Gymnastics

GYMNASTICS (2004)

Maya Dunietz and Michal Oppenheim-Landau in Gymnastics photo: Alona Rodeh 

Gymnastics is an indirect response to Samuel Beckett's play QUAD (1980). The formalistic play provides the setting for an attempt of communication between people in a controlled environment. This produces an additional quest, which examines the independence of contemporary theatrical language, an exploration of nowadays abstraction of theater.

The audience is presented with simple situational guidelines, and is invited to fill in the blanks as they please. The piece offers a view at hardly distinguishable hues and inquires whether a grey, self-reflecting non-virtuous creation can find a place in the colorful environment of today's emotive visual public sphere.

With: Maya Dunietz, Amit Hadari/Moran Abergil, Noam Inbar, Osnat Kelner, Asaf Korman, Michal Oppenheim, Na'ama Schendar/Rachel Zinder, Eyal Zusman.

Featuring music by: Robert Wyatt, Wes Montgomery, The Barry Sisters,

Norbert Schultze / Hans Leip, Maya Dunietz.

Costumes: Alona Rodeh

Set and Lighting: Ariel Efraim Ashbel

'Gymnastics' premiered at the School of Visual Theater, Jerusalem in May 2004 and later that year was presented in Tel Aviv's Tmuna Theater and Suzanne Dellal Center. 

I made Gymnastics in my first year at school. Wanting to create a piece that has no center and happens only at the edges of the space, We started from walking in squares according to Beckett's structure. Between boredom and attention, and when all the colors seemed to grey out, we started to introduce increasingly clear images to the monochrome stage. This is one point we reached:





And this duet was the prologue for that piece. I like it very much still. It features the lovely Osnat Kelner and a beardless, glassless, young looking me: