Shalev’s Russian stage

Director Irena Gurelik has worked with the Mikro theater troupe for seven months on ‘As a Few Days.’

By BARRY DAVIS
Mikro theater 521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Mikro theater 521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Like his debut, well-received 1988 novel The Blue Mountain, Meir Shalev’s As a Few Days is set in the early days of the Yishuv and is peopled by a rich spectrum of highly colorful, if not improbable, characters. There is also a strong whiff of Russian culture, mind-sets and accents in many of his books, which neatly makes the Jerusalem-based Mikro theater group’s rendition of Shalev’s 1994 novel all the more snug.
The production has been running for a couple of weeks at the small auditorium of the Khan Theater to highly enthusiastic audience response and will officially open at the premiere performance on September 15.
Most of Mikro’s actors are Russian born – when the company was founded in 1994 everyone on board was Russian – which suits the plot and spirit of As a Few Days.
“My grandparents came here from Russia with the Second Aliya, and even though they spoke good Hebrew, they kept their strong Russian accent,” says Shalev. “So in that respect, too, I was very happy for Irena and Mikro to do the play.
The Irena in question is Irena Gurelik, who directs As a Few Days and runs the troupe.
While the new show is clearly a labor of love, Gurelik and the nine-member cast, behind-the-scenes personnel and two musicians put a lot of effort into getting the production down pat.
“We worked on it off and on for seven months,” says Gurelik. “It is such a wonderful book, and Meir gave us carte blanche. He doesn’t play ego games. He let me interpret the book as I saw fit, but I never change the words. The text is always an important part for me.”
“As long as they don’t change actual events – for instance, if Irena decided that Yehudit should have four lovers instead of three as it is in the book – I don’t mind what they do,” confirms the author, adding, however, that not everything in the play is as he imagined in his mind’s eye.
“The character of Zeideh [Yehudit’s somewhat simple son whom all three men claim to have fathered] is a bit different from the way I saw him when I was writing the story, but that’s fine by me. I gave Irena full license to do whatever she wants with the book, and I don’t regret it.
As soon as you allow a book to be performed on stage, it’s a different medium, so by definition there has to be a different form of portrayal of what you have written.”
Mikro started out in 1994, shortly after Gurelik made aliya. Like any artistic enterprise with little or no institutional support, the fledgling theater group had a tough start to life.
“I worked on a voluntary basis for many years,” Gurelik recalls. “I took young people to begin with, all immigrants from Russia, and only later I started taking Israelis.”
There were no cultural discrimination considerations in that decision, it was simply a matter of practicality. “I didn’t know Hebrew. Actually, I didn’t even want to come to Israel. I have worked with texts all my life as a dramatist and writer in documentaries and animation films, theater and other stuff, so I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to do anything in Israel without knowing Hebrew. But my husband and my son, who was then 14, forced my hand and I came on aliya. Today, I am happy I came,” says Gurelik in impressively fluent, if heavily accented, Hebrew.
Gurelik’s son, Ilya Kotz, is also “in the business” and designed the sets for the show.

For more information about As a Few Days: www.mikro.co.il and www.khan.co.il