At the end of September and the beginning of October, the Little Theater showed its play «Lear. Dolls and People» at the Mondial Des Theaters De Marionnettes Charleville — Mezieres France festival in France and on tour in Croatia at the Rijeka Theater.
One of these days the theater will return to Israel and already on October 7 during the holidays, as well as on October 21 will show a play for the whole family «Snow Tale» for children from 4 to 8 years old. This is a play with different puppets — from a small snowman, glove puppets to large tablet puppets and three actors, a play about a snowman who learns the world.
The play is in Hebrew, lasts 45 minutes — just a magic lesson for young spectators, and Leon Moroz (who is also the director), Ksenia Moroz (she is the most important puppeteer who made the scenery and sewed all the dolls for the play, in including the snow army of snowballs and the main character — the snowman) and the actor Ophir Duan.
The performance is based on the famous Romanian folk tale «The Sun and the Snow Men», which has been retold in Russian in several versions, many performances have been staged, mainly in puppet theaters, and cartoons have been made. Ksenia Moroz presented Tel Aviv with a new chamber, touching and philosophical performance for children and their parents with a feeling of happiness and lightness about the snowman who decided to find the sun and ask him not to come so that winter does not end and so that it does not melt. The play is about what and whom, what forest monsters and wonders the snowman meets on the way to the sun, a play about warmth and sensitivity.
On October 10, the performance “Chairs” based on the play by Ionesco will be shown in the premises of the Tmuna theater (8 Shontsino st.) — a new version of the performance staged in Hebrew (translated by Eli Sabag), staged in 2010.
The play «Chairs» by Eugene Ionesco has become one of the symbols of the theater of the absurd, a cult amazing parable, the main theme of which is loneliness: words that replace the real world can interrupt a lonely old age in only one, most inhuman way. «From day to day, the heroes live with memories, supporting themselves with a blind faith that it is impossible to live a better life than they did. This is a play about loneliness and love. This play has black humor, it is comical, touching, and true» — says Mikhail Teplitsky.
Behind the initially ridiculous speeches and shocking of the characters of the play is an attempt to understand the meaning of human existence. Is it enough to consider that you have lived your life with dignity, just to be yourself, or you have to go out of your way, trying to prove that you are «not like others», and is capable, perhaps, as they suggest (without special grounds) to the hero of «Chairs» he and his wife, to do good to all mankind.
On October 12 and 13, in the «Studio» of the Little Theater on Yitzhak Sade Street, 34 in Tel Aviv, there will be a performance «Unclaimed Dust» (performances start at 20.00).
The initial sketch of the play «Unclaimed Ashes» was created as part of the «First Reading» festival, which was held at the Little Theater in March 2016. And now for a year and a half this performance, staged in the site-specific style especially for the new studio of the Little Theater, has been presented in full format. The performance is based on the play by Mikhail Baranovsky, a famous Moscow journalist, playwright and screenwriter, a recent repatriate. The director of the play, Yuri Goldin, also recently repatriated to Israel. He — a graduate of the Shchukin Theater Institute — worked for many years on the Kultura TV channel, staged there the memorable films «Theatrical Novel», «Lady in Glasses with a Gun and in a Car», «Dark Kingdom».
The plot of the play «Unclaimed Ashes» is as follows: a case brings two men together in a crematorium when they receive urns with the ashes of their beloved. The writer Alik and the artist Ilya cannot share the ashes of their beloved. She was an actress, a person of free views and supported affairs with two married fans at once. Arguing about who was closer to her, Alik and Ilya discover circumstances unknown to them, and they also discover themselves in a new way. At the same time, they have to solve a lot of puzzles associated with this tragic event. Did their passion really die or set it up? Are her ashes in the urn? And was she who she claimed to be?
This performance is amazing, funny, painfully tender, sad and nervous. And yet — this is a surprise performance, watched in one breath. «Unclaimed Ashes» is the first performance staged by the Little Theater in its new studio. The very beginning of the play foreshadows an extraordinary content, and the performance itself captures the viewer until the final phrase. It has everything — the twists and turns of a sitcom, black humor, philosophy and romance hidden behind irony. When staged in a small studio, it is difficult to talk about the design, but precisely because of the limited space in the scenography of Vadim Keshersky, every little thing is thought out. All the mise-en-scenes, every gesture in the direction of Goldin have been verified.
The play «Unclaimed Ashes» will be repeated with the participation of Anatoly Goryachev — the actor of the Moscow theater Pyotr Fomenko on November 9 at the «Harmony» center in Jerusalem and on November 10 also with the participation of Goryachev at the «Studio» of the theater on Yitzhak Sad street. The performance will also take place on November 24 in Tel Aviv.
On October 22, in the premises of the «Tmuna» theater, in the framework of the Shakespeare Festival «Little will show his» Lear. Dolls and People «.
The play «Lear. Dolls and People» is relatively new; its premiere took place in the spring of 2015. In this performance, Lear is practically absent, Cordelia and the Jester are absent. This is a story about the history of the war of brothers and sisters, the generation of «those who are after». A story about Etgar’s «lawful son» and «illegal» Edmond, about Regan the «Widow» and about Goneril, who is married to a «wretched madman.» This story — a paraphrase of King Lear — is played by people, dolls and what is left of them, interspersed with dark tragedy with buffoonery. And what could be more terrible than the story of poor Gloucester, blinded for his loyalty to the king by the cruel daughters of Lear.
The production by Mikhail Teplitsky is a surreal spectacle, an ominous phantasmagoria. The plot touches from «King Lear» flicker, but these are only signal moments that add logic to the sequence of episodes and charge the performance with emotional energy. «Lear. Dolls and People» was awarded the prize of the Walizka International Theater Festival in Poland, shown at the 13th International Shakespeare Festival Gyulai Várszínházban in Hungary in the city of Gyula, just shown, as already mentioned, at the Charleville-Mezieres festival in the north east of France — one of the largest European festivals of visual and puppet theater, and on tour in Croatia.
The theater will open November with the beloved performance «Inostranka» based on the story by Sergei Dovlatov, which will be presented on November 1 at the Suzanne Dalal Center in Tel Aviv and on November 2 at the «Youth Palace» in Beer Sheva.
On November 11 and 25, at the Theater Studio, you can see a new children’s play «Alice and the Old Circus», which premiered in August 2017 at the 4th International Clown Festival in Netanya. «Alice and the Old Circus» is a modern theatrical clownery with a reminder of the old circus, a fun musical performance, a theater performance without words for the whole family, but first of all — of course, for children.
Alice receives two gifts for her birthday: a smartphone and an unusual box. And in the box are clowns and old games — such as our grandmothers played. But for some reason, Alice is still much more interested in a smartphone, and not a box with old things. And so the clowns decide to interfere in her life, as well as in upbringing and education, break the phone and literally force Alice to pay attention to the fact that there is a magical world of circus nearby.
Playing along with the clowns, Alice discovers a new world — not a virtual world, not on a smartphone screen, but a world of imagination, fantasy and clownery. The play involves four actors of the Little Theater, who came up with this play-play together with the director. «Alice and the Old Circus» is a performance based to a large extent on the canons of intuitive, intonational and improvisational theater, when the ideas of the actors born during rehearsals are honed and assembled by the director in an atmosphere of magic, fairy tales and an old circus in this case.
