An Open Stage for Artists with and without Disabilities

Na Laga’at Theatre published an open call for artists with disabilities to express themselves in personal creations with the artistic support of the theater’s professional team. This event will feature two short plays adapted from ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare and ‘Cathedral’ by Raymond Carver. The plays will be performed by actors with and without sensory disabilities, alongside interpreters. The adaptations incorporate acting, texts, movement, and video, where the use of sign language in parallel with Hebrew will add a dual meaning to the themes presented.

In the ‘Hamlet’ adaptation, the protagonist is portrayed as blind but the only one who truly sees the unfolding events as a thinking, feeling, and frustrated individual seeking justice. Facing him is a blind prophet with the deaf Uncle Claudius in between them. The protagonist constantly searches to be honest and authentic, while demanding the same from his surroundings, only to find himself turning reality into a performance, in the literal sense – full of concealment and pretense. Thus, the play explores questions of truth, illusion, and whether a person can truly know themselves and the other.

In the ‘Cathedral’ adaptation, the narrator is a cynical man who is asked to host his wife’s old blind friend and is reluctant to do so. Eventually, the ice and hostility melt away after the wife falls asleep, and the two men engage in an intimate creative activity together, trying to describe a cathedral through touch. The closeness that develops allows not only the blind man to “see”, but also the host to open his heart in a story filled with humor, pain, and great sensitivity.

Additionally, a collaboration with The Progressive Wave will be presented. Gal Naor and Matan Zamir, the artistic directors of the Berlin-based group, will arrive to Israel to participate in a creative process with deaf dancers and actors from Israel and Germany, and the result of this process will be presented to the general public.