Since time immemorial, theatre has sought and explored new ways of communicating with an audience. This is doubly true nowadays, days of a technological and digital revolution in which forms of communication are becoming increasingly sophisticated on the one hand, but which also isolate us from each other, making us more withdrawn, and, consequently, basic human communication becomes more difficult. The artistic creators we shall meet at the presentation have chosen different approaches to address this challenge, albeit never compromising their artistic truth – either by incorporating technological media into the work and utilizing their advantages or by enhancing and refining more traditional performative practices. During the discussion, we will view scenes from their recent works, delve into the creative processes, and ponder the next stage toward which theatre and they themselves are headed.

…a surrealistic, funny and mind-blowing evening… (Marmelada Magazine)
A red carpet for this creation! (Sigal Wisbein, radio)

In this fascistic cabaret, Svironi takes the concept of “a one-woman show” a few steps further: Combining puppets, clowning, stand-up comedy, and songs, she tells the story of a mother raising a child who is destined to become a monster!
Inspired by the actual childhoods of major twentieth-century dictators, Michal Svironi introduces the audience to a visually enchanting world of fantasy. With great originality and humor, she manages to translate a tragic subject into satire, while raising profound questions about parenting, education, and responsibility.
Svironi’s clown interacts with the audience, and in her own special way she makes it laugh about the unlaughable, revealing unspoken fears, doubts, and responsibilities.
Nominated in two categories for the Israeli Fringe Awards: Best Comedienne in a One-Woman Show, and Best Design, and for the Audience Choice Award in Walizka Festival, Poland, in 2017
A Dictator’s Mom participated in festivals in Czech Republic, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Austria, and Israel, and the journey continues…

An amazing creator and performer, a combination between Tom Waits and Mr. Bean. (Daniel Miran)

Michal Svironi is a creator, clown, puppeteer, and comedian. She is a leading independent theatre creator, and lives in Tel Aviv. Her works have been performed for the past fifteen years in twenty countries around the globe (Europe, Far East, and Africa). She brings a personal, yet communicative theatrical language, using mixed genres and humor.
Michal graduated from Ecole Jacques Lecoq, La Sorbonne, clown master Eric Bluet, puppet master Francois Lazaro, and more. Her theatre is constantly researching innovative ways to express deep psychological processes, and transforms them into theatrical events. Her universe is poetic and abstract, absurd and kicking. Specializing in interactivity, she creates for indoor and outdoor spaces, mixing plastic arts, circus, and puppets. Searching for the magic in life and on stage, with her head in the clouds and her feet on the ground!

Sodom, both a mythical place and a geographical and historical site, is transformed by Jackie Pearl’s art into a vivid theatrical vision, speaking to our current times. This poetic and political production is the result of multilayered research crossing archeological layers of taboo and longing.
The biblical story of Lot’s wife is read anew from a contemporary political perspective: Lot’s wife is a refugee escaping an air raid on her town, while two of her daughters remain under fire. She stops and looks back. Her gaze disobeys the divine injunction: “do not look back”. She is punished, and turned into a pillar of salt.
The biblical story is woven together with archival materials recovered by the artist, diary entries telling the story of anonymous female workers in the potassium factory in Sodom in the 1940s. The workers are refugees who escaped the war in Europe, and like Lot’s wife, they too are mothers who have been torn from their children, a condition of their work in Sodom. Their previously unheard voice, emerging from the distant factory and the depths of archives, bears witness to their insubordination.

Jackie Pearl is an interdisciplinary artist and visual theatre creator, an activist and an educator. She graduated from the School of Visual Theatre, the Continuing Education Program at HaMidrasha Faculty of the Arts, and the Theatre Directing and Theatre Education Programs at Kibbutzim College. Her early works, The Child, Lot’s Wife (Sodom), and The Hedgehog, were performed on leading puppet theatre stages in Israel, and in festivals in Berlin, Bucharest, St. Petersburg, and elsewhere.
In 2018, her video work participated in two exhibitions in Hamburg and Kraków.
In 2017, Pearl presented Sodom as part of the Hanut Gallery Theatre’s residency program. Sodom was invited to participate in an exhibition on fata morgana in the desert at Arad Contemporary Art Center, and appeared in the international De Zone group at interdisciplinary art and poetry events.
In 2014, her work Paper Heart Pearl was presented at the Akko Festival of Alternative Theatre, on which she collaborated with director Hanna Vazana Grunwald. Pearl won an award for stage design and artistic language at the Golden Hedgehog Awards in 2015, and the work continued to run as part of the repertoire of Jaffa Theatre.
Pearl taught interdisciplinary art and theatre at the bilingual (Arabic-Hebrew) school in Jaffa for several years, and has participated in prison theatre project and political art projects.

The Silence of the People of the Plane was born out of and resonates a period of stagnation, of personal, social, and political paralysis. It deals with instability and hesitation in complex ways in which silence can be a tool for expression, and can serve as empowerment.
The performance is structured as a sequence of situations, images, and musical moments. It expands and contracts time, slowing down and speeding up sounds and images. It can be seen as a single everlasting sequence, as a serialized action, as a fragmented collection of events, or as a single image. It consists of silences and sounds, songs and moods. The performance space is built as a gallery, as a living exhibition of lights, texts, and sculptural objects.
The Silence of the People of the Plane was devised out of a desire to take time, and therefore it first and foremost allows suspension of time – a quiet time to observe, think, and feel.
Within the noise of social-political reality, in the tumult of post-actuality, the show allows time for reorganization – for remobilization.
Like a silent protest song.

Guy Gutman is a director and interdisciplinary artist. His works include: Oslo, recently performed at Theatre Garonne in France, Non Troppo, performed at the Israel Festival, and Eleison, presented at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Together with Tamar Raban, he co-directed The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Old Wives Tales and Cookies, which were performed in various festivals in Israel and around the world.
He directed Amplifier and Remix.
In 2010, Old Wives Tales and Amplifier were chosen by Time Out for best performances of the decade.
He was director of the School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem from 2009 to 2017, the founder and artistic director of the International Performance Gathering, and co-founder and current editor of the online journal Maakaf.