It’s a drizzly Tuesday evening in Neve Tzedek’s Mitham Hatahana, the Old Railway Station. The grounds have mostly emptied, except for a few children exiting the youth center, and a group of actors rehearsing a scene from Hanoch Levin’s 1983 play, Suitcase Packers (Orzei Mizvadot).
“Give me another 500, give it!” the prostitute yells at Elhanan Gellernter (portrayed by Alya Goldman and Grigory Katzenelson, respectively). Three young girls watch, enamored. The actors are bundled up against the biting chill, their bags strewn on the ground across remnants of the old railroad track, once the terminus of the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway.
Suitcase Packers is the flagship show of the Fulcro Theatre group and its first full show in Hebrew since the company made its move to Israel from St. Petersburg in 2022. They were looking for the right play with which to launch their Hebrew repertoire.
“We thought about it for a year,” says Dasha Shamina, director of the show and director and curator of Fulcro. “Then I saw the statistics: in the last three years, we had the biggest emigration from Israel to other countries. And it was absolutely logical, because of the war, because of political reasons.”
A comedy with eight funerals
Described in its foreword as “a comedy with eight funerals,” Suitcase Packers premiered at the Cameri Theatre in 1983. It was a time of public anger, trauma, and disillusionment following the First Lebanon War, the Israeli banks crisis, growing economic hardship, and an accompanying increase in emigration. The play tells an existential story of longing – for escape and freedom, love and acceptance; and of concession – to life and death, and those things over which one has no control.
As the play’s description puts it, “Six families, five lovers, three bachelorettes, nine dead, eight funerals, four widows, 11 suitcases, a baby, an American, a homosexual, a prostitute, a stutterer and a hunchback, all deeply unhappy.” Throughout the play, characters exist and die, and attempt to escape to other countries, where things will be better.
It was a play to which members of the Fulcro Theatre group could relate on several levels, considering their immigration to Israel.
“We left Russia immediately after the war in Ukraine began [in 2022]. A full-scale invasion was something we couldn’t accept,” says Shamina. “Month by month, things were getting worse.”
Already in the autumn of 2020, following the establishment of the group, Shamina had been detained by Russia’s Center for Combating Extremism, and the company found itself under scrutiny from officers of the Investigative Committee after alleged denunciations, during a period of increasing censorship focused on Russian artists and activists.
Fulcro has already performed six repertoire shows in Israel, including the cabaret Die Blumen (2022, premiered previously in Russia), The Third Cabaret: The Burning Bush (2023), Joke (2023, premiered previously in Russia), There Will Be No Wedding (2024), No Name (2024), and Crime (2025).
Employing a horizontal (collaborative) approach, Fulcro was founded by Shamina, working together with students she was teaching at the time at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts.
“We tried to prove that the horizontal structure could work in Russia – that if we could do it with 14 people who founded the theater, it could work with 20, and it could work with thousands,” Shamina says. “And I think we were successful. Now we are at the next level of our mission: we’ve met new people, Israeli actors and artists, and it’s a different way of thinking. So we are trying to do something together, and it’s really interesting.”
After receiving a grant from the Culture and Sport Ministry, Suitcase Packers began rehearsals in October. Described in Fulcro’s promotions as “a spatial journey across the grounds of the old Tel Aviv railway station” – a place where people once arrived and embarked on trips – and with the grounds serving as part of the experience, the play follows in the tradition of Fulcro’s performances in Russia, which took place on the grounds of a former brewery, converted to a hub for offices, culture, and nightlife.
With a cast of 30 characters in a real-world performance space, company choreographer Polina Dreyden was excited about the play.
“Site-specific is always challenging. I can’t just come up with ideas that I’ve used before. Because sometimes when you work in theater for many years, you have secrets in your pockets that you can use. But here, I’m almost naked. I must think how to do it, how to make it visible, how to make it interesting,” she says. “And the cast is huge,” Dreyden adds, noting the challenge.
Rehearsal is over. Shamina, Dreyden, and noted Israeli actress and cast member Michal Weinberg have gathered in a pub on the grounds for some coffee and food as they talk. Weinberg, who plays the characters of Bianca Shuster and Tzila Hofstetter, says she jumped at the opportunity to join the show after having seen Fulcro’s production of There Will Be No Wedding.
“When the producer called me, I heard, ‘We have a new production going on, and we need a Hebrew speaker…’ and before I heard what it was, I said yes.”
Weinberg says having the opportunity to perform in a site-specific location was another attraction.
“That was something that really turned me on. When we came here, I felt like, okay, it can happen, because something is in the air. Real people are walking here. I like these challenges – when it’s not in the theater, in a black box. When people watch you, and you don’t see them. I like to see the people, to feel the life, the pulse of the audience.”
Shamina, for her part, describes it as a conversation – one between the artists and the audience. But what is this conversation about?
“I think about how we can be happy,” she says. “Can we be happy? Maybe you have an answer. Maybe we find an answer together. And maybe not.”
For tickets to the Suitcase Packers dress rehearsal on December 26 (8 p.m.), or premieres on December 30 (noon) and December 31 (2 p.m.), visit: fulcrotheatre.co.il/heb/suitcases