The director's Guide for Theatre During Wartime

Text, Directing and Performance:

Hannan Ishay

Ido Shaked

Dramaturgy and sound design:

Idan Rabinovici

Production of:

in Coproduction with:

Le Théâtre Majâz (FR)

Wortwiege Theaterfestival (AT)

Press Review:

European Cultural News

KiJuKu.at

Ido Shaked and Hannan Ishay are both Israeli born theatre directors, that work mainly in Europe. Being Israeli directors, they are expected time and time again to confront and represent the complex story of their unchosen homeland. Between politics, morality, history, and reality, what is an Israeli story, and can they stand by it?

In this play the two directors invite the audience into their creative process as they engage in the endeavour of present a play about their neurotic, half-crazy, going-to-be totalitarian, but nevertheless, kind of beloved, motherland. But once again reality proves to be wilder than any imagination when in the mid of preparations the actual open war breaks in the middle east and reshuffles all we know, or think we know about the life in Israel/Palestine.

»Mit „A Handbook for the Israeli Theater Director in Europe“ gelingt es Ido Shaked und Hannan Ishay, von den Konflikten, die ihr Land umtreiben, zu erzählen, ohne die Schwierigkeiten zu verschweigen, die uns in Europa beschäftigen, wenn vom Nahen Osten und vom Judenstaat die Rede ist, doch dabei verstehen sie es gleichwohl, uns mit pfiffigen Zwischentönen und geistreichen Dialogen zu unterhalten, wodurch sie – so leichtfüßig wie möglich und so eindringlich wie nötig – unseren menschlichen Blick schärfen auf die Gegenwart in kriegerischen Zeiten.« (Doron Rabinovici)

How do you pack war and Macchiato, self-involvement and cynical distance, hope and despair, and one or two international conflicts into a compact entertaining format?! How can they engage with the identity they bare but struggle to cope with? Navigating between guilt and condemnation; Holocaust and occupation; what can never be said and what must be heard. Shaked and Ishay represent themselves on stage as they recreate the journey toward a theatrical performance that runs from their lives onto the stage and back again. This is a humorous, ironic, fictitious story of a very current reality.