Sense 1: Momentous manipulation...should it be momentary?

As I leave my full-time work at the Karov and instead focus on the different ways to get it abroad as a part of my, Nico, Dorit's and the other Karovians' Israel, there are other things to relate. They link to much of my learning here and to record them with a sense of consideration because others might read will also be helpful to me as I use this archive throughout my life and work.

My first week-long blog project is about the senses...sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

Like always, it is amazing for me to hear anything that my writing or its components may spark in you so do consider sharing if you ever want.

On Thursday evening we went to see Not By Bread Alone at the Nalagat ('please do touch') Centre - a theatre and restaurant geared towards the work and productivity of deaf and/or blind actors. This show is famous now and will be at the Arts Depot in London, hopefully featuring also at the LIFT Festival. During the show 12 actors - some of them completely without sight or hearing, others with varying but generally low degrees of one or the other, make bread and relate their lives, dreams and observations (sorry) with immense creativity, aided by a special touch language 6 interpreters impart to them over the hour.

Afterwards C and I ate at the wonderful little Cafe Yafo up the road, forgoing the 30shekel live jazz an hour later to continue our talk as we walked back to Tel Aviv along the tayelet.

One thing I have been constantly intrigued and at times frustrated by over the past 5 months is the obsession with taking photos. Photos photos photo opportunity come on photo posing photo oh my god oh my god oh my god All The Fing Time. A told me her friend actually forgo swimming with dolphins in Eilat because nobody would be there with her to take pictures. wtf. And within this crazy scene I am increasingly aware of my own attitude to being in pictures. In the final leadership seminar one leader was taking individual pictures of us as we explained a project and I found myself, completely unintentionally, asking her not to photograph me. Put me on my trampoline, a swing, a stage of any kind and take whatever. But it's not that I just like not knowing when exactly someone's clicking. Sometimes it's fine...when there is no pressure, I suppose, to pose. I can't pose really. I just can't. Unless.....

Unless the moment is manipulating me...there's a stimulus. Being photographed is often aligned with the subject manipulating the moment, turning nothing into an inanimate animation - making a piece of film or a screened image amazing. At the top is a photo by D and at the bottom one created by A (although she is in it) and in both I found the situations (one I was aware the picture was being taken, the other one no) so sexy sexy sexy being photographed was great.

Stepping out of self-focus zzzz for a second, I love the pictures some of my photographer friends take...I mean those which are considered so highly, so thoughtfully, with the immense vision and angle in every sense of the word that a true photographer possesses. There are 2 people who really come to mind and to have an example of what I mean read the introduction on JP's wedding photography website. The other, R from my program, reflects the light of her presence, depth of emotional perception and extraordinary engagement with the bigness and smallness of the world in every moment she captures.

We will call her Erika, my favourite photographer personally known to me. She knows my "issues" with being photographed though we never had really the need to speak about them...I just knew she knew from her gentleness with me on one such occasion. She turns down some paid photographic work that doesn't incorporate the kind of thing or vibe she wants to picture...not out of snobbery or even real an idealism...it just doesn't come naturally. The way she talks about her art projects and those of her brother has taught me so much in its unknown humility and honesty. I won't write too much for discretion but Erika, if you are reading this, know how you touched me.

In a nutshell, when I have a conversation with people about this subject I dwell on my fear of camera-brandishers missing out on the moment itself because they are so keen to capture it on film. I really think a lot of the time they do. And it's an age-old cliche I know, the best photographs being imprinted on your memory. But even if you don't remember, does it matter? On the way back from Nalagat, C and I sat for a good while on the rocks overlooking the sea and talked at length. We came back to the moment itself and how we would cherish and remember it. The power of the sea, the sun, of how whether we call it G-d or science or struggle to define a greater creator or force it's to some extent immaterial. We spoke of personal impact, the definition of ambition and success. I said to C how she has effect already through her writing, through her conversations. Any subsequent development of her work, professional or otherwise, will carry on the success but on many levels she has already succeeded. As far as I am concerned anyway. :-) Moments and minutes count every day, whether we are waking, sleeping or dreaming. And isn't photography a wonderful thing to explore and extend those experiences for those with the gift of sight?

Shapira - 2nd installment: Alexa and friends

PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE.

Hello. Welcome to Clinca Karov...4 shows for 100nis and an exclusive appointment with "Doktor Cultura" aka Rafael Adi and a scant ushering service courtesy of Achot Alexa.

In the tiny Shapira neighbourhood, men, women and children flocked to songs, sounds and tambourines to learn about Nico Nitai's Karov Theatre.



