Showtime 279819

This year’s Testing Tools Festival features more than 100 artists from various disciplines.

By BARRY DAVIS
Cat 311 (photo credit: Tallulah Floyd)
Cat 311
(photo credit: Tallulah Floyd)
Testing tools of art
This year’s Testing Tools Festival will take place at Beit Tami in Tel Aviv from Tuesday to Thursday. The three-day roster features more than 100 artists from various disciplines, and there will be 25 stage premieres and 30 new plastic art offerings.
Testing Tools was initiated by the Tel Aviv Municipality’s Community, Youth and Sport Department nine years ago and aims to enhance the careers of independent artists from across the creative fields and to support their efforts to develop original works that feed off several genres.
This year’s festival is based on the theme of “the process,” in which the various works of art feed off other creations around them. The program incorporates dance, theater, dance theater, movement theater, visual art, music (rock and jazz), installations, street theater and shows for the whole family. Each slot will last around 30 minutes.
The artists on the Testing Tools roster include Uri Shapira, Orit Yishai, Noga Shatz and Oded Ben- Hefer in plastic arts, while Lihi Chen and Ilanit Vigodski will display audio and video works, respectively.
Various works and shows from the festival will later relocate to Tefen in the Galilee, and will be displayed there on weekends through September and October.
For tickets and more information: (03) 528-8827/9 or www.telaviv.gov.il
It’s a cat’s life at Animix
The Israeli Animation College will mark this year’s International Cat Day, on August 8, with a competition for feline-based plastic arts items and animation works as part of the 2012 Animix International Animation Comics & Caricature Festival, which will take place at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque August 8-12.
The works come from a wide range of areas, including painting, drawing, animation, sculpture and computer-aided creations. The judges’ panel includes veteran comics author Uri Fink, designer Sagi Rechter and animator Kfir Ram.
The winner will receive a Sony PSP Play Station, NIS 5,000 and free entry to all the festival events. Entries will be displayed at Animix.
For more information: www.animator.com or iac.cat.day@gmail.com
Dance images in Jaffa
Choreographers/dancers Sharon Friedman and Anat Grigorio’s new documentary, AnimaAnimus, will be screened at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Jaffa this evening at 10.
The film, which was made by Spanish director Damyan Varela, captures several works by Friedman and Anat Grigorio, including “Coffee, Lamp and Cigarette,” which examines human dynamics and versatility through the choices we make.
Last year, Friedman and Grigorio were invited by De La Gomera Choreographic Center in the Canary Islands, Martin Padron, to work and perform at the center. The Israeli choreographers/dancers’ residency spawned several works that feed off the dynamics, energies and spaces of nature, which are captured in AnimaAnimus. The duet of the same name explores the worlds of femininity and masculinity and the synergy between them.
For tickets and more information: (03) 510-5656 or www.suzannedellal.org.il
Plumbing the neighbor’s pain
On Sunday at 8 p.m., Tmuna Theater in Tel Aviv will host a performance of a new theatrical production, The Neighbor’s Grief Is Greener. The work is an intense, macabre yarn that references American cultural clichés from the 1950s which feed off a wide range of genres, from radio scripts to musicals, horror movies to hit songs.
The darkly comical fantasy features four women and a man, with all the action taking place in a typical kitchen of the era.
The show was written, directed and choreographed by Emmanuel Amichai, and the cast includes Ayala Bressler-Nardi, Jeremy Alfasi, Merav Dagan, Merav Elhadaf and Tamar Levin.
For tickets and more information: (03) 561-1211 and www.tmuna.org.il
Grave photographs
A photographic exhibition with works by Jean-Noel Baggar opened last week at the Bar Davis Museum at Kibbutz Bar’am in the Upper Galilee.
The images were all captured at the Lag Ba’omer events in honor of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yohai, held on Mount Meron.
The exhibition was curated by Helen Sukman and will close on August 27.
For more information: (04) 698- 8295 or www.bardavid-museum.org.il