The Cameri Theatre announced its plans for the upcoming 2016 – 2017 season. Hosting the press meeting together for the last time were General Director Noam Semel, due to end his nearly quarter of a century sojourn at the helm of the Cameri Theatre at the end of the calendar year, and Artistic Director Omri Nitzan. Nitzan commented on their almost 30 years of working together, which began with five years at the Haifa Theatre, and continued at the Cameri, saying that “The experience of creating together is the foundation of theatre,” balancing the desire to create “meaningful theatre, that remains ever memorable” with the ongoing challenges of economic survival.
Already onstage is a new play by Hillel Mittelpunkt, HaZe’evim (The Wolves). Set in 1978, the year after the critical change in Israeli politics, and the ascension of the Likud party, the play focuses on the widowed Ze’eva, who lives with her eldest son and brother. When her younger son returns after a long absence, it sets off a series of changes and revelations.
HaHeder HaAhori (The Back Room), a new play written and directed by Edna Mazie, will soon begin rehearsals, and more new Israeli plays by Maor Zagori, Savion Liebrecht, Shay Golden, and Shay Lahav are planned for the coming season.
Classic plays to be featured this season are a comedy by Georges Feydeau, translated by Eli Bijaoui and directed by Udi Ben Moshe; Henrik Ibsen’s Pillars of Society, translated by Arthur Kogan and Itay Tiran and directed by Arthur Kogan; and Heinrich Kleist’s The Broken Jug, which will feature Rami Baruch in the leading role.
One of the most intriguing projects in the works is a new bilingual version of William Shakespeare’s Othello, to be directed by Itay Tiran. The play will be performed by Arab and Jewish actors in both Hebrew and Arabic, alternating the two versions. In this unique process, the entire cast is learning their lines in both languages.
Experimenting with form, Zvi Sahar and Oded Littman will be creating stage performance based on short stories by Etgar Keret, to be directed by Zvi Sahar. The play will be staged as Puppet Cinema, a form Sahar has developed over the past several years. I’ve seen two of Sahar’s recent works, Planet Egg (read the full review here) and The Road to Ein Harod (read the full review here), based on the eponymous novel by Amos Kenan. Puppet Cinema works something like this: Onstage are actors, puppeteers and a camera-person, with the camera’s perspective shown on a large screen at the back of the stage. It’s a shifting collage of image, sound, and movement, telling a story that is several stories at once.
In addition to new plays, there are several excellent plays still running at the Cameri – Mephisto (read the full review here), West Side Story (read the full review here), On The Grill (read the full review here), and many more – the full schedule in English is online via this link.
