{"id":3689,"date":"2010-03-06T11:59:25","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T18:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=3689"},"modified":"2010-03-22T13:04:23","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T20:04:23","slug":"ghetto-premieres-at-the-cameri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=3689","title":{"rendered":"Ghetto Premieres at the Cameri"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Itay Tiran as Nazi officer Hans Kitel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ghetto, a play by Joshua Sobol describing daily life in the Vilna Ghetto and the theatre company created there under impossible conditions, will premiere at the Cameri Theatre on March 8, directed by Omri Nitzan. For Noam Semel, Director of the Cameri, the play has come full circle \u2013 it was first produced at the Haifa Theatre in 1984, when Semel was its director.<\/p>\n

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Noam Semel, Director of the Cameri Theatre\/Photo: Elizur Reuveni<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Omri Nitzan recalled sitting in the Haifa theatre offices one evening with Semel, when Joshua Sobol came to tell them about the diary written by Herman Kruk, describing life in the ghetto. Says Nitzan,\u201cIt was a source of inspiration for Joshua. Now, Noam Semel lives twice \u2013 he is always doing several things at a time. While Joshua was telling us this touching story, Noam was moving non-stop at his desk, opening drawers, picking up pens\u2026I told Noam \u2013 he\u2019s talking about something very precious and important to him. Then Noam picked up the papers he\u2019d been fiddling with, and held them out for Joshua to sign \u2013 it was the contract for Ghetto.<\/p>\n

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Playwright Joshua Sobol and Director Omri Nitzan\/Photo: Elizur Reuveni<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Playwright Joshua Sobol said, \u201cMy inspiration for writing the play was my discovery of songs written in the ghetto. In a book about the partisans of Ghetto Vilna I found the comment: \u201cThe underground objected to the theatre in the ghetto.\u201d It was the first time I realized that there had been a theatre in the ghetto. I started to research the topic, it was then 1982 and many of the people involved were still alive. Irena Lusky wrote a book about her experiences which shatters many myths. It was written from the perspective of a girl of 16, about first love, sex, without any inhibitions. When I spoke with her she asked me, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you talk to the Theatre Director Israel Segal?\u201d It turned out that he was living at the time on Gordon Street in Tel Aviv. I met with him. When I asked him how he found costumes for the theatre, he said, \u201cWe didn\u2019t lack for costumes. There were many clothes from Ponar [the death pits].\u201d<\/p>\n

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Gadi Yagil as Israel Segal\/Photo: Elizur Reuveni<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThey performed satiric sketches, cabaret \u2013 there are no remaining texts from these. Some are humorous; sometimes the humor is a kind of black humor, sometimes romantic songs. Lusky wrote in her memoir that after a hard day\u2019s work people would come home, shower, and go to the theatre. I visited the YIVO archives in New York. They had documents of ticket sales. The theater had 315 seats and they usually sold 330 \u2013 350 tickets each evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom my perspective,\u201d Sobol concluded, \u201cthis is not a play about the Holocaust, but about the Jewish world that disappeared. In the 1920s the Vilner Troupe performed O\u2019Neill, Strindberg, Pirandello, The Dybbuk \u2013 it was a modern and even avant-garde theatre. They were a testimony to the spiritual force of European Jewry.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stage Designer Roni Toran\/Photo: Elizur Reuveni<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stage designer Roni Toran explained that the conversation with Segal (played by Gadi Yagil) provides the framework for the play \u2013life in the Vilna ghetto is presented through Segal\u2019s memories. \u201cWorking with the freedom of memory,\u201d said Toran, \u201cwe placed emphasis on the dramatic situation rather than historical accuracy. There will be a transparent screen, on which an image of a Tel Aviv street will be projected, and behind you can see the set \u2013 the ghetto slowly emerges from Israel\u2019s memories.\u201d The chaos and crowded conditions of the ghetto will be expressed in the three huge piles of clothing, furniture and books on the stage, each of which will also contain hidden exits for the actors. Toran further said, \u201cThis is a group of people who are locked in the closed space of the ghetto. They have been cast here like the piles of clothes and books.\u201d His inspiration for expressing that sense of imprisonment came in part from the works of Mona Hatoum, a Palestinian artist born in Beirut and living in London, whose grid-like work Current Disturbance (1996) is at the Israel Museum (due to the extensive renovation project, this wing is currently closed). Hatoum\u2019s work is minimalist in form, personal and political at once, a grid with no entrance or exit, recalling a prison cell. The grid contains many light bulbs that flicker on and off, at different levels of intensity \u2013 an effect evoking associations of searchlights and electric fences, but also perhaps, beacons of hope.<\/p>\n

The play expresses the dissonance between the life created in the theatre \u2013 joy, laughter, song and dance, as well as the sense of togetherness, and the experience of being crowded into the ghetto, in unbearable living conditions, dependent on the whims of the Nazis, under the constant threat of death. While the play itself is fictional, it is based on historical figures and events.<\/p>\n

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Yom Tov Litman\/Photo: Elizur Reuveni<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the presentation, a man who had lived in the Vilna ghetto, Yom Tov Litman (as he said \u2013 the name by which he is called to the Torah), recalled his experiences there. \u201cI visited the theatre; I couldn\u2019t come to all the plays because I didn\u2019t have enough money.\u201d Litman recalled the Nazi Kitel, saying, \u201cWhat I saw now in the play was true, Kitel would come to the ghetto and play with the orchestra. Not in front of an audience.\u201d Litman also spoke of the conflicts between the different factions in the ghetto that are brought to life in the play Ghetto. He worked on behalf of the underground in the Judenrat \u2013 specializing in assigning people to apartments, dividing up the living space \u2013 2 meters per person. \u201cIf the apartment was 40 meters I was an expert at knowing how many people I could fit in there.\u201d Speaking of ghetto commandant Jacob Gens, Litman said, \u201cHe could have saved himself but due to his sense of public duty thought that he could save those who would be the most essential, and he made the selection. He didn\u2019t cheat or take bribes. Historically, he betrayed his people\u2026Life in the ghetto, every hour is borrowed. The uncertainty: what will happen tomorrow? That was our constant fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scenes from an open rehearsal of Ghetto, photographed by Elizur Reuveni:
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\n<\/em>The songs used in the play are authentic songs written in the Vilna Ghetto between the years 41 \u2013 44. Kruk\u2019s diary, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, was published in 2002 by Yale University Press.<\/p>\n

Ghetto by Joshua Sobol, directed by Omri Nitzan<\/p>\n

Cameri Theatre, 19 Shaul HaMelech Street, Tel Aviv<\/p>\n

Performances beginning March 8, performance with English subtitles on April 10.<\/p>\n

Tickets: www.cameri.co.il<\/a>, 03-6060960<\/p>\n

Photos from the premiere can be seen on Midnight East’s flickr page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

AYELET DEKEL<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ghetto, a play by Joshua Sobol describing daily life in the Vilna Ghetto and the theatre company created there under impossible conditions, will premiere at the Cameri Theatre on March 8, directed by Omri Nitzan. For Noam Semel, Director of the Cameri, the play has come full circle \u2013 it was first produced at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}