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About the play
Four concentration camp inmates are chosen to serve as the court jesters of the
camp commander, and survive thanks to their theatrical prowess. They are: The
Judge Cohen, Adam Van, the juggler, Max Himmelfarb, the astrologer, and Leo
Rosenberg the acrobat dwarf. The play takes place during the Holocaust, but the
drama harks back in time to pre-war Europe, and forward to the world of the
surrvivors in Jerusalem after the war. The relations between the jesters are
depicted with agonizing sensitivity, shadowing the protagonists all the way
from their joint experiences in the camp commander's court to the individual
halucogenic and dream-like realities of each of them following liberation,and
finally culminating in a poignant reunion years later on King David Street,
just below Jerusalem's Old City Jaffa Gate. The instinctive passion to
survive,
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alongside the desperate need to understand utter imponderables, render
the play all the more relevant to the contemporary Israeli predicament, as well
as to the Jewish experience in the Diaspora today.
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and we are
seeking ways to shape and to mould contemporary interpretations. The production will allow young Israeli artists to relive the work of Avigdor
Dagan, one of the country's pioneering artists. We aim to produce a play that
will be viewed and experienced by Holocaust survivors, fourth- generation
Israelis, and everyone in else. Increasingly, the younger generation in Israel
has come to view the Holocaust as a distant historical occurrence. The aim of
the play is to transform the stories of the court-jesters into a personal,
existential experience for the audience.We believe that our theatre group has
the ability to turn an historical event into an abiding personal memory.
Consequently, we will aim to subsidize ticket costs for handicapped and
retarded persons, as well as bring our play to far-away, peripheral locations,
to Arab and Druze communities and,hopefully,in time, to the Diaspora.
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