A jubilant jubilee

At 50, the Haifa Municipal Theater has overcome its financial woes and is looking to the future.

By BARRY DAVIS
Haim Topol in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ 521 (photo credit: Courtesy of Rachel Vilner PR)
Haim Topol in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ 521
(photo credit: Courtesy of Rachel Vilner PR)
This week the Haifa Municipal Theater’s 50th anniversary celebrations kick off with a TV show about the venerable institution on Channel 2. The half-century milestone will also be marked by a production written and devised by some of the theater’s old guard, including Ruth Segal and Amnon Meskin, a reworking of one of the theater’s earliest plays and an ongoing exhibition of posters, programs and other memorabilia from various highlights of the institution’s history thus far.
Fifty years is a long time in show business, and some of our best-known thespians have trodden the theater’s boards, including Liora Rivlin, Ilan Dar, Haim Topol and Gila Almagor to mention but a few. It was Almagor who provided 55-year-old Haifa Theater chairman of the board Danny Nishlis with one of his earliest childhood cultural thrills.
“I remember seeing Gila Almagor in a harness in a production of Peter Pan,” he says. “That was the first time in Israel that an actor ‘flew.’ That was a magic moment.”
Nishlis was a subscriber to the theater for many years before, almost five years ago, moving into the chairman’s seat. In fact he took over a ship that was sinking fast, but managed to steer it to calmer and more profitable waters.
“At the time a trustee had been appointed to manage the theater’s financial affairs, as it was on the brink of bankruptcy,” recalls Nishlis, adding that he had to take some drastic and painful action. “We had to fire over 40 actors, which took a lot of courage. They held a sort of funeral with pictures of me and the mayor on a coffin. They were hard times.”
Thankfully, the tough measures did the trick and the theater gradually worked its way out of its financial morass.
“The place was actually at a standstill,” says Nishlis. “There were no shows going on, the debts had reached around NIS 24 million and subscriptions were down to 3,000. Now we have 13,000 subscribers and the deficit has dropped to around NIS 16m. We saved millions of shekels in salaries to people who didn’t do a thing.”
The theater was established in 1961 on the initiative of Haifa’s iconic, longserving then-mayor Abba Khoushy, and there has been a strong symbiotic relationship between the theater and the municipality for many years.
“The municipality is still very supportive of us and we have an exceptional relationship with it,” says Nishlis. “It owns half of the theater but it leaves us to get on with the artistic work. It does more than could be expected.”
Septuagenarian actor Ilan Dar, who was in at the beginning, will naturally be involved in the jubilee celebrations.
He has fond memories of his initial steps in the northern company.
“I spent 17 years at Haifa Theater and took part in the very first production, The Taming of the Shrew. There were still plastic covers on the seats,” he recalls jokingly. “Before that I was with the Ohel Theater [in Tel Aviv], which was on the wane, and I was excited about having an opportunity to come to a brand-new venture.”
Dar was also enthused by the chance of working with Haifa Theater’s founding artistic director Yosef Milo.
“I saw his production of The Visit [at Habimah Theater in 1956] and I was really taken with that. I thought he was a genius so I grabbed the opportunity of acting with him with both hands.”
Dar says that the theater began to experience difficulties before he left, in 1978.
“Actors began moving to Tel Aviv because Israel TV set up a studio there and there was work going there. When Oded Kotler took over the Haifa Theater he started introducing political and social material to the repertoire, and took a more realistic approach. That worked quite well, but then actors started leaving and things began to fall apart.”
Thankfully, that’s all in the past and the chairman is keen to point out that the theater is also taking steps to ensure that the creative wheels will keep turning in the city for many years to come.
“We established the Haifait group of young actors,” he notes. “We set out basic requirements of the members of the group: that they all live in Haifa, all the rehearsals take place in Haifa, they all carry out teaching work at local schools, and the shows take place here.”
The group is currently in the middle of a highly successful run of 1948, based on Yoram Kaniuk’s book of the same name, about the author’s experiences as a teenage soldier in the War of Independence.
“The theater is now enjoying a period of growth – artistic growth, financial stability, and the subscriptions are doing well,” Nishlis continues.
Considering the current plight of many theaters around the country that is no mean feat. Actors of Habimah, our national theater, recently went on strike over unpaid salaries and the venerable institution has run up debts of around NIS 50m. Gesher Theater, which marked its 20th birthday with a grand affair at the President’s Residence last month, is constantly battling mounting financial challenges, as is the Suzanne Dellal Center in Jaffa, not to mention lesser known and less well supported companies.
NISHLIS IS no less proud of the wider positive impact the theater is having.
“We have invested a lot of work in the infrastructures around us, including fencing off and enhancing Binyamin Park next to the theater.
That used to be a crime-ridden spot, with lots of drug abuse. Now it is a very pleasant place to be in.”
And the plans just keep on coming.
“Next year we’re going to open a drama school for youth at the theater. We will take talented high-school kids who want to become actors or directors or playwrights. The teachers will be the members of our young theater group [the Haifait]. We are going to turn the theater into the largest active cultural center in the north of the country,” declares the chairman. “The annual Book Week now takes place at the theater and we host the children’s theater festival each Passover. We have standup shows and poetry readings.
You could say that Haifa Theater, on its 50th anniversary, is a lively and healthy institution.”
Part of the theater’s ethos is based on the mixed Jewish-Arab makeup of the local population and, says Nishlis, there is no corner cutting.
“We put on productions with strong political content, and we have Jewish and Arab actors performing these roles with absolutely no reservations whatsoever, including in the younger group. That is the very essence of Haifa. We believe in shared creative life, everyone is equal, everyone is a human being and everyone is talented regardless of their religion, gender or race.”
That sentiment is shared by one of the theater’s longest serving Arab actors, 58-year-old Yussef Abu-Warda, who has been with the Haifa company since 1981.
“I think that, maybe, the fact that this is a city with mixed [Jewish-Arab] population makes this kind of material more accessible to people who live in Haifa and also to the staff of the theater,” says Abu-Warda.
Could that also be down to the fact that it is a geographically provincial institution, away from the pressures that may go with serving the public in Tel Aviv and the center of the country? “I would put it another way,” says the veteran actor. “I think Haifa Theater’s added value comes from the fact that it adopts a different approach compared with theaters in the center.
It accommodated different repertoire during the time of Oded Kotler, and also when Noam Semel was in charge [1980-88]. Anyway, there’s no point in doing the same things that Tel Aviv theaters do. We couldn’t compete.”
As it begins its second half century of creative endeavor, especially after enduring something close to financial meltdown, it is gratifying to see Haifa Theater in such fine mettle, and a good time should be had by one and all at the jubilee celebrations, and beyond.