Vera Berzak Schneider, the 29-year-old theatre director from Israel, portrays intense human emotions in her play A Stranger Guest. She speaks to Team Viva about her maiden production and why she chose to be independent
It’s not common to find a father in a friendly relationship with his daughters in old-fashioned patriarchal families. They often do not share their deepest emotions, doubts and fears but rather hide them. A Stranger’s Guest, a play directed by Israel director Vera Berzak Schneider, brought about this gap and resultant confusion at the Bharat Rang Mahotsav.
The play pivots around the intensity of human relations in a family set-up and how the illness of a member can change the equation between the others. The play, performed in English, was remarkably present-day with the actors easing themselves into their characters seamlessly. The 29-year-old created her own theatre group, Vera Berzak Schneider Theatre, soon after she graduated from School of Visual Art, Jerusalem in 2012. On adapting the play The Intruder by Maurice Maeterlinck to make A Stranger Guest, she says, “I love The Intruder because it deals with emotions of human beings. I was very curious to know how it could be expressed on stage when someone close to you is ill or has died, through the physicality and visual language and the task of a director would be to express it through gestures, movements and sound. We were inspired by the play but changed it to suit our requirements. In the original play there are many characters whereas we have only three. Also we didn’t take most of the text.”
“I was more interested in the emotions of the characters and how they deal with an unpredictable situation. Each character views it in his or her own way, which in turn changes the relation between them. Each one is going through a certain process on stage. The play develops through the subconscious strata of the actors.”
The director says that there is a lot of improvisation on the part of the actors and if there were other characters, the play would have been different: “The way the play has eventually been made has a lot to do with the actors’ personal world. It forces them to connect to an emotion every time and it’s difficult. They really have to feel it for the play to work out, which is most important. We tried that connection to work out well. The character of the mother, who is ill and bed-ridden and who never appears on stage, affects everything happening on the stage.”
A Stranger Guest is Vera’s maiden play and premiered at the Indo-French Theatre Festival in Tel Aviv. It has been presented in different cities of Israel after that. A graduate in Performance Arts, direction was Vera’s passion. “My interest lies in direction and animation. I love the process of creating a work and making the play was great, not easy at times though. This was the first time I worked with actors. I was very excited to work in their world and to know their minds. Acting is entering into a character. During my studies, I worked with performers only.”
Born in Russia and living in Tel Aviv, Israel, she feels that she hasn’t completely inherit any of the two cultures: “That has an impact on the play as well. The family I have created for the play is a Russian one where things are more patriarchal.”
Asked how well theatre is received in Israel, she says, “There are independent theatres in Israel. They lack funding and it’s tough to run. But they are a lot into experimenting, where one can create something without knowing how it’s going to end. People have the freedom to try out and deal with subjects which perhaps nobody wouldn’t want to talk about. Then there are big theatres which are less experimental and understandably more revenue-driven. I hope both will be more open to new artists and ideas,” she says.
On forming her own theatre group rather early, she says, “I didn’t want to depend on anybody else. When someone gives you an opportunity to work, it comes with conditions. You are expected to make certain things that restrict your freedom. I didn’t want that to happen,” she signs off.
The three characters of the play, essayed by Amichai Pardo, Shaked Sabag and Hadas Weissman, speak more through their body language than dialogues. And it’s the character of the mother, the one who never appears on stage, that determines the dynamics of each.