The Woman In The Wall - SHE Festival 2 May 2010.

Dorit has asked me to be a part of the She Festival - an annual Karov extravaganza where female performers bring their niche to the entire space in a single promenade venture.

Between the foyer and auditorium is a minute passge full of standard theatre junk. I want to clear it an install a swing, turning the cupboard into a private space where the audience can only watch through holes drilled in its front door.

At home I went through long periods of drinking an entire bottle of wine and, in the beloved and now-gone trampoline days, singing my way through repertoires I couldn't for some reason bring to life to an audience. This is what I want to do for She, giving a glimpse into some of my own personal space through a capella songs and a small-scale visual scenario which demonstrates loneliness and playtime.

Stay tuned.

Introduction and drumroll - welcome to Alexa le Karov

ALEXA'S FIRST BLOG POST EVER.

I had my interview at the Karov on Wednesday 27 January 2010. I had been in Israel for just over a week and started the Oranim Tel Aviv Internship Experience two days before. The shared room was too small but I lived on Rehov Ben Yehuda in the centre of North Tel Aviv where, thank G-d, there was noise all the time. Since Edinburgh 2009, which I will always label as a professional and personal disaster, I hadn't worked in theatre but had focused on my beloved au pair job in Tufnell Park and work for cult jewelery boutique Tatty Devine in Brick Lane.

When I asked Oranim to find me an internship in Tel Aviv, I specified that I did NOT want a theatre. I had worked, played, eaten, drunk and exploited my father's theatre (the New End in Hampstead) for half my lifetime. Determined to move into burlesque, circus or anything else, I had Oranim contact any relevant company I could lay my hands on. But after 6 months, all they had for me was an interview at the Karov.

"It's something different," I was told. "You wanted something different and that's what we've found for you. It's in the Central Bus Station. What more could you ask for." It was not a question.

Tel Aviv's New Central Bus Station is a cross between Elephant and Castle in South London, Stamford Hill, a masked sewage system and the Guggenheim in New York. You have to see it to believe it and I've always perversely loved the place. I'd never heard of the Karov Theatre and when I eventually found it on the 4th Floor I was curious or something.

Liron opened the door to me and I liked her at once. She gave me the grand tour - 90-seater-or-so with old cinema seats and eff-off huge wide stage. Kitchen and dressing rooms backstage, tiny office leading to a spacious foyer with tea and coffee area. No bar. Dark, dingy, and all of it beautiful beautiful beautiful.

The Karov was established by Romanian-born director, actor and theatre practitioner Nico Nitai. In my interview with Liron (Press and Marketing) and Dorit Nitai Neman (Nico's daughter and Associate Director and Producer as well as theatre manager) I learnt the Karov story. Nitai established his production house in a disused bomb shelter in North Tel Aviv in 2001. Two years later a fire destroyed both the space and its creative archive to date.

Against all advice, Nitai relocated his theatre to an available complex in the Central Bus Station where few "respectable Israeli theatregoers" venture to take a bus, let alone enjoy a night out. But Nitai was determined to make his philosophy of merging life, performance, audience and text ("karov" translates as "close/near") a reality in the heart of "real" Tel Aviv.

Seven years later, here we all are with over 100 in-house productions, a current repertoire of around 10 shows (performed in rep by the Karov company) from promenade Sartre to community theatre, and an ever-growing audience from all over Israel and beyond.

My job is to break the Karov into the English-speaking festival scene and build its International Relations "department" as a whole. I am at-home there and happy, my fears of it being an unwelcome home-from-home remain unfounded.

It is now Pesach, and what I do for the Karov requires tremendous motivation, initiative and self-belief. I have never written a blog before and hope that Alexa Le Karov will rouse some curiosity somewhere for arts outside the box, theatre in Israel and a personal journey from which I hope others can profit. Somehow.