Curtain Rises

Every year a score of English-language theatrical productions are staged in Israel by at least 20 amateur theatrical groups, enriching the lives of English-speaking audiences and actors alike.

By PATRICIA GOLAN
Fidler on the roof 521 (photo credit: Brian Negin)
Fidler on the roof 521
(photo credit: Brian Negin)
THE MEMBERS OF THE 10- piece orchestra take their places and begin tuning up. The conductor walks out on stage in formal attire. He strikes up the Overture, the curtain goes up revealing the opening scene of a popular Broadway musical. The excited audience applauds enthusiastically.
It’s neither the West End nor Piccadilly, not Broadway nor off-Broadway, and certainly not “mainstream” Israeli theater, but every year a score of English-language theatrical productions are staged in Israel by at least 20 amateur theatrical groups – seven of them in Jerusalem alone.
Among the many English-language amateur shows in the 2010-2011 season are productions of the plays “Barefoot in the Park” by Neil Simon, “The Mousetrap” by Agatha Christie, “Fat Pig” by Neil LaBute, “Mikveh” by Israeli playwright Hadar Galron, “Passengers” by Sam Bobrick, “Doubt” by John Patrick Shanley, “Ruddigore” by Gilbert & Sullivan, the Broadway musicals “South Pacific” and “Kismet,” a staged selection of scenes from Shakespeare’s plays, and a handful of standup comics doing routines in English.
According to the Statistical Abstract of Israel for 2010, there are only an estimated 106,000 Israeli residents from English-speaking countries – less than 1.5 percent of Israel’s total population of 7.5 million. That tiny percentage hardly explains the number of groups and performances. Clearly, there is hunger for English theater.
“Hebrew-language theater is very daunting for English speakers; even for those with good Hebrew, it’s a challenge,” says Rob Binder, a founder of the Encore Educational Theater Company and its artistic director.
“And the plays seem to be such downers.
People look for relief from the hectic, harsh life in this country. There really is a demand and a need by English speakers in this country for high-level entertainment.”
“To this day, there are many who participate in English-language theater groups who speak Hebrew poorly, and if you love theater and cannot understand local plays, then creating your own in your native language is a given,” explains Helen Kaye, a professional actress-turned-director and a veteran journalist who has been the Jerusalem Post’s theater critic for many years. “But, secondly, there is the social aspect,” she adds, “the feeling of belonging, and because it’s theater – community.
When you’re in a new country, far from friends and family, community is a lifeline.”
Kaye calls it “comfort food for the soul.”
Indeed, it’s clear that whatever the size or level of professionalism of the various groups, the common thread is a feeling of family – we are all strangers in a strange land, and here is something we can do together.
“Anglos” (as native English speakers are peculiarly known in Israel) also bring with them the tradition of amateur theater, which is well-developed in English-speaking countries.
And since most English-speaking Israelis are immigrants or children of immigrants, that desire to perform on stage in English is part of their culture.
“It’s a very Jewish thing to do theater,” theorizes Daniel Schwartzman, musical director of Israel’s largest acting school, the Beit Zvi School of Performing Arts, and musical director of TACT (Tel Aviv Amateur Community Theater). “In what other country would you have so many English-language amateur theaters with so few Anglos? “We are a very theatrical people,” he continues.
“Wherever Jews lived there were the- aters, even in the Warsaw ghetto,” says Schwartzman.
VETERANS SAY THAT AMATEUR drama groups in Israel face the same challenges as in other English-language countries: more women than men, few performers in their 20s and the perennial problem of time commitments that severely restrict rehearsal time. Recruitment of suitable players is also a daunting problem for most of the groups, with the exception of Jerusalem, where there is a large talent pool.
“Amateur groups are full of energetic and highly motivated people. They have to be in order to take care of their kids, go to their day jobs and then come to rehearsals,” says Schwartzman. “And this results in a lack of punctuality, poor attendance and lack of decorum during rehearsals. This is true all over the world. It’s like putting a round peg into a square hole.”
Schwartzman, who also conducts annual musical theater workshops, says that he tries to make rehearsals “as professional and as fun as can be while working with people who are not paid, but you need to gear down your expectations.”
“There is also a limit to how much you can demand from non-professionals,” says Madeleine Mordechai, involved with TACT and its predecessors since the late 60s, and its director for 13 years. Now retired from the theater, she has performed many leading roles throughout the years.
