Here and now at the Israel Festival

In Jerusalem’s beating heart, next to the light rail stop, a place has been set up to enable people to meet and talk, listen to music, catch a show and more.

By PEGGY CIDOR
The ‘FOLK –S: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ show will bring its sounds to Mazia House (photo credit: MATTEO MAFFENSANTI)
The ‘FOLK –S: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ show will bring its sounds to Mazia House
(photo credit: MATTEO MAFFENSANTI)
Now! is the title of this year’s Israel Festival, which will run from May 24 to June 11. As its name implies, the festival will feature a large selection of artistic events that share the concept of whatever is happening on the artistic stages here and abroad, right now – focusing on a new artistic language that promotes multifaceted performances.
In other words, anything we may have had in our head regarding a highbrow artistic performance in multiple art forms, such as theater, dance or music, is now becoming part of one show, blending them all together to create an “event” on the stage. This year, more than ever, the festival management is reaching out to the widest spectrum of visitors.
The following are four of the many noteworthy events: The Israel Festival invites the public to come to the Jerusalem Theater’s Sherover Plaza to hang out and enjoy live music, DJs, beer and coffee before the performances begin. An original video- mapping work by artist Nevet Itzhak will be projected onto the building’s façade. Music by various DJs will be played in the openair café as part of a collaboration with Uganda and the Confused Machines music label. Activities on the Sherover Plaza will run from May 29 to June 5, daily, from 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. (except on Shabbat, when events will start after Shabbat is out), and are open to all.
Between May 31 and June 7, the Leo Model Hall at the Gerard Behar Center will host a series of six Israeli monodramas in the framework of the Center Stage event. This is the seventh time the Israel Festival will utilize this interesting venue to promote original Israeli plays and translated works from abroad, combining drama, video art, dance and music. Works included are by Ori Paniri, Luis Borghes, Yael Pazuelo, Adam Yakin, Lena Pogosov and Roey Maliah Reshef, plus a short adaptation of Daniel Keye’s story “Flowers for Algernon.”
Another intriguing event is the Nephilim (from the Hebrew “giants” in the Book of Genesis) theater experience, so named to refer to some of the mythical figures in the country’s modern history. At the Mazia House from May 26 to May 28, this 75-minute (without intermission) trilogy centers on three Israelis who look at the State of Israel from the outside: Menachem Begin, a fictitious judoka, and Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli. The play begins with the 1980 visit of then-prime minister Begin to Beaufort Fortress in Lebanon right after the IDF conquered it and ends with the supermodel, whose image welcomes and follows departures and arrivals at Ben-Gurion Airport.
In the middle, in a sort of political fantasy, an Israeli judoka who represents the country at an international contest learns just before he competes for a gold medal that Israel has been destroyed by a nuclear bomb.
Zion Square was once the jewel in the crown of the Ben-Yehuda- Jaffa-King George triangle, with movie theaters, cafés and the best of everything else. Here in Jerusalem’s beating heart, next to the light rail stop, with the collaboration of the school of architecture of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, a place has been set up to enable people to meet and talk, listen to music, catch a show and more. During the afternoon and evening hours from May 29 to June 3, Zion Square will host a rich artistic program including lectures by leading scholars, concerts, dance performances, video screenings and stage shows for the whole family.