Theatre and War 1 – Doco-drama :
Guest host : International writer & journalist James Inverne.
A hard-hitting look at how conflict shapes the themes, styles, and voices in Israeli theatre. Featuring creators whose works directly grapple with unimaginable realities that were imposed on them, bringing life to the stage and then tossing it back to the audience, with no answers but many questions.
Reservist and playwright Roee Joseph spent sixty days in Shura military base, somewhere in the center of the country. For sixty days, he took part in one of the most complex tasks known to the human mind – identifying victims of a massacre.
For long hours, Roee and the other soldiers recruited for the mission, looked for any identifying marks that would facilitate identification of the dead, and allow burial. On his breaks, Roee took out his computer and began writing. He wrote what he saw, heard, experienced: thoughts, moments that unfolded before his eyes, an exact transcription of what was said around him, and spontaneous interviews with people who were there.
Shura is a deep, poetic, honest, and sometimes funny observation of hardship. Shura understands that in order to bury something, you need to know what it is. Shura is a brave and exposed attempt to enable us all to understand what took place there, and perhaps let it be laid to proper rest.
Roee Joseph is a playwright, director, and performance creator whose work blends documentary theatre, ethnographic tools, and personal experiences. He is the recipient of the Rosenblum Prize for Performing Arts (2024) and the Golden Hedgehog Award for Playwright of the Year (2022).
Roee is a PhD candidate in the Program for Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies at Bar-Ilan University, and an alumni of the Theatre Directing and Teaching Program at Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts.
He has also participated in prestigious development programs, including the End Point 1 residency, and the Starting Point 8 playwriting initiative.
Selected works: Hereby, I Declare (a collaboration with Noa Nassie), a documentary play revisiting the killing of Mohammed Qudaih during the 2014 Gaza War, blending official documents and personal accounts to explore silenced stories.
Good Morning Hedgehog – an LGBTQ-themed poetic drama about a crumbling relationship, and the communication difficulties between two ordinary people.
Running Time: 90 minutes
For performance rights to the play: Shimrit Ron, Director, The Hanoch Levin Institute of Israeli Drama
The play was written with the assistance of the Starting Point Program, established by Kvutsat Avoda (NPO).
“A home is the place where a person ‘feels at home,’ where nothing is foreign to him. Therefore, it is also the proper place to begin the history of being-in-the-world.” (Dr. Boaz Neumann, historian)
What makes a place a home? Where can a person feel at home? What happened to our joint home?
The group of actors and creators of Otef HaNegev Theater, which also includes survivors and evacuees, developed this piece to explore the personal journeys of the residents of the Gaza Envelope. Through WhatsApp messages, first-hand testimonies, and the actors’ personal experiences, a multi-layered stage piece is created that includes movement, video, and live music. An original production that was born out of that Saturday morning, and seeks to delve into the feelings and thoughts that have accompanied us since then: to take them in, observe them, and look for the way back home.
Otef HaNegev Theatre’s focus is on documentary theatre. Since that Saturday of October 7th, the theatre team has been working with the residents of the Envelope in workshops, writing sessions, and various plays, as a tool to try and heal the soul a little. A Place to Live is a layered stage adaptation of the testimonies that resulted from this process.
Running Time: 70 minutes
Nine short stories by nine playwrights form a unique play.
Each of the nine stories takes place in a different bomb shelter in Israel, moments after the siren is heard. The scenes are about ten minutes long, featuring diverse characters illustrating the multiculturalism in Israeli society.
Running Time: 110 minutes
Flowers (Die Blumen) is an anti-war reverie envisioning a better world when the outer world is already lost; it is a party in hell; it is a story of the tumultuous and tragic demise of humanity: noisy and tragic at the same time. The production is an endeavor to resurrect or recall the essence of German cabaret from the Weimar Republic to the Second World War. It is within such cabarets and taverns that Brecht’s early texts found their origins.
The production was nominated for eight Golden Hedgehog Awards in 2023, winning three, including for Ensemble Work and Stage Language.
Fulcro is an independent theatre company established in 2020 in Saint Petersburg. The group moved to Israel in 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It currently works with prominent Tel Aviv theatre venues. Since 2022, the theatre has produced six shows and participated in five festivals. Fulcro reflects on the catastrophes of the 20th century, and each production explores this theme from a different perspective.
Dasha Shamina is a theatre director and founder of Fulcro Independent Theatre Company. She was born in Moscow in 1990. After earning a degree in journalism from Moscow State University in 2011, she worked in various media outlets. She later studied theatre directing under Veniamin Filshtinsky at Saint Petersburg Academy of Performing Arts, where she also taught acting and directed student productions. Her production Our Class received international acclaim, earning multiple awards in Russia and abroad.
In 2020, she founded Fulcro, an independent theatre company that quickly became one of the leading collectives in Russia. Following the outbreak of the war with Ukraine, Fulcro relocated to Israel, becoming a significant part of the local theatre scene.
Since moving to Israel, Fulcro has produced six critically acclaimed shows under her direction, performed at Tmu-na Theater, Gesher Theatre, and Suzanne Dellal Centre.
Running Time: 120 minutes