literally in the space of a few days. The living hostages, for whose return everyone had been waiting, all came home in one go; and evacuees from Israel’s north, south, and center are slowly starting to rebuild their lives. After two years of living with the sirens, running to bomb shelters and protected spaces, black humor, and demonstrations – suddenly Tel Aviv is back to normal, offering a wealth of culture and food, and we are delighted to host you here without the need to explain what you have to do if and when a siren sounds.
The program, quite naturally, includes several plays engaging with the war and the personal experiences of the creators. For example, Shura: The Mission of Identifying Life by Roee Joseph, which describes his experiences as a reservist Military Police Criminal Investigation Division investigator tasked with identifying fatalities of the massacre; in Everything Remains Alive, a Japanese folktale by Dana Keila and Yarden Gilboa, a loving wife sets out on a journey in search of a cure for her husband who returned from the battlefield an angry man; and My Red Nose by Ilya Domanov of Malenky Theatre, which presents October 7 from the perspective of medical clowns at Barzilai Medical Center, who, with the doctors and nurses, faced an endless flow of casualties and desperate families searching for their loved ones.
And alongside these plays, there is also an abundance of puppet theatre, comedies, dramas, performance shows, Kafka seasoned with artificial intelligence, stage adaptations of films and Jewish myths, as well as an interactive performance invented by Danielle Cohen Levy, and inspired by the life of Alexei Navalny.
Because even in times of war, even when it hurts, even when uncertainty rises – people continue going to the theatre, as they have always done (or so it seems).
We hope you enjoy the program, that it inspires you and raises questions; and invite you to meet with creators and directors of cultural institution who could be your partners in future collaborations.
The era of surprises is over (at least for now), and we invite you to join us in an era of dialogue and partnerships.
