Our heart is broken, theater director says after new coronavirus shutdown

The culture industry is not the only one negatively affected by the new regulations.

By ROSSELLA TERCATIN
Outdoor performance of the Vertigo Dance Company by the Suzanne Dellal Centre on June 30. (photo credit: COURTESY OF THE SUZANNE DELLAL CENTRE.)
Outdoor performance of the Vertigo Dance Company by the Suzanne Dellal Centre on June 30.
(photo credit: COURTESY OF THE SUZANNE DELLAL CENTRE.)
The government’s decision to prohibit all performances and events in an effort to contain the new coronavirus outbreak in Israel has come as a big blow to cultural institutions all over the country.
After months of shutdown due to the coronavirus emergency, the culture sector was the last one to be allowed to operate again in the second half of June, and in the past few days they had just started to get back in the saddle, allowing only a limited audience in their venues to respect the required social distancing and organizing outdoor events.
“For the past four months, we worked to move all of our activities outdoors for the moment we would be allowed to reopen,” Elisheva Mazya, director-general of the Khan Theater in Jerusalem, told The Jerusalem Post.
“On Sunday we offered our first play in the special outdoor stage that we built with the help of the municipality in the Hinnom Valley, which is now being taken down as we speak. We were also supposed to use an outdoor amphitheater in Liberty Bell Park from tomorrow and we had another itinerant production in the streets of the Yemin Moshe neighborhood.”
“The announcement of the government canceling all cultural activities literally broke our heart,” she added. “It’s a disaster.”
Mazya pointed out they invested a lot of time, energy and money in these projects, and were very excited about the turnout of the first two nights, which attracted around 150 people each.
“I can understand the government considering that things with the virus are so out of control but on the other hand I feel that these outdoor plays were a great, not dangerous alternative,” she said. “At the moment we don’t see any concrete plan on when we can go back to work.”
The lack of a plan is also what worries Anat Fischer-Leventon, the director of the internationally renowned Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv.
As she told the Post, they were just getting ready to reopen on July 17 while maintaining all the restrictions, from the masks to social distancing.
“From the beginning of the shutdown in March, we knew it would take us about a month and a half to resume activities after we were allowed to,” she said.
The center has several indoor stages, but in addition last week it organized two highly successful outdoor performances in the piazza just outside its buildings.
“It was beautiful and it gave us a lot of optimism,” Fischer-Leventon highlighted.
For now, the center has decided to cancel all the performances for July, while it is waiting to see how the situation evolves for August. In the meantime, the director explained that all the studios are fully active with many companies practicing to prepare for the Tel Aviv Dance Festival, which is set to take place at the end of next month.
“We have 14 companies and 12 premieres planned, an extraordinary number. We really hope that it will still happen. We are also considering moving the festival online as a plan B, if we really have to,” she said, adding that she hopes a full lockdown, which would also prevent artists practicing, will not be imposed again.
“I’m an optimistic person, but of course I’m worried,” she pointed out. “I don’t see a clear plan, cultural institutions were the last to be allowed back and now are the first to be shut down again and I wonder what it means, also considering that we are very organized and we were ready to implement all the guidelines, but they did not even give us the chance.”
At the moment, no financial support has been offered to the cultural institutions. Both Mazya and Fischer-Leventon expressed hope they will know more about it, as they are deciding what to do with the staff, which was already put on unpaid leave in the previous months.
“Even if we are close and all the workers are on unpaid leave, we still have a lot of expenses, we need support,” Fischer-Leventon concluded.
The culture industry is not the only one negatively affected by the new regulations announced by the government on Monday, which shut down also event halls, clubs, bars, gyms and public pools, while limiting restaurants to seating 20 patrons inside and 30 outside.
Many restaurant owners are maintaining that operating under the requirements is not sustainable.
“In the last three months the Israeli government did not prepare for another wave of infections and colossally failed, in a similar fashion to the beginning of the crisis, in dealing with the financial aspect,” said Shay Berman, director of the Restaurant and Café Association, as reported by Channel 12.
“The decision to limit the amount of customers without taking into consideration the size of the business is an expression of hysteria and has no health justification in light of the low numbers of infections in restaurants,” he added.
Berman demanded the government to step up to find a solution for the 10,000 restaurateurs and 150,000 workers in the field.


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