Playwright. Someone who writes words that actors speak. The word itself excites mostly women in an industry that for years has been masculine and closed and one for all, all for one. Alterman and Nathan Shaham and Yosef Bar-Yosef and Nissim Aloni and Hanoch Levin and Yehoshua Sobol and Shmuel Hesperi, pillars of Israeli theater. and Edna Mazia, who in the early 90s broke through the glass ceiling and became a leading and successful playwright.
In 1993, she wrote the play "Playing in the Backyard", following the gang rape on the guard, which became her most successful play, translated into dozens of languages and performed around the world. Only a woman can write such a play - and especially at that time.
Mazia, who has always been a political woman, wrote a political play about a system that expects women to behave in a certain way, and sees the victim as guilty. Years before the Mi-To movement broke into consciousness, Mazia wrote about a girl under 15 standing in front of a group of boys who are "the glory of the State of Israel," bringing her backyard to the forefront.
"You claim that you were raped all night and you don't even cry?" the defense attorney asks the raped woman sitting on the witness stand. "I'm telling you that at the time of the incident you didn't cry because you wanted them, you were moved by them, and it wasn't a sin. But why punish them for your weakness?"
Mazia, who attended all the court hearings, succeeded in making a voice that no one within the various systems, in education and in the media, had made in this manner and intensity. She saw the callousness and arrogance of the rapists and the pain and helplessness of the rapist, and created a theatrical world in which the actors are both plaintiffs and defendants. Her Yael Greenberg, who in the real world passed away a year ago in agony, was a victim, but also someone who could be strong enough to say "you raped" and demand justice.
Because Mazia was a true feminist: political, upright, uncompromising, a woman who said what was in her heart, confident and confident in her talent. She didn't ingratiate herself with anyone, didn't beg, just created.
Mazia knew that success is not argued, so she did what she knew how to do best: she wrote a lot, and that was also her message to young writers - write everything and all the time
The connection between her and the late Anat Gov created some of the most successful plays in Israel: "Best Friends" and "Happy Ending" became schlagers. Mazia knew that success is not argued, so she did what she knew how to do best. Success allows you to be yourself, and you give yourself success. That's why she wrote a lot, and that was also her message to young writers who came to learn from her, including me: Write everything all the time – scripts, plays, books, skits. Writing is a muscle, and every action trains it.
The most successful play I wrote began in Edna's writing workshop. She accompanied the first class of the Stage Workshops and Beit Lisin in which Gur Koren and Nir Strauss and Adiva Geffen participated, among others – all of whom continued to write and create successfully afterwards. Not because Edna had a lot of patience to read and make comments, nor because she was the perfect mentor. This is mainly because listening to it means knowing that hard work, loyalty to yourself, awareness of the world, broad knowledge, curiosity and humor - this is what makes people writers.
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