Michael Bloom, artistic director of The Cleveland Play House, had never been to Israel before. This past July, as he flew to the Jewish state for the first time, he struck up a conversation with the woman next to him about, what else? Theater.
Bloom was shocked when the passenger, an Israeli, casually informed him that she attends the theater one or two times a week.
“I thought it had to be an exaggeration,” Bloom says. “But I found out, it's not!”
Israel, Bloom learned, ranks among the top three countries in the world for its support of nonprofit organizations (along with the US and the Netherlands). That includes its professional theaters,
theaters, which are substantially subsidized by the government. Thanks to the subsidy, audiences rarely (if ever) pay more than $15 for a ticket to professional theater.
Israelis “have a passion for theater this country can only dream of,” Bloom raves. “For a country that is always at war or on alert, their achievement in the arts is singular.”
Bloom and former Play House managing director Dean Gladden visited five theaters in seven days this summer, leaving the Jewish state a mere three days before the bombing of northern Israel by Hezbollah began.
The Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland provided Bloom and Gladden with guides and also paid for the trip
Financing the two men's exploratory theater venture was an easy call for Federation president Stephen H. Hoffman. Not only was it a “moderate cost” covered by one of Federation's many special purpose funds dedicated to the arts, but it served both organizations' interests, Hoffman says.
The Play House has already done exchanges with theaters in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Russia. It has been investigating the possibility of doing an exchange program with an Israeli theater for five years.
“We chose those (countries) because Cleveland has major populations of those people,” Bloom explains, thus guaranteeing The Play House a built-in audience for its foreign guest productions. Due to Cleveland's strong Jewish community, Bloom, who is Jewish, feels an Israeli production would generate strong local interest as well.
Federation “is interested in having more people understand that Israel is more than the headlines and the conflict,” Hoffman says, explaining his agency's interest in the project. “Israelis are a cultured people with something special to share with the world.”
Israeli theater is “one of the world's best-kept secrets,” Bloom says, still brimming with enthusiasm months after returning to Cleveland. “I don't think I've talked to a single (American) person who has been to theater in Israel, and I know a lot of people who go to Israel!”
It is also surprising, Bloom remarks, that he has never run across any coverage of Israeli theater in American media, not even in The New York Times.
Subsidies and subscribers
Most of the theater Bloom and Gladden attended was in Tel Aviv .“Tel Aviv is about the size of Cleveland,” Bloom notes. “The Cleveland Play House has 7,000 subscribers. Tel Aviv has three theaters with 30,000 subscribers each, plus three other major theaters. Israel sold more theater tickets than soccer tickets last year. Part of that is the low ticket price, but that's staggering.”
The figures break down to some 4 million theater tickets sold last year in a country with a population of 6.9 million. For an artist working in America where theater, dance, opera and visual arts venues are constantly scraping for enough audience and funding to keep themselves open, says Bloom, Israel's numbers are “unbelievable.”
Adding to the artistic director's amazement was the frequency with which young adults - an elusive demographic in the US - attend the theater. He attributes this phenomenon almost entirely to the low ticket prices.
The government subsidy which keeps these theaters financially viable and able to offer such low prices is provided on condition that urban professional theaters tour their productions around the country to small towns. In that way, all Israelis have a chance to enjoy the productions.
Managers of small regional theaters head to Tel Aviv, review their options, and select which shows they'd like to bring into their towns, Bloom explains. Big city ensembles tour to a small town for one night, loading their set and equipment into the theater at 6 a.m. and packing up after the show to be back on the road by midnight. Many of these small-town theaters are able to sell a 25-show subscriber series. (By comparison, Play House subscribers will attend eight shows in the 2006-07 season, and the Playhouse Square Center Broadway Series sells its subscribers a package of seven touring shows.)
In addition to the government subsidy and ticket revenues, many theaters have corporate partnerships (like American theaters) or have special donors who will sponsor a whole show.
The companies
In Tel Aviv, Bloom and Gladden attended performances at the Gesher Theatre, a company founded by Russian immigrants. Much of Israel's theatrical renaissance has been fueled by Russian יmigrיs, Bloom notes.
In recent years, the Gesher (meaning “bridge”) has produced such shows as Moliיre's “Tartuffe,” Chekhov's “Three Sisters,” and Tom Stoppard's “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead.” The theater projects English supertitles above its Hebrew-language productions. It employs a resident companies of actors from which all its casts are drawn.
Bloom was greatly impressed by the Cameri Theatre. Working with a $14 million annual budget (The Play House's is closer to $7 million), the Cameri operates four stages that run productions simultaneously. Unlike the Gesher, it does not have a resident group of actors; it casts a core nucleus of actors each season (“they're like affiliated artists,” Bloom explains) to anchor its productions. The Cameri also holds open casting calls.
