Music, melodrama and provocative social commentary – Leah Mauas and Diego Rotman, the Sala-Manca Group, take the telenovella (another great Israeli invention, is it not?) and reconstruct it to create “The Story of Batya M,” which will be screened at the Tmuna Theatre on Wednesday, January 13 at 20:30. The movie will be screened with live dubbing by Sala-Manca and a musical performance by Yarden Erez, who also composed the film’s soundtrack.
“The Story of Batya M.” is the last (and unique) chapter of a fictional Argentinean “telenovela” (soap opera) projected on the screen and experienced as live performance. In a live performance the two leading actors from the film dub the scenes (from Spanish into
English). The language they use changes, the translation becomes dubious, the design of the subtitles and the conventions of the genre are also transformed and subverted. The outcome is a unique piece that exists on the border between mass television culture and avant-garde performance.
“The Story of Batya M.” uses the classic story structure of the telenovela but subverts it through the subtitles which have a central role in this work or through the use of poetic elements from cinema language or the appearance of a melodrama researcher who comments about the work . The Story of Batya M. is a work full of humor, drama,
poetics and blinks. The work addresses different audiences because allows different levels of reading: it dialogues with cinema, art and telenovela culture. The work deals with the concepts of migration, culture, social issues, and of course….love and revenge.
The performance was produced and shown at first in the framework of the
Bat Yam Street Festival in 2007. It was also presented at the Jerusalem Film
Festival in 2008 and EPAF – Performance Festiva, Ujazdowski Castle, in Warsaw, September, 2008.
The Story of Batya M. Wednesday, January 13 at 20:30
Tmuna Theatre, 8 Soncino Street, Tel Aviv
Tickets: 03-5611211
