Month: October 2023

Model

Posted by: ines Posted on: October 4, 2023 , , , ,

 

Alit Kreiz invites three distinctive women of different ages to be her friends on stage for just one hour. What they all have in common is the magnetizing passion to exist within a work of art, in front of an audience. Their identity is built and dismantled by the audience’s gaze at them, and their gaze at the audience. They play remembering and forgetting, exile and belonging, beginnings and endings. Their personal narratives become entangled; the layers of their stories are revealed as part of an emotional striptease, and accumulate on stage as a pile of underwear alongside bouquets of flowers from a never-ending premiere. The performance looks at the models in our life; it empowers us to overcome expectations about our identities and roles, and leads us to truly understand what inspires us to be ourselves.

Model is a work that will read your thoughts, a work that will fantasize about you, that will make you its best friend. It will take care of you, and in the end also thank you.

Alit Kreiz is a performance art creator, an actress, and a lecturer. For the past twenty-five years she has been devising multidisciplinary performance-based, autobiographical, audience participation, and site-specific works. Her devised projects aim to investigate an open and honest way of communication, in order to reach a mutual humanistic understanding. Alit has been performing both in Europe and Israel. As artistic director of A2 Company, a London-based performance collaboration (1999-2015), Alit presented works in London, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Dortmund, Ljubljana, and Jerusalem. Alit also co-created works as a member of The People Show Company, the legendary UK performance art group. In Israel, Alit created solo autobiographical performances at Tmu-na Theatre and Tel Aviv Museum. Her recent autobiographical ensemble creation is performed at Habait Theatre. Her site-specific and participatory works have been presented at Tel Aviv Museum, The City Museum, Tel Aviv, Hulda Forest, Petach Tikva Museum for Modern Art, The Pussycat – ExStrip Club, Israel Festival, Mekudeshet Festival, Loving Art-Making Art Festival, Haifa Museum for Modern Art, Hazira Performance Art Arena, and Tel Aviv Site-Specific Festival, among others.

Name Drop: Hacameri

Posted by: ines Posted on: October 4, 2023 , , , ,

Name Drop: Hacameri is an event that examines the moments in which music becomes the soundtrack of our lives. Or is music just an excuse? Six performers with a cache of defining moments tied inexorably, almost involuntarily, to music, attempt to bring into words the connection between the wound and its tune – whether that tune is Nina Simone, Charlie Megira, techno, or the fantasy of becoming a musical theatre soloist… Love and disappointment, death and separation, sex and personal crusades – all of our lives have soundtracks. Unique, singular, burned into our psyches, ungoverned and unequivocal. The journey of Name Drop is a verbalization of life – intimate, painful – through the music that has always been there, that suddenly pops up, that will always take us back. Like a scent from our childhood, like mother’s cooking… Name Drop: Hacameri is an unusual move in the established repertoire theatre, that has adapted and re-produced a show that was born in fringe theatre. 

Jason Danino Holt is an interdisciplinary artist known for his roles as a theatre maker, writer, visual artist, teacher, and artistic director. In 2019, after a decade as an independent theatre maker, he formalized his work into a theatre company, expanding its reach both nationally and internationally. He is also the co-artistic director and founder of Habait Theatre in Jaffa. Jason’s projects span various artistic mediums, consistently exploring new forms of expression. His signature style combines autobiography with fiction, embracing diversity in the pursuit of progressive ideals. His work delves into complex narratives, employing art as a powerful tool to navigate intricate dimensions of existence, particularly emphasizing underrepresented stories, and promoting inclusivity.

A Good Place Everything Is Bad

Posted by: Vg Admin Posted on: October 4, 2023 , , ,

Winner of Best Director and Best Playwright Awards at the Ephraim Kishon Comedy Festival.
A theatrical piece about a father, who is actually a child, and his two daughters. This is a fantastical autobiographical show where fiction, humor, and sorrow are the substance of everyday life. The protagonist is seventy-four-year-old Nachmi Dreamer, a controversial social media influencer, a rebel, a widower, a lonely man who dreams of becoming a writer. Through his many writings, personal diary snippets, failed plays, and fantastic pieces of prose that have never seen the light of day, the audience is exposed to a funny, sad, and absurd chain of existential moments. These are both touching and distressing at the same time.

A fourteen-year-old boy plays Nachmi, while the two sisters, Anat and Nurit Dreamer, play themselves. Together they seek to reveal the experience of growing up with a single parent who never actually behaved like a father; childish, helpless, mischievous, and without boundaries. Through this fascinating personal family story, the creators raise questions about the relationship between loss, madness, theatre, and love.

