(Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare)
Twenty Two Pictures
Wins the best show in Acre Festival of Alternative Israeli Theater 2008.
Twenty and two pictures from the lives of three women: grandmother, mother and daughter.
“A literary work, full of drama and humor which describes the world of a young girl, third generation of the Holocaust, who grows up in between two previous generations- grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, and her mother. In a segmental and theatrical language which includes the pain of growth and loss, the actresses succeed in exciting the audience and give them a deep and true experience.”
(From the judges’ reasons in choosing the winner show in Acre Festival 2008)
The play takes place in the ancient space of the halls of the knights inAcre, on the three levels of the space, which echo the three characters who take part in the play.
Warlike Collage
Based on “Antigone” by Sophocles and “Iphigenia in Aulis” by Euripides.
Kibbutzim college, Tel-Aviv, 2006.
Writing, directing and design by Ruthie Osterman
From the play “Warlike Collage”
When people were evacuated from “Katif” area in the Gaza strip, the Israeli nation was divided into two groups: one, in blue, supported the evacuation. The second, in orange, was against it. The struggle between these two different worldviews constituted the basis of this artistic work.
The internal struggle I felt as a creator between the belief in God and the Zionist values on which I grew and the passion and freedom to create converged with a cruel political situation in which, for the sake of achieving peace, many of my friends had to leave their homes against the values on which they grew. The question of self-sacrifice and its limits versus the state of the law bothered me a lot.
At that time of evacuation, while I was 70 kilometeraway from Gaza, on the roof of the building of the “School of Art” in Tel-Aviv, I composed this play, combining texts from Greek tragedies, which I like very much, and some of my personal texts.
The creation of the play was inspired by “Theatre du soleil” by Arian Mnushkin in France.
The Dybbuk
An original adaptation to Ansky’s mythological play.
Adaptation and direction by Ruthie Osterman.
Kibbutzim College, Tel-Aviv, 2007
(Song of Songs 8, 7)
The play “The Dybbuk” consists of stories and tales from the Jewish tradition and Kabala.
In the center there is a love story between Lea and Chanan. Chanan deals with practical Kabala and dies.
Lea’s father arranges her marriage to another bridegroom, but Chanan’s soul can’t find peace.
Being torn between two worlds Chanan breaks trough the border between the dead world and the living world and enters Lea as a “Dybbuk”. SEE MORE
Cheruta
A Dance theater which in based on Talmudic texts and inspired by Dervish dances.
Directing and adaptation by: Ruthie Osterman
Kibbutzim College, Tel-Aviv, 2010
(Rabbi Menachem Mendel from Kotsk)
Two Talmudic “Midrashim” (religious allegories) tell the story of two loving couples. Between these two couples stands a pomegranate.
The married couple, Rabbi Chiya and his wife, do not have sexual relations.
The second couple takes the risk of a marriage offer which is rejected. The two couples experience a moment of internal and passionate awakening which will change their lives.
These are two stories about the fear of intimacy – with myself and with the other. Stories about gracious moments of agreement to be free, to meet myself without masks.
Grace
“Notzar” theatre, Bat-Yam, 2010
Writing and directing by Ruthie Osterman.
(from the play “Grace”)
The play tells the story of an encounter between a girl and an old woman on the railway tracks on the outskirts of town.
The woman has come to end her life on the tracks and thus gain longed-for peace, and the girl is there looking for the toffees that mark her way home.
For the woman, the railway tracks are a remnant of a childhood memory of abandonment, when her parents threw her from a train window during the war. For the girl, the tracks are where every night she meets a gang of children who abuse her.
The surprising encounter leads to a mutual reflection of the characters until it sometimes seems that they are one and the same. Out of the characters’ need for warmth and love, and their scratching each other’s wound, a brutal world replete with violence and fears, together with a desire for warmth, closeness, and a wish for reformation is revealed to the audience. At the end of the night the two go their separate ways, with each of them making a choice between life and death, and all that remains for them is the force of the human encounter with all that it brings to the surface and enables.
The play was inspired by documentary material dealing with violence and abuse in Israel.
