\u201cWe must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest,\u201d says Hester Prynne to her daughter in Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s novel The Scarlet Letter. In the market-place, the wares are all out in the open: on display, exposed, as are the people. The tumult of colors, scents and noise, even the ubiquitous plaid plastic carts with wheels \u2013 there\u2019s a kind of thrill to it all, and an element of risk. There is no comfortable distance from which to view the market. You are either in or out and you never know what you will see or hear: anything is possible. That is the feeling I had watching Sara Sibony\u2019s theatre group from Jaffa\u2019s Beit Reka perform at the Bat Yam International Street Theatre Festival. An imaginative journey to the unexpected, with its underlying intimations of the secrets of the forest, it was a theatre experience unlike any other.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeit Reka is a community center located in Jaffa Daled \u2013 it\u2019s a neighborhood with a stigma,\u201d director Sara Sibony told me as we sat in the caf\u00e9 at the Tel Aviv Gay Center in Meir Park. She explained that this particular community theatre group has been active for many years. The previous director had worked with them for 11 years straight. When she approached Sibony two and a half years ago to replace her as director, Sibony hesitated. With a background in dance, movement and more experimental theatre, she was not sure that the community theatre environment, with its emphasis on social issues, would be a good match for her. But after meeting the group, \u201cI knew I wanted to work with them. They are people from all walks of life who are interested in theatre. There is a preschool teacher, a graphic designer, a taxi cab driver \u2013 it\u2019s a very diverse group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although people have come and gone over the years, the group has been consistently active and serious about their work, some of which was documented in a film by Iris Rubin (Machboim \u2013 the Hebrew term for hide and seek) which won the Wolgin Prize for best documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 1998. Prior to the current production, Sibony did a piece with the group that was entirely movement based, called \u201cMan Broom Woman\u201d which explored male-female relationships. Says Sibony, \u201cI wanted to see what I could do with this group, to bring out something different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ati Citron, artistic director of the Bat Yam International Street Theatre Festival invited Sibony and the group to participate in the festival (which is usually open only to professionals), and she started to think of an appropriate project. The idea of having a market grew out of Jaffa itself, as Sibony visited the Agora Gallery, where she saw an exhibit of portraits, and continued from there to the flea market, moving, as she expresses it, \u201cfrom something very intimate to something very public.\u201d She began working on the idea with the group, starting with making actual self-portraits, and developing it into the concept of putting yourself on the table, your identity, your sense of self on display.<\/p>\n