Even the most polished of the English-language theater groups suffer an inevitable uneven level of talent and skill. Performances can be impressively professional but also embarrassingly amateurish. There is often a mix of accents – rarely explained by the story line. Singers are called upon to dance and dancers called upon to sing, a rare ability even among professionals.
But the local audience is forgiving and appreciative – and if the performance exceeds their expectations, so much the better.
While the social aspect and artistic imperative may explain the relatively large number of amateur English-language theatrical groups, their success in attracting what is an obviously limited audience is something of a mystery.
“Audience numbers actually have little to do with the numerical count of Anglos in the country,” explains Kaye. “The audiences are the friends and relations of the actors, those who are familiar with the shows, and those who are hungry for English language theater – a Neil Simon play will always fill the house and then some.”
And like theatrical groups everywhere, whether professional or amateur, there’s plenty of drama behind the scenes, too: romances, including shy young loves and illicit encounters; backbiting and bitchiness; ego trips and narcissism; adult temper tantrums and teenage rowdiness. Rehearsal schedules, especially towards opening nights, are often a strain on marriages.
Still, in the Israeli context, the overwhelming ties that bind in all the theatrical groups are their function as a sort of substitute extended family: amateur theater as social club and support group as well as an outlet for artistic expression in one’s native language.
In a few rare instances, both husband and wife take part. Phyllis and Harvey Narrol, who moved to Beersheba from the US in 1979, have been performing in English language productions for decades. Among the founding members of LOGON, they moved to Beit Shemesh to be closer to their grandchildren and almost immediately became involved in the Jerusalem-based English-language theatrical groups.
“Singing has always been a major interest of ours, and English at the beginning was very important,” says Phyllis. “Even though we knew Hebrew, it was a great relief to join a group who were English-speakers and singers and it became our hobby and our social group.”
WHILE MANY OF THE PERformers in the Israeli English-language amateur groups are professionally trained, and most of the artistic and musical directors of the groups are professional, almost all the groups are amutot or non-profit organizations. They scramble to raise sufficient funds for their productions from ticket sales, charitable organizations, membership fees, private donors and occasional grants from the Education Ministry.
Two drama groups have been adopted by their local municipalities: Ra’anana’s The Guild Theater and TACT (Tel Aviv Amateur Community Theater).
In December 2010, TACT, the oldest and perhaps most active of the English-speaking theater companies in Israel, celebrated 50 years in Tel Aviv by producing a retrospective of past comedy, drama and musical productions.
Originally formed by a group of English-speaking immigrants in the 1950s, TACT reformed in the 1960s as the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) House Drama Circle, and in 1987 came under the auspices of the Tel Aviv Municipality and adopted the name TACT. In addition to plays and old-fashioned British pantomimes, TACT also runs acting and musical theater workshops.
Though earning a livelihood by acting in English in Israel is out of the question, over the years there have been occasional attempts to maintain a truly professional English-language theatrical group with salaried trained performers.
They have always failed.
The earliest of these ventures was the Circle Theater, founded in Jerusalem in the 1960s. Following the 1967 war, the group became part of the newly established repertoire Khan Theater in Jerusalem, and was renamed the English Theater of the Khan.
However, it was soon disbanded due to internal struggles within the Khan. it earned some money but the producers did not stage any other shows.
A for-profit English-language musical theater venture called Capital Musical Theater, launched in 2001, went bankrupt within two years following the production of two ambitious shows. “It was like a kick in the face,” founder and producer Jack Halpert was quoted at the time in the Haaretz daily newspaper. “Theater business is a risky business and here in Israel even more so,” Halpert said. Fleeing his creditors, Halpert left the country and his whereabouts are unknown.
In the most recent case of a professional English-language theatrical group folding, Shakespeare Jerusalem was forced to pull the plug at the end of 2010. Established three years ago with the aim of staging Shakespeare plays and revues with Israeli artists, the group had critical successes, but was unable to stay afloat.
DESPITE ALL THE DIFFICULTIES, some of the local groups produce near professional shows. At least two musical theater groups mount annual full-scale productions. The most veteran of these is LOGON – The Light Opera Group of the Negev. (The group’s acronym was formed long before the age of the Internet.) Founded in 1981 in Omer near Beersheba, the group, which draws participants from the south of the country, performed only Gilbert and Sullivan operettas for its first 14 years. (In the interests of full disclosure: this writer is a devoted member of the group.) Deciding it had exhausted the G&S repertoire (and perhaps its audience), LOGON then began staging Broadway musicals, which the company now stages every year in performances throughout the country.
