Next Theatre Company

I know it's only been three weeks since I took the helm of the company, but I am already traveling on behalf of Next. I was invited to attend IsraDrama, a week-long intensive immersion in Israeli theater that is sponsored (and paid for) by the Tel Aviv and Israeli governments. The purpose of the program is to introduce artists from around the world to Israeli theater and to promote partnerships that will bring this work to our countries.

I have an additional agenda for Next Theatre Company. I would like to see the company build some international partnerships that will allow us to work across borders to share the work we do at Next as well as bring work in from these other places. This type of cross-cultural exchange will bring new ideas to Next and will take our unique brand of theater and promote it around the globe. It is my hope that we can further enrich Evanston and Chicagoland culture with these partnerships.

I had a very long stopover in Madrid and took the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture there. Conveniently I have a friend who is a stage manager for Spanish theater (although he works on shows like Phantom, Beauty and the Beast and the like). He was able to show me around, get me some backstage tours and introduce me to a few theater professionals on the level of Next Theatre Company. In addition I was able to attend a dress rehearsal for a major revival/rethinking of La Vida es Sueño (Life is a Dream) by Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. I was struck by the way the play transformed language and time. It was written in very antiquated spanish in 1636 and yet this production felt compelling and relevant today. It reminded me why I am so committed to using the classics to reach contemporary audiences.

We hit the ground running with two plays, Hanoch Levin's classic adaptation of 3 Chekhov short stories. This stunning work had been presented every year at the National Theatre of Tel Aviv (The Cameri) since he wrote it in 1998. It has played over 400 performances in the repertory and continues to sell out every night. I was struck by how many young people were in the audience... at least 1/2 the 700 seat house was under 25. This play is a modern "ritual" for young Israelis, a must-see on their cultural development. It was a powerful experience.

The second play we saw was a brand new piece called Return to Haifa, about a Palestinian couple who returns to the home they abandoned in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. The home and the baby they left behind was given to a Jewish couple from Poland who had lost everything, including their child. Now, with the father dead and the son fully grown and serving in the Israeli army, the Palestinian couple return in the post Six Day War calm to reclaim their house and their son. What started out as a very experience-specific play is gently and powerfully transformed into a play about home, property and identity. The dramatic journey these characters go on reminds me very much of a play that Next Theatre Company would produce. Stay tuned!

Not the most exciting of days, honestly. We began by meeting with the artistic leadership of the two major companies in town, The Cameri and the Habima National Theatre. Both receive tremendous government support and have incredible performance complexes much like the Goodman and Steppenwolf (although larger). The economy and the reduction of government support is as much on the minds of the Israeli theater community as it is on the United States and, more specifically, Chicagoland. What did strike me was their complaint that they would have to reduce their rehearsal time from 3 months to 2 months in most cases. And we're lucky if we get to rehearse 4 weeks. So it's a quite different culture here to create new work.

We then saw 4 plays back to back. The first and the third were very different riffs on the famous play The Dybbuk. One was really stale and unimaginative, while the other pushed so many envelopes and tried so many new things that it was a bit incomprehensible. It was, however, my first taste of more avante garde theater in Tel Aviv. The third play we saw, Nutcase, was by a tiny fringe company and the acting undermined what the play was trying to accomplish. It reminded me how lucky we are at Next Theatre Company to have such amazingly talented actors and other artists willing to work in the intimate environment that Next offers. I must remember to thank our actors again the next time I see them. We are very fortunate. Finally we saw a play that could be describes as Wendy Wasserstein meets Stockard Channing. It was a solid, clean, well produced, well acted and ultimately "by the numbers" play. It's nice to see that there is a mainstream playwright and an audience for her work. But ultimately this is the type of play you will never see at Next. So I am signing off after day three with hope for the session tomorrow morning about Political Drama in Israeli Theatre and with some excitement to be going to a theater where they speak Hebrew and Arab in the same play and take on issues that are germane to both cultures.s