The Elad Theater, founded nine years ago in memory of Major General Elad Dan, who fell in the Second Lebanon War, is in a period of renewal. For a new season, the theater has moved to a new abode and its people are working to position the city of Eilat as a cultural destination - and not just a tourist one.
The actors and creators who joined the theater left the big theaters in the center, left behind successful careers and moved with their families to Eilat and Kibbutz Eilot.
All this out of a true sense of mission to encourage art and turn the southern tip of Israel into a groundbreaking creative center.
The theater recently moved to its new home in the terminal space in Eilat, and is now staging the new show "The Shoreline", created especially for the terminal space.
The play was written by the Lebanese playwright Vojdi Mowad, one of the greatest directors in Europe today, and Shay Pitovsky, the theater's artistic director, directed it.
Another new show being launched at the theater is "It Must Be Love", which turns into an experiential evening with the actors at the "Yinat Eilat" wine bar.
The play was written by the members of the theater's ensemble.
What starts around the bar, develops into an immediate experience between the audience and the players - around love.
In the month of November, the theater will host the "Online Violence Festival", during which new original productions by Israel's leading creators will be screened in the terminal, touching on one of the most explosive issues in all of our lives.
"The web has become a reflection of the modern man's state of mind," says Pitovsky, "the web is like a kind of radioactive material, you can light up dark places with it and you can make bombs from it whose damage will last for generations."
Also in the program: "Shakespeare Festival" (February 27 to March 3), a connection created between the Elad Theater and the Shakespeare and Company Theater.
On top of that, a plan that will transform the area is to establish three new cultural bodies: an adult theater, a children's theater and a dance center in the heart of the city of Eilat.
"After nine years I can say - a cultural body in the periphery is much more than a cultural solution," says Boaz Dan, CEO and founder of the theater, "it is an engine of growth, it creates tremendous change.
We - the Elad Theater community, a bunch of crazy people - joined the mission out of the belief that precisely here, in the southernmost tip of Israel, a real alternative can grow, which is good news for the Israeli theater."
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