Between the Lines: Creating in a Polarized Society – A Study and Creative Workshop

Beit Avi Chai invites creators from the performing arts to a cross-sector creative and learning incubator.

Israeli reality does not stop, and the storm at its heart continues to send waves through us. After nearly three years of a prolonged war, of returning from the fronts home (and back to the war again, and so on), we are on the threshold of an election period that brings with it new and old concerns: How will we continue living together in the charged reality in which we find ourselves?

In the face of this reality, artistic creation cannot afford to pretend that it is external to these storms. Instead, it can dare to ask difficult questions about the place in which we live: What has been broken here, what is still holding, and what do we seek to build from this point forward? It can also explore who we are in this time—not only as individuals, but as a society—and what role creation plays within a reality that refuses to calm down. Between the lines, with self-awareness and an attempt not to be overly presumptuous, it also asks: What can it do to inspire change?

At Beit Avi Chai, we believe that creation has healing power—the power to influence reality, public discourse, and our lives here. We invite you, creators from the performing arts and from different sectors, to think and dream together with people who are different from you; to engage with ideas and texts from Hebrew culture throughout the generations; and, out of all this, to create new works that are in dialogue with Israeli reality and respond to it. This is an invitation not to escape reality, but to bring it into the rehearsal room, onto the stage, and into the creative work itself. Throughout the incubator, we will address questions of identity, society, community, polarization, memory, and a shared future, and seek to examine how creation can be not only a testimony to this time, but also an active partner in shaping it.

The workshop includes eleven sessions of shared study of formative and inspiring texts from a range of backgrounds, and the creation of works in response to them, led by Yonatan Blumenfeld and Dana Bar-Lev. At the end of the workshop, the creative group will present a performance at Beit Avi Chai featuring the incubator’s creations. In preparation for the performance, participants will receive two individual artistic mentoring sessions: Rona Kenan will mentor the musicians, and Yael Tal will mentor the writers for the stage.

Session dates:

To submit an application