Back to Normal. After being shut down for a year due to the Corona crisis, Gesher Theater will reopen its doors on April 22 with five new premieres, in which in the sequels of the 30th season it presents a diverse repertoire centered on a salute to Nissim Aloni with his beautiful classic “The Bride and the Butterfly Hunter” – Efrat Ben- Tzur and Israel Demidov in the shoes of Gila Almagor and Yossi Banai! – and with a return to the Russian classics in three masterpieces from it.
In a preliminary talk before a press conference held a short time ago at the renovated Gesher Theater, Lena Kreindlin, 58, Gesher’s director since 2008 and the right-hand man of director Yevgeny Arieh – the founder of the Jaffa Theater and its artistic director, tells about the strange years in Moscow – The new plans.
From “Who Like Me” (Photo: Courtesy of Gesher Theater)When asked to point out the hallucinatory moment she experienced in the theater in the year of the Corona, Crindlin points without blinking an eye to a certain evening last September: “Half a year after the Corona stopped us at once rehearsing ‘A Thousand Glowing Suns’, by Khaled Husseini and directed by Noam Shmuel, what A hole in the closures suddenly allowed us to hold the general rehearsal in front of only 50 people, according to the permit we received. What’s up? “
Temporarily closed, right?
“True. After all the difficulties we went through over the years, with threats of closure in the past due to debts, then in this respect we spent the Corona year in peace after the Ministry of Culture and the Tel Aviv Municipality continued to transfer their allowances, which allowed us to survive, and the players and staff were expelled. To the Khalat.
“In March, when all the theaters closed, I did not know what to do with myself,” Crindlin returned to the beginning of the odyssey. “As someone whose bridge is her second home, I did not know what to do from seven in the evening without the theater, which I would not have known life without. I was overwhelmed with longing for our audience and the energy of a hall full of mouths, with applause and electricity in the air. But we were not satisfied with longing. We renovated the lobby and the locker rooms, renewed the stage and upgraded the lighting. In short, we did everything we did not have time to do in normal times, where we are always stressed and no one is enough. And polished. “
So for you the corona has paid off?
“Absolutely. That way we were able to do a Restart Ball ahead of the theater’s 30th anniversary celebrations and recharge our batteries.”
According to Crindlin, much of the repertoire was promised before the Corona. This includes “Bullets Over Broadway,” a multi-part musical directed by Rafi Niv, the former artistic director of the Be’er Sheva Theater. The musical, with the gifted comedian Tali Oren as a guest star, was about to premiere on March 19, but everything closed, as mentioned, four days earlier. And as for Woody Allen the Elder, who staged his popular film and its entanglements, not a word.
“It was really a hit,” the energetic CEO recalls. “Everything was ready and the last rehearsals had already taken place with the costumes. “Suddenly we had to stop everything.”
Another guest star, this time new-old on the bridge, will be Orna Banai, who will star with Mickey Leon and Neta Spiegelman in “Every Hour”, his seventh performance (!) On the bridge by and directed by Ezekiel Lazrov, playwright-director-choreographer-actor, with the plot Should reflect the social deterioration in the country since the assassination of Rabin.
Following the success of the play “Kite Chaser”, by the American-Afghan writer Khaled Husseini, a dramatized version of “A Thousand Glowing Suns”, his bestseller, anchored in the tragedy of the Afghan Civil War, will be staged on a bridge stage, with Doron Tavori The stars of the show.
Amir J. Wolf, the director of Gesher’s House, will direct “The Treasure Under the Bridge,” a play for the whole family inspired by the stories of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, by Roi Chen, Gesher’s house playwright. Participants: Ido Musari, Gilad Kletter, Alexander Sandrovich and Alon Friedman.
Members of the Gesher Theater (Photo: Courtesy of the Gesher Theater)The highlight of the five premieres that will open the 30th year of Gesher is his return after 17 years to the Israeli theater stage of “The Bride and the Butterfly Hunter”, the pearl play by Nissim Aloni, starring Efrat Ben-Tzur and Israel Demidov. The staging of the play reflects the upheavals of the corona, this year.
“This is a show that was born with us quite spontaneously, I must say,” says Crindlin. “Before the Corona, we intended to present ‘King’s’ by Nissim Aloni, directed by the young Yair Sherman, but we found it difficult to put on a show with a lot of actors in the current situation. ‘Look for something smaller,’ I told Sherman. He suggested ‘The Bride.’ “Two actors, a brilliant idea, while reversing the creators. The audience will watch from the stage a play that will be played in the empty hall and a fresh symphony orchestra will play from the stands.”
“We will have another Aloni with us,” adds Crindlin. “During the year, Gesher actors will bring to the audience ‘I dressed up as a street cat,’ a plot audio tour of the streets of Tel Aviv, according to Aloni’s short story book ‘Lists of a Street Cat.'”
Compared to Aloni, in honor of the 30th anniversary celebrations, a bridge will later return to its Russian roots. The play “Yevgeny Onegin” by Pushkin, which was planned to be directed by the renowned Latvian director Elvis Hermannis, will be joined by plays based on “Sin and Punishment” by Dostoevsky and “The Seagull” (also directed by Sherman), a play for which The actress who will star in the role of Nina.
Also in Gesher programs: “The Future of Theater”, productions by young playwrights, including Ilail Semel, Neta Wiener and Aliza Hanowitz, with the support of the Tel Aviv Municipality; “Mother and Son (and His Father), a video collage directed and directed by Doron Tavori and” Mothers “, a musical-dramatic journey to motherhood from Genesis, by David Zeba, who will also conduct the Raanana Symphony Orchestra, co-produced by the Israeli Opera and Bridge by Shirit Lee Weiss.
Lena Kreindlin (Photo: Daniel Kaminsky)The “Jaffa Fest” festival will return in June. “The tickets are addictive from last year,” notes Crindlin. “I hope nothing new comes up that will cause further rejection.”
If any of you are interested in where Mr. Gesher, Yevgeny Arie, in all joy, then well, thank you. If there is no new outbreak of the corona, he is due to return in the middle of next month from his stay in New York, where his wife lives and direct a play that will embody the spirit of the 30th anniversary celebrations. As for the identity of the show, Arieh keeps the cards close to his chest. “Meanwhile, Yevgeny is not revealing what to us,” says Crindlin. “But we trust him.”
As for you, will you continue to welcome visitors to Gesher performances every evening?
“Of course. At eight o’clock in the evening, when the plane is supposed to take off, there should be the pilot to fly it, right?”