Although we were stationed a 3-minute walk from the Tachana Merkazit (Central Bus Station), few new friends knew about us although most were familiar with Nico's name and work.
Rafi and I thus created our own bus stop with the aid of an amiable tree, bringing the Karov's location into our larksome playtimes.

For the most part I donned a tambourine.






Alexa and friends:
Left we have the beautiful Linor (chief photographer), pictured in schoolgirl get-up complete with cigarettes and fetching hair ribbon.

Doctor Rafi indulges in a little risque peeping Tomness and Alexa wears an authentic shawl from backstage.

Below we have Liron - a symphony in turquoise and veritable songbird of the Karov quintet. She can ring my bells any day.

Also pictured below is Rudi...lead singer and guitarist of Rutsi Buba and very talented at other things besides. He used to be in-house tech manager at the Karov in the days before girlfriend Linor became resident production manager. You can see me clapping along to the beat in the background. You don't have to look that carefully.

The SHE Festival goes live on Kadmus, and daddy meets dorit...

Gerald got poorly in the throat and didn't come to hear Alexa's thrilled, spilled and pilled up thoughts about eating twins and subtitling the mentally ill or whatever I mentioned last time

Oh, you can change the font colour and see how it looks when you type. How exciting. Now I am going to write something that is really difficult to see hahaa oh but I can't see it either so never mind.

So thoughts for Gerry will have to wait. Instead, I took Brian to meet Dorit and co. It was great although we couldn't get any proper cookies because it is Pesach. I showed dad all the nice backstage and the wide stage and the foyer and office and tea and coffee and we talked about twinning the She Festival in particular with the New End. Ann has since made a page for this year's SF on Kadmus which is ever so nice of her. I will add some pictures here next week.

Increasingly I am excited about The Woman In The Wall. I think I would like to have a tyre as my swing, or something round-ish. They have now those wide round swings with three pieces of rope and they go round as well as up and down. The Sailor pushed me in one at Edinburgh and it was so much fun. Also, I always prefer round and round to backwards and forwards.

As a result of going to the Karov and meeting Dorit, B has an idea for a play about families in theatres, especially fathers and daughters. It sounds quite interesting actually. Anyway, we shall see. I also want to get Alef Alef to London in some shape or form, to promote the work of Jewish artists on the issue of domestic violence.

My dad said he was happy I went to the Karov and not somewhere like the Cameri, which I thought was nice. Also I felt very proud in a general way. It is sad he won't get to see anything there this time.

Chag Samech, and forthcoming meeting with Gerald :-o

It is Pesach today which should be interesting. We are going to be in Ashdod this evening for the Seder. The whole holiday is about two weeks, I think, but normal times like that don't really apply to theatre so whatever. I am very curious because on Wednesday morning, Dorit and Liron and Linor have a meeting with the Karov's head trustee Gerald. He is English and runs a big tourist newspaper in Israel. I think he sounds rather important, a bit like Conrad or Godfrey or the trustees we have at the New End.

Just on an aside, Emma I know you are reading this and I want to give you a special Chag Samech and Mazel Tov because you did so amazingly in A Big Day For The Goldbergs at the New End. My dad wrote it you see and I was so sad that I couldn't see it.

Anyway, Gerald at the Karov will come partly to hear about the ideas for the theatre's English-speakers program. I like this work et al...also, I come up with many thoughts whilst smoking which makes me worried because what if when I don't smoke I never think of anything anymore? Or what if I just never stop smoking and just die very young? Well, my thoughts for Gerald etc are:

1) The Wings Project: a fortnightly surtitle program with a pioneer session sold to Oranim, Career Israel and a selection of invited English speakers in Tel Aviv.

2) Festivalim Kanafiyiim: a foundation proposal for the Karov on the international fringe - Israeli theatre, the wider world and thoughts beyond the Exposure.

3) Theatre twinning: I have this thought to twin the Karov with a similar scale space or festival elsewhere in the English-speaking world. For a week a year say, each company prepares an exchange project with the aid of two young Israeli/exchange volunteers, bringing a different kind of arts exposure to the two countries. I've broached it with the Captial Fringe Festival in Washington, and also with Bill and Ann at Kadmus Arts, plus the International Drama and Education Association who have very boring looking chairs on their website. For this I am sad.

They are all a bit on the educational side. After my dad in theatre, I think Gerald and I will be cool because I have thought all about where the money is coming from etc and I am not very idealistic.

My session or whatever ends if 5 minutes so Chag Samech and watch my space. Please please. I still have such a hang-up about this blog thing.

I miss my trampoline also:-(

A x

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.