Closing Discussion via Zoom: Isra-Drama guests in conversation with:
Shimrit Ron, Director of The Hanoch Levin Institute of Israeli Drama.
Natalie Feinstein, actress and translator, former member of the Isra-Drama artistic committee.
Month: November 2023
What Happened to the World:
The session offers a global take on some of humanity’s burning issues – from the loneliness epidemic in modern society and the breakdown of the traditional family structure, to the crisis of democracy, geopolitical wars, climate change, and AI technology. All of which compels us to wonder: Where is humanity heading?
Moderator:
Shifra Cornfeld, author, screenwriter, columnist, radio broadcaster, and television host.
Duration: 40 min
Participants:
Tamar Keenan is a theatre director, playwright, translator, dramatist, and winner of the Yosef Millo Award for Outstanding Director, 2022. Since 2016, she has directed over a dozen plays in Israel’s leading theatres. Tamar also serves as the artistic director of Tzavta Theatre in Tel Aviv, and co-artistic director of the theatre’s celebrated One Act Play Festival.
Director of What Happened to The World, a Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv production.
Dr. Carmel Weissman is a researcher and lecturer on digital culture in the multidisciplinary program and the Cohen Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. Her areas of interest are a critical reading of the discourse on technological futurism, and examination of the religious aspects of technology. She owns the podcast “The Post-Human Condition”.
Ilan Ronen was the artistic director of Habima National Theatre from 2004 to 2016, after running two other theatres – The Jerusalem Khan Theatre and The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv. In the past decade, Ilan has paid considerable attention to the expansion of Habima’s international activity.
Director of (R)Evolution, a Gesher Theatre production.
Zvi Sahar is a director, actor, and puppeteer. Sahar established PuppetCinema in 2009, presenting Planet Egg at Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse, NYC.
His works have participated in numerous international festivals, including BAM Next Wave Festival, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Taiwan International Festival of Arts and more. Sahar was named Artistic Director of Itim Ensemble, established by director Rina Yerushalmi.
Director of Step, performed by Itim Ensemble.
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.
Co-creator and director of Because the Night, performed by Ensemble 209.
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.
Creator and performer of Narkis.
Nataly Zukerman is an independent performance artist, dramaturg, artistic director, and lecturer. She has created and participated in numerous theatre, dance, and performance works, globally, spanning her twenty-year career. Nataly’s work deals with notions of body, identity and disability, as she creates autobiographical and interdisciplinary works.
Co-creator and co-director of Blueberry.
Tomer Koppel is a professional actor who has appeared in television and numerous theatre productions. Since 2020, Tomer has been working as a guide for healthy sexuality and sex education for teens in schools.
Co-creator and co-director of Blueberry.
THEATRE IN TIMES OF CRISIS AND WAR
Opening session addressing the current situation in Israel, reflecting on the role of theatre in these uncertain times.
Moderators:
Noam Semel, Chairman of The Hanoch Levin Institute of Israeli Drama
Hadar Galron, Israeli playwright, screenwriter, director, and actress. Her plays have appeared on esteemed stages both in Israel and worldwide.
Duration: 75 min
Participants:
Moshe Kepten is one of the most renowned directors in Israel, currently the artistic director of Habima National Theatre. For three consecutive years, he was the artistic director of the Israel Festival in Jerusalem, an interdisciplinary celebration of art from around the world.
Director of The Labour of Life, performed by Habima National Theatre.
Michal Rovner is a renowned painter, photographer, video artist, and writer who exhibits a varied and evocative body of work. Rovner offers a seamless blend of photography, video, digital art, and painting, in order to express the intensity of her personal experience while applying appropriate symbolism to reflect the broader human condition.
Shirili Deshe has been acting, directing, and writing for the stage and television for the past twenty years. She is a graduate of the Jacques Lecoq Physical Theatre School in Paris.
Co-writer and co-director of A View of the Sea, a Jerusalem Khan Theatre production.
Ariel N. Wolf is a theatre director, movement director, teacher, and actor. In recent years, he has been creating works with his ensemble of performers, an independent group of actors and dancers. Wolf works as a director, choreographer, and dramaturg in different theatres, dance ensembles, and films.
