Theatre Or Presents: 'OnStageIsrael' At VG Biograph Aug 16

Theatre Or*, the North Carolina non-profit theater company that brought their American premiere production of Israeli playwright Motti Lerner's Hard Love to Victory Gardens Theater two summers ago, will present OnStageIsrael: A Festival of Staged Readings of Cutting Edge Plays at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater August 16-24, 2008.

Professional directors will stage five plays about Israel by Israeli and American Playwrights: Women's Minyan by Naomi Ragen, the recent off-Broadway hit Masked by Ilan Hatsor, Apples from the Desert by Savyon Liebrecht, Conviction by Oren Neeman, starring Ami Dayan, and To Pay the Price by Peter-Adrian Cohen. Professional actors will read each play two or three times in repertory during the nine day festival.  Discussions with facilitators will follow most of the readings.

Tickets for OnStageIsrael can be obtained through the Victory Gardens Box Office at 773-871-3000 or on-line at www.victorygardens.org  Prices are $10 per reading, $32 for a five show festival pass, and $8 for groups of 15 or more.

The purpose of the festival is to present the community with unique artistic works about Israel that pose questions of universal urgency, help us reflect about our values in new ways, and promote cross-cultural dialogue. The project is also intended to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday by educating the community about Israeli culture through theatrical works that transcend religious, gender, political, and cultural barriers and express universal concerns about the human condition.

"If one wants to go beyond the headlines about the Middle East, one must come and see and hear these readings," says Dr. Michael Taub, editor of "Modern Israeli Drama, Israeli Holocaust Drama, Israeli Drama for the New Millennium, Contemporary Jewish American Writers, and "The Jewish Experience on Film. Dr. Taub will moderate post- performance discussions beginning Thursday evening, August 21, through festival close on Sunday, August 24. Other facilitators and panelists will be named shortly.

"We staged our first Israeli play reading festival in our home town of Durham, N.C., four years ago.  At the time I believe it was the first of its kind in the country," says Theatre Or's Producing Artistic Director, Diane Gilboa. From there we staged the American premieres of Hard Love and Women's Minyan "each of which has now received subsequent regional productions. Our community is small, and I felt the plays deserved a wider audience. I was pleased that Victory Gardens agreed, I researched these plays over the past several years, attending many in Israel. The plays deal with secular/religious relations, religious fundamentalism, growing up in
Israel, the Spanish Inquisition, and with life under the threat of terrorism. Romance, comedy, drama. I believe too this is the first time we see plays performed together that are empathetic to both Israelis and Palestinians. Hopefully, this creates a balanced perspective to encourage dialogue."

OnStageIsrael Schedule

Sat., 8/16            8:00 pm     Women's Minyan
Sun., 8/17           4:30 pm     Women's Minyan
Mon., 8/18           7:30 pm     Masked
Tues., 8/19           7:30 pm     Women's Minyan
Wed.,  8/20          7:30 pm     Apples in the Desert
Thurs., 8/21         3:00 pm     Conviction
Thurs., 8/21         7:30 pm     Masked
Fri., 8/22              8:00 pm     To Pay the Price
Sat., 8/23             1:00 pm     To Pay the Price
                            4:30 pm     Conviction
                            8:00 pm      Apples in the Desert
Sun. 8/24             1:00 pm     Apples in the Desert
                            4:30 pm     Masked
                            7:30 pm     To Pay the Price

Background on the plays:

Women's Minyan by Naomi Ragen
Played to over 500,000 people over five years, at The National Theatre of Israel, the Habima. Based on a true story, Women's Minyan is a spellbinding exploration of religious fundamentalism in a patriarchal society. Chana flees her orthodox home in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem, leaving behind her 12 children, and carrying with her a terrible secret. Two years later, armed with a court order, she
returns to see her children who have now been hidden. She convenes a secular minyan, a trial of 10 women, to judge her fitness to see them.

Masked by Ilan Hatsor (the recent off-Broadway hit)
Translated by Michael Taub
A fiery drama that depicts the the tragedy of three Palestinian brothers during the intifada as they wrestle with conflicts between duty and family and survival and principles.

Apples from the Desert by Savyon Liebrecht
Translated by Shir Freibach
Winner of Israel's Best Play Award, 2006
A romantic comedy about Sephardi-Jewish parents from Jerusalem whose only daughter runs away from home to live on a kibbutz.  With a comic, generous and hope-filled spirit, the playwright sketches the life of young Israelis under the shadow of terrifying social rifts - the ethnic rift between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews and the religious rift between religious and secular Jews - and enables the audience to discover the possibilities embodied in a future that transcends these rifts.

Conviction by Oren Neeman, starring Ami Dayan
Based on the novel Confession by Yonatan Ben-Nachum
Translated and adapted by Ami Dayan and Mark Williams
"The translation of Conviction was commissioned by the Denver Center Theatre Company Kent Thompson, Artistic Director."
(2001 Israeli Prime Minister Prize for Hebrew Literature) Played for five seasons and over 500 peerformances in the repertoire of the
National Theatre of Israel, Habima An off-Broadway production is in development for 2009.

Conviction is based on a true story of a beautiful love affair doomed by religious persecution in Inquisition Spain. In present day Madrid, an Israeli scholar is detained and questioned by a Spanish official for staling a confidential Inquisiton file. Together, interrogator and interrogated, are drawn by the files wrinkled yellow pages into the torrid love affair of the converted Spanish priest Andres Gonzalez and his Jewish wife, Isabel.

In 1485, seven years before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the priest Andres Gonzales, the son of a converted Jew, confesses how he met a Jewish woman and saved her from burning at the stake. Caught by the woman's charms, their love grows and blossoms, while the eyes of the Inquisition documents his every move.

To Pay the Price by Peter-Adrian Cohen
In 1976 Israeli soldiers flew 2,000 miles to Entebbe, Uganda, to rescue hostages from a hi-jacked air liner. All but three hostages survived, and only one Israeli soldier was killed: Jonathan "Yoni" Netanyahu. Several plays show the difficulties of life as a Palestinian, while this play depicts the harrowing life of a young Israeli. The words are Yoni's, compiled from his letters and remembrances of friends. It is his story and that of his military brethren, the woman he loved, and the lives of generations of young Israelis who are thrust into war after war for their survival. This is the moving story of a genuine hero.

*Or is the Hebrew word for light.

Photo caption for Women's Minyan phone call photo.jpg:

From the American premiere of Naomi Ragen's "Women's Minyan," produced by Theatre Or and StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance at Duke University Reynolds Theatre in Durham, North Carolina, October, 2005.
Photo credit ShelDon Becker

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