Beit Lessin’s Family Ties

Beit Lessin’s Open Stage Festival has always been dedicated to nurturing and encouraging new plays, with an open call for scripts, staged readings of the selected plays and a development grant for the full production of the winning play – which is then traditionally performed the following year. Family Ties – a joint project of the Beit Lessin Theatre and the Heidelberg Municipal Theatre – opens a new direction, not only as an international co-production, but as an entirely different approach to theatre. Unlike the other plays presented at the festival – these did not begin with a script.

Exploring the stories of individuals and families from both countries, a series of six plays will be written for the project, based on research conducted in Israel and Germany. Artistic directors for the project are Avishai Milshtein from Beit Lessin and Jan Linders from the Heidelberg Municipal Theatre. The first two plays – They Call Me Jeckish and Undercover Tel Aviv – will have their Israeli premiere as part of the Beit Lessin Open Stage Festival 2010.

Midnight East had the opportunity to talk about the process of creating the plays with Stéphane Bittoun, director of Undercover Tel Aviv, who recently visited Israel with his production of My First Sony, which was performed at the Cameri Theatre this past June. Roughly a year and a half ago, Bittoun began doing preliminary research for the project in Tel Aviv with dramaturg Kirstin Grubemeyer. They were then joined by two German actors – Paul Grill and Franzisca Beyer, and two Israeli actors – Dan Kastoriano and Michal Shtamler. They explored Tel Aviv, interviewing a variety of people, collecting impressions and information from which Bittoun would create the play.

“The two projects are very different,” said Bittoun, “although they are both based on interviews. We had a very vague topic. It was not like ‘Jeckish’, it was Tel Aviv…if Israel is maybe a country of immigrants – a variety of people, cultures, food, languages, then maybe Tel Aviv is even one step further, a place for all those who try to live their lives, follow their picture of … there is this word outsider, I don’t like that so much, I don’t consider them outsiders.”

According to Bittoun the people and stories they encountered, revealed the variety of individuals that live in the city and the complexities lying beneath the surface of the easy-going beach city where ‘everything goes’. Bittoun recalled, “We interviewed a young guy who was 23. At the age of 15 and a half he left his religious family. He was at a Yeshiva – so where would he go? He wouldn’t go to Jerusalem; he would go to Tel Aviv to live his life. We talked to people who considered not circumcising their sons, even though they are Jewish and they say my son is still a Jew. Even though their parents, the grandparents, are not religious but it touches them, because it’s such a tradition it seems strange to break tradition. But the parents said: Why should I injure in a way my child? Why should I disregard the integrity of the body of my child? This is the proof that we are Jewish? It cannot be. We met also foreign workers from the Philippines or Ghana who have an in-between status – kind of legal or illegal.”

“What I didn’t want to do is a documentary, a real documentary. I wanted it to be… maybe in terms of Fellini, a world… you recognize Italy but it’s not Italy…I tried to understand ‘What is Tel Aviv?’ for me on a more theoretical, intellectual, or philosophical level. It seems to me a city which at least can give you the freedom to be yourself, or to try to be yourself. I’m not talking about the success if you really manage to live your life, but try and really to follow your vision of life. You have the possibility, freedom and possibility. Some people succeed and are happy and some don’t.”

“I created a frame story in which there are agents – two from the Mossad/Shabak and two from the German BND. This refers to several things. First of all it’s a cliché. The Mossad is known as one of the best secret services in the world but after the Dubai experience we are not sure anymore…Second, in talking about this I use a big word, but a collective paranoia that exists, maybe a bit in Israel. To be cautious because it’s a small country, because with a reason, because you feel endangered.
And it’s a metaphor for our a play: two people from Israel and two people from Germany (I’m talking about the actors and around them me and other people) came with a mission not knowing exactly what we are looking for – so this is what they are.”

Undercover Tel Aviv is a docufiction that centers on four undercover agents sent on a secret mission to Tel Aviv – yet they do not know its purpose. Bittoun says, “From the beginning you know that there is an irony to it. They start to identify with their cover identity. They start to get involved in it and being more and more sucked into this – I’m a Tel Avivian, I’m so different, I’m lonely.”

In reflecting on the Tel Aviv sensibility, Bittoun recalled something said in one of the interviews conducted with a friend of his from Frankfurt. The friend was born in Czechoslovakia, and then the family fled to Germany. After finishing school he went back to Prague to study, then to the United States and finally moved to Israel. In the interview the friend said, “When we were in Czechoslovakia we felt lost and then we came to Germany I felt lost, then I went to Prague but it was not the same as before and I felt lost, then I went to the States to study more, I felt lost then I came to Israel – yes, I felt lost but maybe this is the city of the lost.”

Family Ties is supported by the German government, the Baden-Wirtemberg Regional Government, the Municipality of Heidelberg, the Goethe Institute, the Minister of Foreign Affairs – Kashtum and private donors.Undercover Tel Aviv will be performed at ZOA House on: September 2 at 20:30, September 3 at 21:00 and September 4 at 18:00. They Call Me Jeckish will be performed at ZOA House on: September 3 at 11:00 & 14:00, and September 4 at 11:00 & 21:00. Tickets: 03-7255333, www.lessin.co.il.