A fat pig in Jerusalem
Carter and Tom in "Fat Pig" (Dana Dekel, Jerusalem Post)
A play called “Fat Pig” doesn’t sound like a likely candidate for an evening of light entertainment. But that’s the point. Sara Halevi’s Way Off Productions, which is staging Neil LaBute’s weighty and award-winning work in Jerusalem through the end of November, is dedicated to using theater “as a tool for social change,” says Halevi, also the director.
In “Fat Pig,” Tom, a good-looking executive, falls for Helen, a plus-size librarian. Tom’s friends chide him mercilessly about his new romance, making both Tom and the audience squirm until the arrival a truly surprising (and not necessarily crowd-pleasing) ending.
Halevi wants audiences to think, not just enjoy another comedy (although there are plenty of laughs in “Fat Pig”). To that end, “Fat Pig” is a success, raising some disturbing questions about body image and “what’s socially acceptable in the eyes of the world,” Halevi told The Jerusalem Post.
Halevi started her theater company almost through the back door. She had dabbled in theater during college but trained as a clinical psychologist.
A few years ago, she started using theater as a therapeutic tool at a school for teens at risk. After accompanying the students on a trip to Poland, Halevi guided the kids as they created an original play about their experience. Halevi says she saw an immediate healing effect. The students staged a second production on terrorism.
Halevi broke away from Jerusalem’s Center Stage Theater, where she co-directed that group’s production of “Rent,” to form Way Off in 2009. Her company most recently performed a musical version of Arsenic and Old Lace (we wrote about it here). Their stage is in the El Halev studio space in the Talpiot Industrial Zone.
Unlike other English-speaking community theater groups in the city (including JEST and Encore), which are mainly volunteer, Halevi’s team operates as a collective, sharing equally any profits after expenses.
“Fat Pig” is well directed and acted. The 5-person cast of English-speaking immigrants has some decent acting chops. David Hilfstein who plays Tom has worked off-Broadway; Lev Kerzhner (Tom’s abrasive friend Carter) gained TV exposure last year on the soap opera “15 minutes.”
It was a shame, then, that the theater space (already small by local standards) was less than half full on the night I attended. Halevi isn’t surprised. Jerusalem is a tough city, she says. A flyer posted at a local hairdresser’s shop had to be taken down when residents objected to the play’s name. And says Levi, in contrast to Tel Aviv, “it’s hard to get Jerusalemites out at night.”
Halevi isn’t discouraged. She’s already working on the next production, Jonathan Tollin’s Twilight of the Golds,” about a Jewish family grappling with a new genetic test which can determine sexual preference of a fetus in utero.
In the meantime, there are still a few more performances of “Fat Pig” before the show closes. More information at wayoffproductions@gmail.com.
Jewish moshing at Linkin Park concert
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture
Some of the crowd at the front of the stage.
As parents sat on the sloped hill on the peripherary of the amphitheater, the wide area in front of the stage was where most of the 15,000-strong crowd crammed and jostled, turning it into a hormone-fueled mosh pit.
According to first-hand accounts, there wasn’t even room to raise their hands down in front, and even before the show started, promoter Shuki Weiss emerged from the shadows and took center stage, and said something like:
“You have to stop all the pushing and shoving, or the security people are going to come and remove you. And then you’ll miss the show, you don’t want that, do you?”
And when that didn’t seem to work, he took out his secret weapon, saying, “This isn’t the kind of behavior we expect from you,” echoing the plaintive wail of Jewish parents throughout the ages.
I’m not sure if that did the trick, but the show went on as scheduled, with the audience swaying like a sea of humanity, raised fists thrust in the air. Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington at one point, reminded the crowd to take care of each other and “if someone falls down, what do you do? Pick them up!” (a sad commentary on contemporary society when we have to be reminded to do things like that).
He also commented that it was the “rowdiest crowd” the band had ever seen. Bennington might say that at every show, who knows? But when the 16-year-old I accompanied emerged from the bowels of the crowd, two hours later, he was so sweat-drenched that he appeared as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. And when we got home at 1:00 am, I successfully used the same Jewish guilt strategy to get him into the shower.