 

 

Nurit Dreamer is a director, creator, and performer. A graduate of the School of Visual Theatre, Jerusalem (2018), she received an award for excellence from the Jerusalem Foundation in 2016 and 2018. She studied and trained in various programs, including Jan Fabre, Yasmeen Godder, and Itzik Giuli. Her stage works: Kushelirabak and You’ll Never Walk Alone. Public art works: Intimately at the Football Stadium and Talking with Strangers on the Bus. She has performed her own works in several festivals, including The Train Festival, Intimadance, and Israel Festival. She has exhibited in various spaces, including The New Gallery Artists’ Studios Teddy, and Ma’amuta Art Center in Jerusalem. She is currently studying cinema and history.

 

Anat Dreamer is a multidisciplinary performer, writer, director, spoken word artist, workshop facilitator, and creative consultant. She studied dance theatre at Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts, and trained in various programs including Jan Fabre, Ivo Dimchev, Sharon Zuckerman Veizer, and Yasmeen Godder. Stage works: The Rest of Cherub, a live poetry and animation show, Saving Shifuk, Lilith: A Fantastic Mythical Thriller, and Flour Ball – A Surrealist Celebration of Death. Street performances: The Chariot, a traveling street performance, and Star Mail, a community art project. She participated in Basic Instinct, a satirical musical cabaret show based on the testimonies of female soldiers who served in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Death Imprint

Posted by: Vg Admin Posted on: October 4, 2023 , , , ,

The Death Imprint delves into Eva’s complex world as a second-generation child, born into a legacy of trauma resulting from her mother surviving Libya’s horrors, and her father’s Holocaust orphan past. He attributes his abusive behavior to Hitler’s lingering presence, which he believes controls him. Eva’s turbulent journey begins in childhood, when she “inherits” Hitler from her father following his serious injury in a suicide attempt. Hitler offers an agreement – if she hides him in her head, he will save her father in return. And so, Hitler inflames her anger and distances her from her family. As she grows older, her rage increases, leading to a suicide attempt and psychiatric hospitalization. A compassionate young psychiatrist offers hope, determined to free Eva from Hitler’s grip. Can she sever her deepest, most troubling relationship?

The play alternates between Eva’s stark present and her haunting past, using surrealism, circus elements, and psycho-drama to explore the human psyche. It delves into historical trauma, abuse, and mental health with sensitivity and humor, engaging the audience in a thought-provoking journey. The Death Imprint is an emotionally charged exploration of Eva’s life, inviting reflection on the enduring legacy of historical trauma, and the power of resilience.

Meirav Gruber is a versatile playwright and actress. At the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv, her roles include Sheindele, The Merchant of Venice, Murder, Mother Courage, and The Rebels (Actress of the Year), among others. At Habima National Theatre: Tamara, Betrayed, and The Ad. At Beit Lessin Theatre: A Streetcar Named Desire, and many others. Tahel Theatre featured her in All About My Mother and Vincent River. She ventured into playwriting with The Death Imprint. Her television presence includes series such as The Comedy Store, Scandal, Saturdays and Holidays, In Treatment, The Champion, The Dreamers, New York, Malaby Express, and Virgins, as well as many films, including Purple Grass and Real Time.

 

Sivane Kretchner is the co-founder of Tahel Theatre, and was its co-artistic director and dramaturg from 2012 to 2016. Her directing credits include Only The Distressed Remains, Inverted Sky (a rock opera, winner of the Golden Hedgehog Award for Best Performance), and The Death Imprint. She created Alterman in French, and performed in it under the name Siv-Anne. She performed in numerous theatre productions, and is currently part of the Mediatheque Theatre. Cinema credits include Sarah in The Reports of Sarah and Salim (Muayad Alayan), and Kochi in Single Plus (Dover Kosashvili). Television: Mikmik in The Secret of Michal’s Songs, and Dina in Johnny and the Knights of Galilee.

 

Produced with support of:

EVE, a non-profit organization of independent theatre and the performance arts creators

Ministry of Culture

Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts

Because the Night

Posted by: ines Posted on: October 4, 2023 , , , ,

Because the Night is a one-off art event. Twenty-one participants board a dark ride built especially for the event in a south Tel Aviv hangar, and go on a journey through the misty and starry darkness of the night. The journey inside the train cars carries the passengers/participants into a world of animals and nocturnal creatures, ghosts and spacemen. Traveling between rooms and forests, planets and stars, the ride slowly builds up into an all-encompassing, mesmerizing experience that echoes contemporary realities and dreams.