Israeli actors' salaries are quite low, which keeps a theater's cost down. But it also forces talent to book themselves as many jobs as possible, Bloom explains. That makes coordinating rehearsal schedules difficult.
Bloom wonders how artists in some of Israel's smaller theaters can make a living and assumes they must work other jobs to support themselves. Nonetheless, the quality of the work is of the highest professional level, he marvels.
The Cameri company has 37 plays prepared - from musicals like “The Producers” to classic dramas by Shakespeare to new Israeli-authored works about the Palestinian conflict - which run in repertory. The Cameri's plays are all in Hebrew, although Bloom was able to hear an English translation over earphones simulcast by two actors.
Bloom also caught a few productions at Tel Aviv's Habima Theater and Beit Lessin, a company that specializes in new plays, as well as the Khan Theater, a 200-seat venue in Jerusalem.
He was unable to visit the Haifa Municipal Theatre. Unlike its thriving cousins in Tel Aviv, the Haifa theater faced financial hardships and had begun reorganizing even before this summer's war brought devastation to northern Israel.
Bloom even attended theater in Cleveland's sister city Beit She'an and in the Negev community of Beersheva. “There's theater in the desert!” he exclaims.
While in Beit She'an, Bloom attended a performance by an amateur troupe of Ethiopian women. The troupe tours local schools to perform pieces that reflect on the Jewish Ethiopian immigrant experience.
“In Ethiopian society, the woman is the provider, but the man is still the head of the family,” Bloom says. “The woman is not supposed to be independent, to talk about herself. But, here they all were performing. It was unbearably moving.”
Tel Aviv on the Cuyahoga
The Play House plans to bring an Israeli theater company to Cleveland to perform in May or June 2008, after The Play House has completed its regular season. As a result, the venture will be budgeted separately from the theater's primary season. In exchange, The Play House will send one of its productions to Tel Aviv in 2009.
As Bloom moves forward with his plans for the exchange, he knows exactly which Israeli show he wants to share with Cleveland audiences: the Cameri Theatre's acclaimed production of “Hamlet.” The Cameri has toured its “Hamlet” across Israel, to Washington, D.C., and to Gdansk, Poland.
Performed by a cast of 14 actors and several live musicians, the Cameri's “Hamlet” will require The Play House to create a theater-in-the-round on the stage of its Bolton Theatre. The audience will sit in 225 swiveling chairs, because the play's action takes place all around the audience.
“Hamlet” is performed in modern dress, and “it blew the dust off the play,” Bloom raves. Hamlet's stepfather King Claudius “is kind of a mafia don, a gangster who manipulates others. It's a very sensual play, and there's an intensity in the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet. Ophelia looks about 12; she's played very, very young.”
When the production was first mounted, it was intended as an educational show for young audiences, Bloom adds. “But it was the hottest ticket in Israel, so they opened it up for adults.”
The Play House and the Cameri have a letter of understanding, although details of the partnership and financing of the Cameri's visit to Cleveland still need to be worked out.
The Federation's Hoffman points out that 2008, the year of the Cameri's planned visit, is the state of Israel's 60th anniversary. And 2009, the year Bloom hopes to take Cleveland artists to Israel, is Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary as a new Jewish city. The milestones create a great opportunity for additional special programming associated with the performances. Bloom and Hoffman both hope they can continue to work together, with the Federation involved in The Play House's historic exchange.
Will American theater ever draw the kind of crowds Israeli theater does? A lot would need to change in order for that to happen, Bloom admits. First and foremost would be lowering ticket price.
“Ticket price matters,” he reiterates, “to young people especially.”
The only way ticket prices will drop in the US is if our government subsidized the arts like Israel does, Bloom asserts. Ohio's recent passage of Issue 18, which taxes cigarettes in order to provide more arts funding, is an important step in the right direction.
But beyond economics, American theater “has to be relevant,” like the Cameri's visceral take on “Hamlet,” Bloom says. It cannot become “museum theater,” or stiff, formal reproductions of classics.
Bloom's time in Israel inspired him in terms of ideas for future Play House productions as well. “I want to learn more about Israeli plays and playwrights. And I continue to be interested in plays with Jewish themes. Also, just the commitment (Israeli artists) have to their craft is inspiring.”
Throughout the trip, Bloom says, he and Gladden kept turning to each other and just laughing with glee. “It was a paradise for theater people. It was like we died and went to heaven.”
(2522 )
|
There are currently no comments about this article
|
|
 |
Michael Bloom, artistic director of The Cleveland Play House | |
|
