Before the Screen Goes Down: Behind the Scenes of “Rehearsals”

After “Manaich”, “Lock Hour” and “Tehran”, the “rehearsals” of the public broadcasting corporation “Here” also reach the last line, being crowned as a great success and garnering much praise.

In contrast to the three series mentioned above, “Rehearsals” does not deal with security matters but deals with the behind the scenes of the theater in Israel, and ironically, aired precisely at a time when theaters around the country are close to closing a year without activity.

The series “Rehearsals” – penned by former couple Noa Koller and Erez Driggs – deals with a couple, creators in a theater that after five years of marriage go through a difficult separation that comes after great success in the joint professional aspect: the play they worked on together was finally accepted into a big theater.

So what reality and the series have in common is that Noa Koller and Erez Driggs were indeed partners in the past, however this relationship lasted a little less than a year and most of the joint writing they started after they separated. What the series and reality have in common is that Driggs was the one who broke up with Koller, when she was ready to get married – and he was not. Since then, Koller has managed to get married and become a mother, while Driggs is in a relationship of his own.

By the way, the play “One + One”, which is shown in the series and to which the characters of Lake Rodberg and Itai Turgeman were cast, is a real play that Koller and Driggs did create and even acted in at the Gesher Theater. That is, the series is based on a show, which is based on the reality in the lives of the creators.

On the face of it, Koller and Driggs’ co-writing lasted about a decade, by which time the play in question had already been staged at the Gesher Theater, and it was only in the last two years that the two began working on a screenplay for the TV series.

According to what Driggs said in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth’s “7 Nights” supplement, even before the “Rehearsals” series reached the corporation, she made stops on the network and on yes, which did not mature into a joint work, until it finally came up in the corporation.

The corporation’s CEO, Eldad Koblenz, estimated that the series speaks to the Tel Aviv industry and the surrounding area, but nevertheless gave the green light for its launch. He even went on to say that it is a series intended for “vegan Tel Avivians.”

It is difficult to measure the success of the content broadcast here in terms of data, as the channel has asked not to be measured in the rating committee that provides the rating data, but the success of “rehearsals” is evident on social media. And if that’s not enough, Itai Turgeman, one of the stars of the series, said in this context that he has been playing since the age of 14 – and has never experienced such success.

The casting of Turgeman and Rodberg for the lead roles in the play on which the series is based was not accidental. Koller and Driggs really wanted them specifically – and tailored the lyrics especially for them. A similar case in the series was with Yevgenia Dudina, who played the director of the theater and for whom special lines were written, although Koller and Driggs were troubled by the possibility that her casting would not work out in the end.

One of the most intriguing stories in the series is actually around the supporting roles that stand out in it. For example, the role of the Austrian director Paul Groszowski, who does not know a word of Hebrew and English in the series, is played by veteran Israeli actor Roni Mendelssohn, who studied German especially for the role, as does his assistant, who does not know a word of Hebrew – an Israeli actress named Yuval Levy, who also studied Is the language especially for the series. The role of stage assistant Sarel is played by actor Ben Yosifovich (“On the Spectrum”), who raised his head and came to the audition with a ready-made binder with his character’s name.

In everything related to the theater, the filming of the series usually took place at the Habima Theater, with the production of the series paying the National Theater about NIS 100,000 for the period of use of its facilities. Filming in the theater began in February 2020 and lasted about two months. By the way, Habima Theater director Noam Semel was photographed for a guest role in episode 9, as the mediator of Iris and Tomer, but according to him, the filming was before December 8, 2019 for the role of theater director.

Apart from Habima, the series was filmed in a variety of other locations, including offices at Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer. Filming, by the way, continued to the peak of the Corona period somewhere in March.

According to data from the Public Broadcasting Corporation, the cost of the entire series is six million shekels, and it has ten episodes. So in a rough calculation, the cost of each episode is 600,000 shekels. Just to clear the ear, “Lock Hour”, which was also broadcast here, cost about two million shekels per episode and needed financial assistance from outside, so its second season is in question at the moment.

And what about the second season of “Rehearsals”? Its future is also uncertain, but in contrast to “closing time”, the corporation’s management is pushing hard to start work on a new season for “rehearsals” soon, despite internal disagreements in the production that are delaying the signing of the contract for next season. It seems that all parties are interested in going out, but when you ask Driggs and Koller – the answer is “with the help of the name”. Either way, if there is indeed a second season of the hit series, Koller said it would take at least two years for it to hit television.