Gesher Theater
Gesher's first production, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, debuted in April 1991, immediately after the Gulf War.
The headline “The Russian Miracle of Israeli Theatre” (Dvar Hashavua, August 1991), captures the essence of the unprecedented reactions with which the production was received.
The French media praised Director Yevgeny Arye and Gesher's actors, who played Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the festival.
In 1993, after only two years of activity marked by impressive achievements, Gesher won institutional recognition and was awarded the status of public theater.
In 1994, the Theater took it upon itself to deal with one of the most difficult and painful subjects in history – the Holocaust, in the play Adam Resurrected by Alexander Chervinsky [ru] (translated by Mark Ivanir), based on the novel with the same name by Yoram Kaniuk.
In 1999, Leander Haussmann, Artistic Director of the German Bochum Theatre, was invited to Gesher to direct Schiller's Intrigue and Love.
The production represented Israel in the prestigious Schiller Festival in Mannheim, Germany, and won excellent reviews and great success.
In December 2000, Gesher Theatre debuted the great theatrical project of The Devil in Moscow, an original musical based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s famed novel The Master and Margarita.
In April 2002 Gesher debuted The Slave, an adaptation of the book by Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer.
In September 2002 Gesher staged The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, under the direction of the renowned Russian director Adolph Shapiro.
In May 2003, Gesher staged an adaptation to another work of the author Isaac Bashevis Singer – “Shosha”, again reaping exceptional reviews and a wonderful audience response.
The tour achieved unprecedented impact in the media, the critics went overboard, the halls were packed and tickets were sold on the black market.
It is tough to describe the amazing experience of playing “Adam Resurrected” in the old marketplace from which the Jews of Poland were sent to the extermination camps, Auschwitz and Chelmno.
In June 2004, Gesher Theater staged the play Marriage of Figaro crazy classic comedy, directed by Yevgeny Arye.
Later that year, in July 2004, the play “The Cripple of Inishmaan” by the successful playwright Martin McDonagh, and directed by Ilan Toren, a visiting director with Gesher Theater, was staged.
At the end of May 2005, the theater went on a second tour in Moscow with the play “Shosha”, at the Cherry Forest Festival in the prestigious Sovremennik Theatre.
The invitation was received at the initiative of the Friends of Gesher Theater Association in Israel and the Jewish community in Toronto.
In July 2005, Gesher Theater, sponsored by the Bracha Fund, staged “Momik”, an adaptation of David Grossman’s best selling novel “See under: Love”.
In late December 2006, the play “Baron Munchausen” – The Whole Truth About the Lie, by the famous Russian playwright Gregory Gorin, directed by Yevgeny Arye, was staged.
In April 2007, the one man act “This is How it Happened”, according to a novel by Natalia Ginzburg, performed by Natasha Manor, winner of the Best Actress Award in the Theatroneto Festival 2007, was staged.
Chen wrote many adaptations for stage of classic novels such as A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev, Enemies, a Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, etc.
