Gesher - a Bridge that
                       spans the world

                             by Wendy Elliman

In Jerusalem in June 1992, a one-year-old theater company performed a play in flawless Hebrew to thunderous applause. The standing ovation was not only for exceptionally fine theater, but that none of its actors either spoke or understood the Hebrew lines they had so convincingly delivered. Newcomers to Israel from Russia, they had memorized their roles in Hebrew, along with the pronunciation and intonation.

Gesher ('Bridge' in English) is one of very few trilingual theaters in the world. All of its plays are performed by the same actors, and staged alternately in Russian and Hebrew. Its beginnings were in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s: a group of actors from Moscow, Leningrad and Riga theaters were planning aliya, and began meeting to discuss the creation of a professional Russian-language theater in Israel. In April 1991, Gesher formally opened in Tel Aviv with a Russian translation of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. Much of that first play had been rehearsed during the Gulf War, with gas masks part of the stage props.

"We were very successful in Russian, and Gesher could easily have settled down as a Russian-language theater in Israel," says the company's artistic director, Moscow-born Yevgeny Arye, who moved to Israel in 1990. But the Russian actors not only embraced the idea of performing in Hebrew, they found it added depth to their performance. "Different languages have different emphases, different inner natures," says Gesher actor Mark Ivanir. "The language changes the way you interpret your role."

The company rehearses from its home in a Jaffa warehouse and performs seven days a week throughout the country. It has also gone on tour abroad, twice to Britain as well as to Germany, France, Switzerland and the United States.

"Unlike other repertory companies, we keep all our productions current," says Ori Levy, who was with the Cameri Theater for 41 years as an actor and later as administrative director, until he joined Gesher in 1995. "We have no wish to become a 'classical' company," says Arye. "That's dangerous. I would like very much to have a school and I am already starting a workshop for young actors. Gesher will take in more Israelis now that there are no more actors coming from Russia."

The tradition of Russian theater will, however, remain because it was the huge post- perestroika wave of emigration that not only created Gesher but also made it unique. "Gesher is an enormously successful marriage of Israeli energy and Russian theater tradition," says Levy. The actors never go home because the theater is their home.

World Zionist Press Service

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