Director of The Lake.
Yigal Azrati is a director, playwright, and the artistic director of Jaffa Theatre, which has been operating since its inception as a home for the joint creation of Arabs and Jews.
Officer Az-Oolay is a clown policewoman who has served on more than 260 shifts during demonstrations around Israel. In 2023, following the war, she initiated a walk from Jerusalem to Gaza.
Yadin Goldman is a theatre and television actor, currently performing in The Death Imprint as part of this year’s program. Yadin was wounded while serving in the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal special forces unit.
Articulating Pain:
The session will invite this year’s leading IsraDrama artists (some of whom have made a name for themselves abroad as well) to discuss their latest work, stretching the boundary between the personal and the social.
Moderator:
Lucy Aharish, acclaimed news anchor, reporter, television host, and actress.
Duration: 40 min
Participants:
Atay Citron is a director, and an emeritus professor of theatre and former chair of the Theatre Department at the University of Haifa, where he founded the pioneering academic training program for medical clowns in 2006. His research interests include shamanism, ritual clowning, medical clowning, and the history of avant-garde performance.
Co-creator and director of Third Person, preformerd by Ebisu Sign Language Theatre.
Ronnie Brodetzky is a director and writer. She is a recipient of the 2020 Rosenblum Performing Arts Award. Her unique works have been performed in leading theatres in Israel, including The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv, Haifa Theatre, and Beer Sheva Theatre.
Director of Short Circuit, a Beer Sheva Theatre production.
Yair Sherman is an award-winning theatre director and one of the most promising fresh voices in Israeli theatre today. His works have been presented in numerous theatres in Israel and abroad. Sherman teaches at three of Israel’s leading theatre academies.
Director of Hamlet, a Beit Lessin Theatre in Honor of Baruch Ivcher production.
Anat Dreamer is a multidisciplinary performer, writer, director, spoken word artist, workshop facilitator, and creative consultant.
Co-creator and performer of A Good Place Everything Is Bad, an Incubator Theatre production.
Nurit Dreamer is a director, creator, and performer. She received an award for excellence from the Jerusalem Foundation in 2016 and 2018.
Co-creator and performer of A Good Place Everything Is Bad, an Incubator Theatre production.
Hana Vazana-Grunwald is a director, playwright, and theatre group facilitator. She is a recipient of the Rosenblum Prize for Performing Arts (2022), and the Minister of Culture Award (2023). She is the founder and artistic director of Frechot Ensemble. Her work promotes a theatrical language emphasizing multiculturalism and oriental femininity. Her shows are performed in Israel and abroad.
Director and dramaturg of A Consensual Homicide.
Meirav Gruber is a versatile playwright and actress. She has played many roles in film, television, and theatre, among others in the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv, Habima National Theatre, and Beit Lessin Theatre. She ventured into playwriting with her autobiographical play The Death Imprint.
Playwright of The Death Imprint.
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.
Creator of I Love You Special.
The Lake
Six friends arrange to meet for a restful weekend on the lake. Throughout the play, which lasts for a day, the group spends its time pleasantly. They talk, eat, argue, play, and even try to match two of them who are not yet in a relationship. Seemingly nothing happens, but the “idyllic” lake scenes are interrupted and split by flashback scenes of the characters’ lives outside of that weekend; scenes that reveal the pain and violence in their private lives. The world presented is much less than perfect.
Written in 2014, The Lake describes the state of a society that creates a comfort and artificial reality for itself, in which it can hide from disturbing changes.
“Where are you right now? Where would you like to be at the moment the world ends?”
Mikhail Durnenkov is a Russian playwright, screenwriter, and teacher, currently living in Helsinki. Durnenkov fled Russia to Finland shortly after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Durnenkov’s opposition to Russia’s war against Ukraine had severe personal consequences. Theatres in Russia stopped showing his plays, and there were calls to prosecute him for his anti-war stance.
Ariel N. Wolf is a theater director, movement director, teacher, and actor. In recent years, he has been creating works with his ensemble of performers, an independent group of actors and dancers. Wolf works as a director, choreographer, and dramaturg in different theatres, dance ensembles, and films.
