"We're all looking for compassion": The award-winning drama comes to Camry Israel today

Already three years ago, Gilad Kimchi, the artistic director of the Chamber, knew that he wanted to put on the play "Angels in America" ​​- the award-winning drama written by Tony Kushner, which takes place in the 1980s in New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

But it seems that the timing of the staging of the play precisely now, at a time when LGBT people are facing threats coming from the political arena, gives it even greater significance.

"Gays are not men who sleep with other men. Gays are people who for 15 years have been trying to pass a poor anti-discrimination law in the city council and are not succeeding";

"From now on, things will happen our way, in every field: abortions, security, family values. The end of secular humanism."

These are just some of the quotes that appear in the play, which brings, among other things, the story of those whom the Republican government fails to contain.

"It is true that today reality meets the material in a blatant way, but I must admit that it is first of all an excellent play, and my initial attraction to the material is mainly because of the phenomenal writing of a brilliant playwright, which I have never encountered," says Kimchi, "He wrote deep, touching characters To the heart, he described relationships that we can all identify with regardless of LGBT.

It's a play that deals with people, and there aren't many plays that are written so well and precisely.

I wish that this material would seep through to those who watch it and make people do some soul-searching."

Gilad Kimchi, photo: Redi Rubinstein

Kimchi claims that through these points (and others) every viewer will be able to go through an emotional journey together with the actors on stage.

"We are all people who to some extent are also victims of society - for example, of religion, of a certain system of laws. The play deals with this system and the way the little man lives in it. Some of the questions that arise are what would happen if there were no laws one day; what if we could be Free from all the dictates they defined for us."

When relationships are undermined and when the AIDS epidemic is raging in the background, each character encounters their own wounds, and "each of the five characters is looking for compassion".

He also says: "As people, we are complex beings who face many challenges. The characters that Kushner wrote describe this multifacetedness, and he manages to create an entire world for each character."

The play depicts the most difficult years of the AIDS epidemic in the US. What changes have been made to the present day?

"Tony Kushner said that he wanted to write about Gays in the time he lived - and not about AIDS.

In his eyes, the epidemic is the image of the disintegration or eating of a society itself.

In the political aspect, I have been dealing with this material for three years now, but I feel that it has suddenly become more relevant than ever.

There are moments in the play that the characters of the Republicans speak, and it sounds like quotes from districts that are familiar to us in the news today.

We sit in the rehearsal room and sometimes really get chills from the texts.

But we are in different times, and there is much more awareness.

I think that even if there are attempts to legislate and change and go back, it's impossible, it just won't happen."

From the show.

"Reality meets the material today in a blatant way", photo: Koko

The play was translated by Eli Bijawi and directed by Kimchi.

She is accompanied by the Revolution Orchestra conducted by Roy Oppenheim under the musical baton of Amir Lekner, who turned the entire event into a meeting between theater and concert thanks to original music written for the play and accompanying the plot.

It will be staged at Camry on January 26 with the participation of Nadav Knights, Abigail Harari, Yoav Levy, Elad Atrakchi, Shaum Shiner, Irit Kaplan, Mia Landsman, Dodo Niv and Matan On Yemi, who play the characters who seek redemption between heaven and hell.

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