Last year the legendary Israeli film producer and theatrical promoter Menachem Golan attended the group’s lavish performance of “My Fair Lady.” Drawn to the show by curiosity, since he plans on staging his third Hebrew language production of the popular musical next year, Golan said he was amazed at the high-quality of the performance and told the director, “I don’t understand how you managed to pull this off with an amateur cast.”
The Encore! Educational Theater Company, which recently renewed the staging of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas in Israel, was established in Jerusalem in 2006, after splitting from the veteran Jerusalem English Speaking Theater (JEST) to concentrate on musical productions. The group also produces Broadway and original musicals.
Encore’s directors Rob Binder and Paul Salter added the word “Educational” to the company’s name to stress their goal of teaching young Israelis about theater. “In this country young people are almost never exposed to theater, or at least good theater,” Binder states. “We want to encourage young people to learn theatrical crafts and so we offer them opportunities to work on lights, sets and costumes and all aspects of the production.”
School groups are often invited to performances.
In recent years the Encore and LOGON musical theater groups have begun using subtitles with simultaneous translations into Hebrew of the performances, as is done at the Israel Opera. Last year LOGON added Russian to the translation. Neither group has reliable figures on how many additional audience members this has drawn.
Binder, a project consultant in Jewish education, says he and his colleagues feel it is important to incorporate Jewish and Israeli content in as many of the shows as possible.
“We want to expose the audience to the classics and also to teach about Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish life and history, if we can,” he explains. In addition to performing the popular classic musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” the team wrote a musical about Jerusalem in 1917 at the end of World War I, and “The Cantor’s Son” about Al Jolsen.
The Jerusalem English Speaking Theater (JEST), one of the oldest groups in the country, also tries to choose plays with Jewish content: “Kindertransport,” “Prairie Lights,” “The Diary of Anne Frank” and Korczak’s “Children” in recent years. Performing only in Jerusalem, over the years JEST has produced both classical and modern plays, each with a run of five performances. JEST director Leah Stoller, who has been with the group for 25 years, says, “We serve a wonderful purpose here. We have schools that come to see our shows from all over the country, not just Jerusalem.” Stoller notes that the audience for serious, thoughtprovoking plays has dwindled.
Another very active English-language theater group based in Jerusalem is The Center Stage Theater (Merkaz Hamagshimim Hadassah), which is affiliated with the Young Judea youth movement. Based in an attractive building in the German Colony, The Center Stage produces a variety of productions every year, including Shakespeare and musicals. It has proven to be a big draw for young English speakers. Its young, energetic director, Rafi Poch, took over the theater a few years ago, introducing improvisation nights, comedy sketches, musical evenings and organizing a Jerusalem English theater festival – all in addition to the two or three regular productions.
“There’s a family feel here. The end game for the Merkaz is to create an artistic home, a real community theater in English for both olim and native Israelis,” says Poch, who also created a Yahoo group on-line calendar listing the many English productions in the country. Explaining the multiplicity of groups, he adds, “There are a lot of talented people with their own idea of how things should be done.”
Raise Your Spirits is a theater company made up of religiously observant women who live in settlements in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank, where large numbers of Anglos have settled. According to strict interpretation of Jewish law, women are prohibited from singing or dancing in front of men, so the audiences for the musicals – all based on Biblical themes – are women only. These popular women-forwomen productions provide an artistic outlet for talented women.
In the north, the Haifa English Theater, founded in the early 1980s, performs two or three shows a year, and they are usually sold out. The group, with a core of regulars, draws performers and audiences from the north, also sponsors acting workshops.
Haifa University English teacher Betsy Lewis Yizraeli has been acting with the group for 22 years. “It’s just a lot of fun and that’s why we do it. We all have jobs but we love doing this.”
Another veteran amateur group in the Ashkelon-Ashdod region is the Old Barn Theater in Moshav Orot. Led by Ronit Libner who had acted for years in amateur productions in her native England, the group has been performing since 1978 in a disused barn that they renovated. “The whole atmosphere at The Barn is different than the groups in the [big] cities since we don’t have the choice of actors, so I don’t hold auditions – if I did we would not have actors,” she jokes. On a shoestring budget the old barn performs mostly one act plays and monologues.
The newest English-language theatrical group in Israel is Israel Musicals, founded three years ago by Yisrael Lutnick, an ordained Orthodox rabbi who leads services on Saturdays at a congregation in Mevasseret Zion, near Jerusalem. An accomplished composer and musician, Lutnick tells The Report that as a member of the failed Capital Theater group he decided he had to “learn how to do this properly.”
