Basement theater

Hamartef’s experimental therapeutic initiative is staging change among at-risk youth.

By PEGGY CIDOR
Hamartef’s experimental therapeutic initiative is staging change among at-risk youth (photo credit: Courtesy)
Hamartef’s experimental therapeutic initiative is staging change among at-risk youth
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Just a few steps away from noisy Emek Refaim Street, on one of the narrow streets emerging from the German Colony’s main drag, a gate opens into a small yard, with a wooden floor and a small bar where only tea and coffee are served. Facing the bar, there is a cozy corner couch that serves as a smoking area, and in between, a small entrance through a staircase leads you down to a built-in cave, with about 50 chairs and a tiny stage.
This is Hamartef (The Basement) Theater, a small yet very active and very special pocket theater, where students of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s theater faculty and professional graduates of theater schools work on a joint venture into experimental and therapeutic theatrical work with at-risk young adults.
“I realized that the youth the welfare authorities define as ‘at-risk’ share, besides their issues, a passion and skill for the arts in general, and theater in particular,” explains Hamartef founder and director Hagai Aharoni. “So here at Hamartef, they get a chance to express and develop their skills, and in fact turn their hardships and lack of adaptation to frameworks at school or in daily life into an advantage.”
“We just give them a stage and the resources to achieve that.”
Hamartef was founded eight years ago, and has developed from a small project to help youth close to “dropping out” of the structures of everyday life into a well-organized and thoughtful place, with a clear and defined course of action. It has been incorporated into the Hebrew University’s theater curriculum, and most of its productions are a result of this joint initiative. Indeed, on stage, most of the time even a veteran theatergoer cannot tell the difference between a professional actor and a Hamartef project member.
Aharoni’s vision has been to create an intimate theater of the best artistic quality, according to the highest requirements of a professional theater, which nevertheless makes room for at-risk youth, giving them the tools to actualize their artistic capabilities. Toward this end Hamartef has its own theater school, where the youth who join the project get an opportunity to learn the history of theatrical genres and methods, from classical to avant-garde, and to take part in top professional rehearsals, before stepping on stage to face the audience members – who do not always know exactly what is behind the spectacle they watch.
Behind the whole project stands Einav, a national nonprofit that helps at-risk youth and young adults make their way in society through the arts and performing.
Hamartef’s repertoire varies from classical plays to modern and local pieces, some adapted by the theater’s artistic staff. As for the project youth, they learn, rehearse and perform, also having a hand in production aspects, from selling tickets to the technical side.
Last week Hamartef presented one of its latest works, based on the Gabriel Garcia Marquez story “The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and her Heartless Grandmother.” The play flier warned spectators that they would experience wonder, repugnance, sadness and humor.
“We decided to give the stage solely to two actresses – one of them a professional actress, a graduate of a professional theater school, the other one of ‘our girls,’” Aharoni said before the play started. “I won’t tell you who’s who; I am not sure you will be able to tell.”
“The short story on which the play is based was first published in 1973, and details the fate of a young woman in a world of cruelty, a world of men,” explained Aharoni. “We wanted to tell the spectators, and in fact, through the play, the actresses themselves, that there is such a thing as evil, exploitation and use of women, that there are such terrible things as female slavery and prostitution. Some of the youth who come to us have witnessed these situations, they know something about it, we just give them the artistic tools to face it.”
Gil Cohen, the 20-year-old actress who took on the role of the grandmother, describes herself as a typical Hamartef participant. “I was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Gilo, but as far as I can remember, I always had problems with the limits of any [authority],” she recalled. Cohen adds that she was always “involved” in theater, from an early age, but had no clear idea of how to make that attraction work alongside her problems in educational institutions.
When she was in her junior year of high school, her teacher, who had heard about Hamartef’s work, suggested she go there. “That was the best present I received,” she says now. “In fact, Hamartef is my home.
From a disturbed girl that nobody could contain, who did a lot of stupid things, I became happy and felt at home; I could go crazy and yet do something good. Here, they flowed with me and my follies, and that enabled me to turn all these things into an artistic expression.
“I finally found my place here.”
Asked if the topic of young women’s exploitation and prostitution was a hard reality to face for such a young person, Cohen said she had received the necessary tools to take what she calls a safe approach to the issue. “I take it to a ‘tale place.’ The play creates an atmosphere of a tale, not of a reality, although we all know that evil does exist.
“Throughout the play, it does send me echoes of the sad reality outside – but here on the stage, I feel protected.”