REPORT FROM GILO

REPORT FROM GILO

ANGLO CULTURE IN JERUSALEM

 

It was only a few years after making  Aliya that we realized, sadly, that our understanding of spoken Hebrew was never going to be good enough for us to enjoy plays in anything other than English.  As ardent theatre goers in our previous life this was a huge deprivation and not helped by the few local amateur productions or one-man shows brought to Jerusalem by the British Council.  Happily, this has now all changed with the advent of The Encore Educational Theatre Company, a not-for-profit community theatre which was established in 2006.  It grew out of the Jerusalem Gilbert & Sullivan Society organized by G & S buff, Robert Binder and originally, the very popular meetings were held in his home.   Robert is not only a human encyclopedia on anything related to the famous duo but also a talented, producer, director and maker of superb costumes.  When maestro, Paul Salter made Aliyah from Manchester, he joined forces with Robert, as musical director and Encore was born.   Since its inception, Jerusalemites can look forward to two first-class shows each year, one Gilbert and Sullivan and one modern musical, Fiddler on the Roof, Carousel, Oklohama, The Wizard of Oz, and My Fair Lady having been amongst these.   Last year’s productions also included West Side Story, performed superbly by the Youth section of Encore, one of whose aims is to educate Israeli youth about Musical theatre.  Last week’s performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Gondoliers was well up to standard and the wonderful set which included a Venetian canal and very realistic gondolas was, as usual, designed by Roxanne Goodkin-Levy, an ex-Brummie.

We are members of a play-reading group which has now been going for around 20 years and meets once a month, in members’ houses, to read, with no prior preparation, a complete cross-section of drama from Shakespeare to Alan Bennet.  Everyone brings refreshments to be enjoyed in the ‘interval’ and it has become one of the high-spots of our month.  Most of the members are ex-Brits but we also have a few Americans and an occasional Israeli, the standard of reading is exceptionally high and we achieve some really dramatic and emotional renderings.

We also belong to the Jerusalem Shakespeare Society run by David Young, English teacher, historian, expert on Shakespeare and the author of a number of fascinating books about him (written under the name D. Lawrence-Young) In this group which also meets monthly, we not only read the works of Shakespeare but study and discuss them and often spend meetings watching films, old and new, of the Bard’s plays.

So even though we no longer have access to West-End productions or the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, except on our occasional visits back to the U.K., with these excellent organisations in Jerusalem, we now feel much less deprived of our native culture.

 

NORMAN & LOLA COHEN