So he went back to his native New York to study acting and singing before returning to Israel to launch the new musical theater group. Lutnick concedes that while his goal is to develop a completely professional company, which is also a successful business, “I’m realistic in understanding the situation here in Israel, in costs and audiences.”
BEGINNING IN THE 1980S, THE English Amateur Drama in Israel (EADI), based in Tel Aviv, served as an umbrella group for the various groups.
EADI held regular one-act amateur drama competitions, published a regular magazine, and raised money to send groups to amateur festivals abroad. The organization, however, is no longer active. Albert Levi, chairman of EADI since the late 1990s, explains that “people are not so interested in local festivals anymore, and there’s no money coming in to send groups abroad.
But we did bring groups together so they could see what one another were doing” continues Levi, “and EADI fulfilled that function for many years.”
Some of the Israeli groups have won prizes at amateur drama festivals abroad. In past years TACT and the Guild theaters won several years in the Dundalk Theatre Festival in Ireland. Most recently Encore! won the international Ko-Ko Award for amateur groups at the Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Buxton, England for its 2008 production of The Yeomen of the Guard.
Whether musicals or plays, these days most of the English-language shows produced in Israel are comedies or musical comedies. As Madeleine Mordechai concludes, “We know that people want to come out and have a good time. They don’t need to come out and see a play to be depressed, they can just watch TV or read a newspaper for that. We provide relief.”
“Your People are Mine,” an Englishlanguage musical based on the Book of Ruth, produced and written by Gladys Hadaya and Shimon Gewirtz, ran for more than ten years in the 1970s in Jerusalem.
Partly sponsored by the Israel Tourist Board, it earned some money but the producers did not stage any other shows.
A for-profit English-language musical theater venture called Capital Musical Theater, launched in 2001, went bankrupt within two years following the production of two ambitious shows. “It was like a kick in the face,” founder and producer Jack Halpert was quoted at the time in the Haaretz daily newspaper. “Theater business is a risky business and here in Israel even more so,” Halpert said. Fleeing his creditors, Halpert left the country and his whereabouts are unknown.
In the most recent case of a professional English-language theatrical group folding, Shakespeare Jerusalem was forced to pull the plug at the end of 2010. Established three years ago with the aim of staging Shakespeare plays and revues with Israeli artists, the group had critical successes, but was unable to stay afloat.
DESPITE ALL THE DIFFICULTIES, some of the local groups produce near professional shows. At least two musical theater groups mount annual full-scale productions. The most veteran of these is LOGON – The Light Opera Group of the Negev. (The group’s acronym was formed long before the age of the Internet.) Founded in 1981 in Omer near Beersheba, the group, which draws participants from the south of the country, performed only Gilbert and Sullivan operettas for its first 14 years. (In the interests of full disclosure: this writer is a devoted member of the group.) Deciding it had exhausted the G&S repertoire (and perhaps its audience), LOGON then began staging Broadway musicals, which the company now stages every year in performances throughout the country.
Last year the legendary Israeli film producer and theatrical promoter Menachem Golan attended the group’s lavish performance of “My Fair Lady.” Drawn to the show by curiosity, since he plans on staging his third Hebrew language production of the popular musical next year, Golan said he was amazed at the high-quality of the performance and told the director, “I don’t understand how you managed to pull this off with an amateur cast.”
The Encore! Educational Theater Company, which recently renewed the staging of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas in Israel, was established in Jerusalem in 2006, after splitting from the veteran Jerusalem English Speaking Theater (JEST) to concentrate on musical productions. The group also produces Broadway and original musicals.
Encore’s directors Rob Binder and Paul Salter added the word “Educational” to the company’s name to stress their goal of teaching young Israelis about theater. “In this country young people are almost never exposed to theater, or at least good theater,” Binder states. “We want to encourage young people to learn theatrical crafts and so we offer them opportunities to work on lights, sets and costumes and all aspects of the production.”
School groups are often invited to performances.
In recent years the Encore and LOGON musical theater groups have begun using subtitles with simultaneous translations into Hebrew of the performances, as is done at the Israel Opera. Last year LOGON added Russian to the translation. Neither group has reliable figures on how many additional audience members this has drawn.
Binder, a project consultant in Jewish education, says he and his colleagues feel it is important to incorporate Jewish and Israeli content in as many of the shows as possible.
