The Jaffa Fest 2023 International Theater Festival will take place this year from June 19 to July 7, and will feature six original and international productions that will be presented for the first time in Israel from various theaters around the world, including theaters from Latvia, Georgia, Austria and Cyprus.
The festival, held every summer, will also include a marathon for young directors in the Gesher Hangar, in which directors whose works have not yet appeared on the big stages, and a theater workshop for immigrant children by director and educator Marfa Gurevich, a new immigrant from Russia, at the end of which the participants will present a play to the participants.
"Like every year, Jaffa Fest brings to the forefront the rich and diverse cultural background of its participants and exposes the audience to quality and different theater. This year, the artistic program of the festival was built under the influence of the war in Ukraine and the tense international atmosphere. We bring in artists and artists who were affected by the war and want to preserve a living and creative culture these days," says theater CEO Lena Kreindlin.
Lena Kreindlin, Cinematography: Daniel Kaminski
Among the intriguing productions that will be staged at the festival: Post Scriptum – the new Riga Theater in a play directed by Elvis Hermanis, based on the writings of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper who was murdered by members of the Chechen president, and on a chapter from Dostoevsky's book Demons, which was banned by the tsarist censor; Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, to be staged at the Marjinashvili Theater in Georgian.
Also at the festival: Flow Project: a collaboration of the Gesher Theater and the Gogol Center artists (a theater persecuted by the Russian authorities and forced to close its doors), based on the performance of the Gogol Center Theater (in a play written by Valery Pachaikin based on the works of the philosopher Vladimir Odoevsky, a work in honor of which they created a special musical instrument – a pangermanicon – consisting of 10 mechanical pianos); German-language cabaret based on the poems of Weil and Brecht; and a work about Marlene Dietrich's picture.
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