Acre Festival Best Play awarded to two playwrights

Judges awarded the Acre Festival Best Play, worth NIS 30,000, jointly to Schmetterling and Unraveled (Prumot). The NIS 25,000 America-Israel Foundatio

By HELEN KAYE
Judges awarded the Acre Festival Best Play, worth NIS 30,000, jointly to Schmetterling and Unraveled (Prumot). The NIS 25,000 America-Israel Foundation Prize went to playwright Ya'akov Eyali for Slap (Stira) and Wound in a Sea of Sharks (Petza beYam shel Krishim). Each of the 30-minute long plays concentrates on the present and lethal implications of past and often random violence. The visually and aurally powerful Schmetterling by Guy Sharaf and Eland Kenar examines the intimately essential connection between music and humans. Unraveled, written by Odelia Moreh-Matalon and performed by herself and Eliana Shechter, is a profound, ironic and witty exploration in rhymeof the various aspects of the way life weighs us down. A new prize of NIS 3,000 for Best Producer went to Inbal Ratzon of the musical melodrama Achingly Blond (Blondinit ad Ke'ev) by Roni Kedar and Stav James-Davis. Some 200,000 people came to the 26th annual Acre Festival of Alternative Israeli Theater from October 18-21. The halls were 98 percent full and thousands more watched the street theater events in and around the festival venues in the crusader fortress and around Acre Old City.