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.