Coming to a theater near you

Habima and Herzliya Stage Arts are ready to launch productions of exciting new works and classics made current.

By HELEN KAYE
Habima Theater 521 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Habima Theater 521
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
The Habima National Theater is a member of the European Theater Union and its season opens in November with the Union Conference, which Habima is hosting for the first time. Some 35 delegates from most of Europe’s leading theaters will discuss, among the rest, the boycott of artists and other cultural institutions around the world.
They will also attend a symposium and the world premiere of God Waits at the Station by young local playwright Maya Arad, part of an international project on the subject of terror. The play has been invited to international theater festivals at Rheims and Stuttgart.
For the rest, Habima offers not only an ambitious and provocative season of local, classic and contemporary theater but also various projects and initiatives such as a playwriting workshop for young wannabe Israeli playwrights, a Moliere Festival and activities for youth.
As well as God Waits the Israeli plays include The Good Son, the debut and somewhat autobiographical play by journalist and author Shay Golden, Black Black on the many faces of violence by the gifted Maor Zagorry, a revival of Yigal Even Or’s tragedy of mutual intolerance, Fleischer, and Deserted Wife by Haim Grade which tells the story of a widow who cannot remarry according to Jewish law because the body of her husband, killed in battle, has never been recovered.
Chief among the world classics are the two great Sophocles plays Oedipus Rex and Antigone, to be directed by Hanan Snir. Others on the menu include Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, a dramatization by Shahar Pinkas of Honoré de Balzac’s Père Goriot, Much Ado About Nothing, and for the whole family, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to be performed outside in the plaza garden.
Chief among contemporary world drama is 1984, an adaptation by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan of George Orwell’s iconic dystopian world that has inspired rave reviews in London, and is particularly apt for the post 9/11 world in which Big Brother runs rampant.
Also on the calendar are the comedy Panic by Robin Hawden in which Clarice discovers she’s not the only one with plans for the weekend, The Velocity of Autumn by Eric Coble in which a determined old lady battles her family for her independence, and another adaptation by Pinkas, Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada.
The Herzliya Stage Arts Auditorium offers its subscribers a season of dance, theater and music.
The new seasons offerings include four plays, six dance events, eight concerts, a vocal series and a variety of other musical events that include the family.
Among the plays are the Cameri’s exuberant Cyrano de Bergerac and Bet Lessin’s The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night.
Dance has the Malandain Ballet Biarritz that recently appeared at the Israel Festival, River North Dance from Chicago and the season’s highlight, the Munich Opera Ballet.
Music has a cornucopia from Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony to a musical tour of the world’s cities as well as a look at liturgical music with pianist composer Gil Shohat.