A Consensual Homicide
A Consensual Homicide, which received an honorable mention in The Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre, 2021, deals with the issue of violence against women that culminates in murder.
The story is based on a poem by Iris Elia Cohen, written following the murder of the late Esti Aharonovitz, and biographical materials written by Tehila Azulay-Shaul, inspired by meetings with women at the Center for the Prevention of Domestic Violence.
A Consensual Homicide touches on the mechanism of murder from different points of view: Can murder by consent even exist? Who agrees to such a murder, who cooperates? It raises questions, and confronts us with the place each one of us has within this social reality.
Four actresses cry out not only for the loss of women’s lives, but mainly for the reality of our lives that allows violence, which is becoming more and more normalized.
The texts remind us that gender violence crosses boundaries of identity, and threatens the freedom of all of us.
Hana Vazana-Grunwald is a director, playwright, and theatre group facilitator. She is the recipient of the Rosenblum Prize for Performing Arts (2022), and the Minister of Culture Award (2023). She is the founder and artistic director of Frechot Ensemble. Her work promotes a theatrical language emphasizing multiculturalism and oriental femininity. This is an artistic and political commitment to the silenced voices in Israeli society. Using community theatre tools, she underpins a new genre, poetic-documentary theatre, accentuating her personal, social, and historical experience. Her shows are performed in Israel and abroad.
Iris Eliya-Cohen is an artist, writer, and poet. She received the Yitzhak Navon Heritage Award (2018), and the Prime Minister’s Creativity Award (2015). She has published prose, poetry, as well as children’s books, including bestsellers Makatub, Galbi, Pele – Poems and Songs, and Grandma Turbo series. Her book Galbi and her poems Maternity and A Consensual Homicide were adapted for the theatre, and are currently performing in Israel and abroad.
Tehila Azulay-Shaul is a playwright, actress, and creator of activist and social documentary theatre that works mainly with silenced populations, such as female victims of violence and ultra-Orthodox women. She is the founder of Hashar Theatre for youth from the Ethiopian community. Her works include Thoughtful and Consensual Murder. She is a high-school teacher, a poet, and a producer of spoken word performances. She graduated from the Mandel Program for Cultural Leadership in the Negev, 2021-2022.
Special thanks to EVE, The Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre, Jaffa Theatre, Avi Gibson Bar-El.
Hamlet
This Hamlet belongs to the current generation. Director Yair Sherman bewitches his Generation-Z audience with his Generation-Z interpretation, and merges a political drama with a sharp satire about a young generation that prefers to sit back and not take sides in the political events that threaten to alter Denmark’s values. At the heart of the production lies a passion for theatre that uncovers hopes, anguish, and fears, all of which are the basic patterns for our family life and our society. It is a theatrical evening full of surprises, twists, and inventions. The Beit Lessin ensemble leads the audience on a riveting journey of cultural associations and exciting discoveries. It’s relevant, it’s beautiful, it’s funny – and it forces us to rediscover what we have almost forgotten: that high art can be communicative, and that with the right communication, we can elevate ourselves to become more human, rather than less.
Yair Sherman is an award-winning theatre director, and one of the most promising fresh voices in Israeli theatre today. Sherman was born in San Jose and grew up in Jerusalem. In 2003, he moved to NYC where he studied at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA). After completing his studies, Sherman returned to live in Tel Aviv. He has been working as a theatre director in numerous venues in Israel and abroad, and teaches at three of the country’s leading theatre academies.
In February 2023, after working on contemporary productions of Israeli and international classics, Sherman became Director in Residence of Beit Lessin Theatre in Tel Aviv. In 2016, he won awards for two separate productions: Best Director for his production of The Bacchae at Golden Hedgehog Fringe Theater Awards, and Best Director, Best Play, and Best Supporting Actor for The Endless Mourner at The Kufar International Festival in Minsk, Belarus. In 2019, he was invited to Beijing to direct Hanoch Levin’s epic play Requiem. Selected works: Death of a Salesman and Indecent – The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv; The Seagull and The Bride and the Butterfly Hunter – Gesher Theatre; The Maids – Elad Theatre; Requiem – Beijing; A Winter Funeral – Beer Sheva Theatre; and The Bacchae – Tmu-na Theatre.