Because the Night is an invitation to an extraordinary mystery tour, an immersive art and performance experience in which we’re pulled into the depths of night, and fly into the future. A dark ride through a parallel universe.

Guy Gutman is an artist and director. His works have been featured in many international and Israeli festivals. He is the director of Miklat 209, and former head of the School of Visual Theatre. 

 

Gabi Kricheli is a multidisciplinary artist, and holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Alongside his visual practice, Kricheli is also a musician and a set designer for dance and theatre.

Ensemble 209 is a contemporary theatre company that operates in a wide artistic field. The group includes artists, performers, researchers, and intellectuals who work as a collective.

*Number of passengers: 21

*Participation is by advance registration with the Isra-Drama production staff.

Narkis

Posted by: ines Posted on: October 4, 2023 , , , , ,

With his follow-up piece to the cult hit show Tavas (Peacock), Binyamin returns to the stage. This time, he engages with his own reflections. He explores his body, the way he walks, and the glint in his eyes. As a homosexual man, he plays with the possibility of being attracted to himself, taking himself on a date, and having a romantic relationship with himself. Blurring the boundaries between the biographical and the imaginary, Binyamin embarks on a psychedelic journey that starts at a nightclub in Tel Aviv, and winds up on Mount Olympus. He uses ancient and contemporary archetypes to redefine the common perception of “narcissism” as self-love that may lead to healing rather than destruction. Accompanied by live electronic music, Binyamin fuses stand-up comedy, classic theatre, and visual theatre, transforming the tragic myth of Narcissus into a contemporary and absurd comedy. Winner of Best Actor Award from the Israeli Comedy Festival, and at The Ephraim Kishon Comedy Festival in Jerusalem. 

 

Binyamin Yom Tov is a multifaceted actor and creator from Tel Aviv, known for his award-winning performance in the show Tavas. Binyamin’s artistic exploration is often themed around identity, stereotypes, archetypes, and blurring the lines between autobiography and fantasy. He grew up in Netanya, a city in Israel’s geosocial periphery, steeped in a conservative atmosphere, the youngest of four children in a traditional Jewish-Persian family. Following his military service, he began studying and practicing different aspects of the performing arts, dreaming of someday creating his own show. Together with Shani Shabtai and Daniel Magon, he created the autobiographical fantasy Tavas, which encapsulates his colorful origins and rich background.

 

Shani Shabtai is a creator, actress, director, and teacher of performance and theatre.

Daniel Magon is a creator, actor, musician, singer, voice actor, director, and translator.

The production is grateful to Ariel Bronz and Danny Carmi Panov. 

Produced with the support of the Israeli Lottery Council for Culture and Arts, Habait Theatre, and Incubator Theatre. The production premiered at the Ephraim Kishon Comedy Festival, where it won Best Actor Award.

I Love You Special

Posted by: ines Posted on: October 4, 2023 , , ,

When my mother ends a phone call with me, she always says: “I love you special”. When I was thinking about a name for the show, I knew this was it. Because this isn’t a normal love between a mother and her daughter, and this isn’t an ordinary love for the theatre.

It’s funny, it’s cruel, it’s twisted, it’s special.

My mother worked at Habima National Theatre for forty years as a casting director; so, when I was six years old, she gave me my first role. My own mother casted me to be one of the children Medea is about to murder. This memory encouraged me to invite her to perform on stage with me. She is seventy-two years old, and this is her first role ever. Using masks of my mother’s face and my own, we exchange our identities, do forbidden things, and create a visual and dramatic ceremony. As you will discover, in my ceremonies, people lose their heads.

Awarded Best Show and Best Director at the Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre, 2022. 

Achinoam Mendelson is a multidisciplinary artist, theatre director, musician, and performer. She creates performance and theatre shows, video art, and also works as a performer, violinist, and dramaturg for several independent Israeli artists. Her works have been shown at Hanut 31 Theatre & Gallery, The Israel Museum, Hazira Performance Art Arena, Habait Theatre, and others. She is a member of the Quantum Choir ensemble that has performed in various museums and theatres in Israel. During her military service as a “Distinguished Musician” (violinist), Mendelson performed with the Tel Aviv Academy Orchestra, and went on a tour in Israel, Germany, and Brazil, under the baton of maestro Zubin Metah.

She holds a degree in Philosophy and Liberal Arts from Shalem College, where she founded the college’s choir. In addition, she holds a degree in Visual Art Creation from the School of Visual Theatre. Her show I Love You Special received Best Director and Best Show Awards at the Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre, 2022. In 2023 she created and curated a series of performance events that took place in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.