“We want to expose the audience to the classics and also to teach about Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish life and history, if we can,” he explains. In addition to performing the popular classic musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” the team wrote a musical about Jerusalem in 1917 at the end of World War I, and “The Cantor’s Son” about Al Jolsen.
The Jerusalem English Speaking Theater (JEST), one of the oldest groups in the country, also tries to choose plays with Jewish content: “Kindertransport,” “Prairie Lights,” “The Diary of Anne Frank” and Korczak’s “Children” in recent years. Performing only in Jerusalem, over the years JEST has produced both classical and modern plays, each with a run of five performances. JEST director Leah Stoller, who has been with the group for 25 years, says, “We serve a wonderful purpose here. We have schools that come to see our shows from all over the country, not just Jerusalem.” Stoller notes that the audience for serious, thoughtprovoking plays has dwindled.
Another very active English-language theater group based in Jerusalem is The Center Stage Theater (Merkaz Hamagshimim Hadassah), which is affiliated with the Young Judea youth movement. Based in an attractive building in the German Colony, The Center Stage produces a variety of productions every year, including Shakespeare and musicals. It has proven to be a big draw for young English speakers. Its young, energetic director, Rafi Poch, took over the theater a few years ago, introducing improvisation nights, comedy sketches, musical evenings and organizing a Jerusalem English theater festival – all in addition to the two or three regular productions.
“There’s a family feel here. The end game for the Merkaz is to create an artistic home, a real community theater in English for both olim and native Israelis,” says Poch, who also created a Yahoo group on-line calendar listing the many English productions in the country. Explaining the multiplicity of groups, he adds, “There are a lot of talented people with their own idea of how things should be done.”
Raise Your Spirits is a theater company made up of religiously observant women who live in settlements in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank, where large numbers of Anglos have settled. According to strict interpretation of Jewish law, women are prohibited from singing or dancing in front of men, so the audiences for the musicals – all based on Biblical themes – are women only. These popular women-forwomen productions provide an artistic outlet for talented women.
In the north, the Haifa English Theater, founded in the early 1980s, performs two or three shows a year, and they are usually sold out. The group, with a core of regulars, draws performers and audiences from the north, also sponsors acting workshops.
Haifa University English teacher Betsy Lewis Yizraeli has been acting with the group for 22 years. “It’s just a lot of fun and that’s why we do it. We all have jobs but we love doing this.”
Another veteran amateur group in the Ashkelon-Ashdod region is the Old Barn Theater in Moshav Orot. Led by Ronit Libner who had acted for years in amateur productions in her native England, the group has been performing since 1978 in a disused barn that they renovated. “The whole atmosphere at The Barn is different than the groups in the [big] cities since we don’t have the choice of actors, so I don’t hold auditions – if I did we would not have actors,” she jokes. On a shoestring budget the old barn performs mostly one act plays and monologues.
The newest English-language theatrical group in Israel is Israel Musicals, founded three years ago by Yisrael Lutnick, an ordained Orthodox rabbi who leads services on Saturdays at a congregation in Mevasseret Zion, near Jerusalem. An accomplished composer and musician, Lutnick tells The Report that as a member of the failed Capital Theater group he decided he had to “learn how to do this properly.”
So he went back to his native New York to study acting and singing before returning to Israel to launch the new musical theater group. Lutnick concedes that while his goal is to develop a completely professional company, which is also a successful business, “I’m realistic in understanding the situation here in Israel, in costs and audiences.”
BEGINNING IN THE 1980S, THE English Amateur Drama in Israel (EADI), based in Tel Aviv, served as an umbrella group for the various groups.
EADI held regular one-act amateur drama competitions, published a regular magazine, and raised money to send groups to amateur festivals abroad. The organization, however, is no longer active. Albert Levi, chairman of EADI since the late 1990s, explains that “people are not so interested in local festivals anymore, and there’s no money coming in to send groups abroad.
But we did bring groups together so they could see what one another were doing” continues Levi, “and EADI fulfilled that function for many years.”
Some of the Israeli groups have won prizes at amateur drama festivals abroad. In past years TACT and the Guild theaters won several years in the Dundalk Theatre Festival in Ireland. Most recently Encore! won the international Ko-Ko Award for amateur groups at the Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Buxton, England for its 2008 production of The Yeomen of the Guard.
Whether musicals or plays, these days most of the English-language shows produced in Israel are comedies or musical comedies. As Madeleine Mordechai concludes, “We know that people want to come out and have a good time. They don’t need to come out and see a play to be depressed, they can just watch TV or read a newspaper for that. We provide relief.”