Yevgeny Arieh dies, founder of Gesher Theater Israel today

 The founder of the Bridge Theater and its artistic director, his living and artistic spirit, director Yevgeny Arieh, died during the night in a New York hospital, aged 74 at the time of his death. 

Aria, born in Moscow in 1947. After graduating from the Faculty of Psychology, he moved to Leningrad and studied theater with the renowned director Georgi Tovstonogov. Yevgeny Arieh began directing in the leading theaters of Leningrad and then returned to Moscow and directed at the Mayakovsky Theater. For years a lion was denied immigration. Only in 1990 did he manage to immigrate to Israel with a group of actors, most of whom were his students. Here, together with Slava Meltzav, he founded Gesher Theater, which became a leading repertory theater with a unique artistic style, a method of directing and exceptional vision that garnered professional appreciation for Aria, applause and awards as well as audience love in Israel and around the world. His works have been exhibited all over the world, from Bogota in Colombia, to Beijing in China, through Moscow, Berlin, New York and more. Arieh was an educator who strongly believed in young talents, and to witness at the Gesher Theater he raised three generations of young actors many of whom now form the core of the band.

At the same time he served as a visiting professor at the European Institute of Acting in Paris, at the Juilliard in New York and at Tel Aviv University, and for his works he won many prizes, including the Rosenblum Prize for the Performing Arts, the EMT Prize, the "Golden Tract" Prize ( Russia National Theater Award) and several times in the Israeli Theater Award.

He received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute and together with the Gesher Theater with similar degrees from Bar Ilan University and Tel Aviv University.

Yevgeny Arieh served as the artistic director of the Gesher Theater from its inception until 2019.

Over the years, Arieh has directed more than 40 plays.

Prominent among them: "Rosenkranz and Gildenstern are dead", "A man with a dog", "A city. Odessa stories", "Village", "The devil in Moscow", "The slave", "Hate. A love story", "A dove and a boy", "The obsessed" , "Orstia" and more.

He has also directed a number of operas at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, plays at the Moscow Submarine Theater, in New York and Latvia.

Already at the beginning of his work in Israel, he wanted to strengthen the connection to Israeli culture and chose to direct and stage many Israeli writers, including: Yehoshua Sobol, Yaakov Shabtai, Meir Shalev, Yoram Kaniuk, David Grossman and others.

Arieh left a wife, a son and an entire theater mourning his passing.

Gesher Theater CEO, Lena Craindlin: We are shocked and hurt by Yevgeny Arieh's untimely passing and are still searching for the words. From the theater, its founder and founder, the heart and essence of "Bridge".

Sasha Demidov, a Gesher theater actor, said goodbye to his mentor: "He was my teacher already in Moscow, he just made me, built me, created me. Our connection started already in school and of course he continued here, in Israel. All my life, all my roles and successes, "It's all thanks to him. He created whole worlds. Directors like him may have individuals all over the world. I thought he would get out of it. I did not believe he would leave us."

Were we wrong?

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