Leo buying Israeli property
Filed under: Business, General, Israeliness, News, Pop Culture
Hunkering down at a cafe in Hod Hasharon
In Israel this week to celebrate his birthday along with his mother and actor friend Kevin Connolly (did you know they were friends?), they started their trip in Egypt and are now staying at the Dan Tel Aviv presidential suite.
This is all according to the Israel Hayom paper, which yesterday reported DiCaprio’s property plot plans. One thing is for sure, DiCaprio is not considering building a home in the mercaz, or Israel’s center, where the Rafaelis live. Guess he doesn’t want to rely on them for the proverbial cup of neighborly sugar. Or doesn’t want to run into the paparazzi again…
Sharon Fruits
Filed under: Food, General, health, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life
Persimmons on tree, looking slightly overripe
Also called Sharon Fruit by some — the name Sharon Fruit comes from the Sharon plain where they’re grown in Israel — the persimmon tree was first cultivated in China thousands of years ago, and is now grown the world over. Besides China, Japan, Brazil and Korea, which are the major producers, Israel also has an expanding persimmon industry and its particular variety is the Sharon Fruit, although the local industry just calls it persimmon, or ‘afarsimon‘ in Hebrew.
And if you like the persimmon, it seems that a persimmon a day does more to reduce the risk of heart disease than an apple, according to Shela Gorinstein, a research associate with the department of medicinal chemistry in the School of Pharmacy at Hebrew University. According to a study published back in 2001 in ScienceDaily, many persimmons contained twice as much dietary fiber as apples, while the peels of both fruits had higher fiber levels than the pulp or the whole fruit. Persimmons also contained more of the major phenolics (antioxidants) than apples.
Around here, you can find persimmons through November and December, and often into the winter. I like their Thanksgiving-like orange hue, and it’s one of those rare occasions where the fruit that’s in season here is also in season in the U.S., making my recipe-hunting that much easier.
Here’s a salad I put together this weekend, utilizing both persimmons and avocados, which are both in season right now. It served 10, including some avowed non-persimmon eaters.
A Persimmony Salad
4 persimmons, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
3 avocados, peeled and wedged
2 large bunches bibb lettuce, torn
Dried cranberries
Toasted and chopped pecans (if you live in Israel, you can use the candied pecans, much sweeter)
For the dressing, I combined olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a cooked down syrup of tangerine juice and zest (but you could just squeeze some tangerine juice into your dressing) and cinnamon. The recipe I was working off of used walnut oil or hazelnut oil, but this tasted fine.
(Tangerine pieces could also be good in this, as would thinly sliced fennel or kohlrabi, for some crunch.)
Dreaming of bagrut
Hebrew translation: "Matriculation Certificate"
I had a horrifying dream last night. I imagined that I was 17 again, but this time living in Israel. It was bagrut season – that time in the spring semester of a student’s junior and senior years in high school when matriculation exams pile into each other like Nascar…or the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.
In my dream, I was preparing for my bagrut tests…except that I had done nothing so far and I couldn’t figure out why. My mind raced between the upcoming exam in ezrachut (citizenship) in my dream and memories of my own high school days in California where we had “finals week” but no standardized national tests staggered every few weeks from Purim to summer break.
It’s not surprising that I had this dream – I’ve been living and breathing my teenage daughter’s bagrut tribulations especially since she was able to move up one of her tests from spring to winter, thereby reducing some pressure by making it more imminent.
This is not the first time I’ve had this kind of dream. I used to wake up in the middle of the night convinced that I had not in fact received my college diploma as I still had one more paper to turn in. Naturally, I’d long since forgotten the study material, relegating my entire professional life to little more than a thinly calculated fraud.
Fortunately, it’s only my daughter who needs to pass her bagruts in order to graduate. Maybe I should help her a bit more – it might hasten my own nocturnal remission.
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