In recent days, the terminal park in Eilat has become a hotel room.
About.
This is happening in anticipation of the opening of a new play by the Elad Theater, which continues the artistic line of the theater, which breaks the boundaries of the hall and turns the audience into an active participant in what is happening just a touch away.
This time it is about the play "Room 201" - an intense thriller that touches on questions of memory, guilt, friendship and power relations between men and women written by Steven Belber about three people locked in a hotel room and trying to reassemble the puzzle of their lives.
The play takes place entirely in a hotel room built especially for it, and the spectators sit together with the actors in the room and go through the emotional upheaval with them.
In the show, which will premiere on October 31, Yoav Donet, Dana Yitzhaki/Adva Levy and Tomer Sharon play, and it is directed by Shay Pitovsky, the theater's artistic director.
"Steven will especially come to see the show. He is a director, playwright and screenwriter who works in Hollywood, and we are very excited that he will come," says Pitovsky, "at the center of the plot are two guys from high school who meet after 20 years. One is a film director, the other has become a merchant over the years Drugs. When a woman from their past enters the picture, things get complicated - and they start dealing with sexual abuse that is not clear if it happened. This is a story about friendship, about what happens to people over the years, about our beliefs and the way we judge others."
This play does not take place in the standard way we know of an audience - hall and stage. Tell me how it will work.
"It takes place in the ramp of the old terminal on the runway. The audience enters the place in vehicles, sits down between some old containers, and the play begins when the director's character arrives at a film festival screening his film. The audience walks with him to the containers that we connected together and turned them into a transparent container, which is lit like an American road motel It looks just like another hotel room in the city, and the audience enters it and sits down in it. There are about 30 people sitting next to the bed, next to all the clothes of the actors, many of whom smoke and shower next to them. The audience experiences exactly what the characters experience in the room. The emotional connection of the actors For the characters, he is at the highest levels."
From the play, photo: Rossello Shamaria
This choice of breaking the fourth wall and involving the viewer in the show has already become an agenda. It seems that this artistic line is only increasing the expectations of you.
"That's completely the line, you won't see other plays here. Eilat and Ilot is a different place, it's a different state of mind, a different view - and people who come here also expect a different theater. There's no point in coming here to see a show that you can see in the theaters in the center.
"We treat each show as an event that we connect the content - which will always be deep and challenging - to the performance. Sometimes these will be classics like 'Romeo and Juliet' or 'The Old Man and the Sea', good plays with drama, but in a way that they have not been done yet. We are building something unique and take the theater a few more steps forward."
Do the viewers devote themselves to the experience, or did you also come across those who liked the idea less?
"The audience feels protected, we don't embarrass anyone. They are simply close to the situation, which allows them to be emotionally involved and take part in the story. People devote themselves to it. We get to grow together with the audience, who comes to us like a child wondering how they will challenge him now."
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