The extravagant spectacle PARADIZE, based on the story of the Garden of Eden, would have swept you off your feet and taken you to a miraculous world of biblical fantasy - if only you could see it. But you are sitting in the backstage.
PARADIZE is a wild physical comedy that tells the story of a theatre company during a run of a show. The director plays the part of God, and is married to Eve, Adam is a spoiled diva and the snake a beginning actor. When the backstage technician carries out his cunning plot to takeover one of the prime roles on stage - their life is thrown into utter chaos, but the show must go on.
Behind the scenes you will experience the suspense of a quick costume change, maneuvering complex backdrops, the anxiety of actors, power struggles, life-size cardboard animals, excitement and despair, extension cables, secret desires and private lives, who are turned in the duration of one show to an exquisite farce of "reality-show" culture.
Creation of Clipa group members in collaboration with Masha Nemirovsky
Performers: Idit Herman, Dmitry Tyulpanov, Tsvi Petrakowsky, Oded Zadok, Yonatan Kunda
Dramaturgy: Masha Nemirovsky
Set: Dmitry Tyulpanov
Costumes: Idit Herman
Light: Uri Morag
Sound: Yonatan Kunda
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A free fall into the dream image world of the Clipa Theater, deep into multiple sensations, abstracted, without borders or a narrative lifeline, to the unremitting flow of sounds and sights, to the ultimate chill out
The Observatory deals with dream archetypes, the same dreams that we all dream in different ways. Dreams that define the longing, passion, and fear that we all share.
The audience enters a dark and soft space. Step by step visual images envelop the observer from all sides, a dream of fleeing into a dense forest, a dream about flight with aerial acrobatics above the head of the viewer, and a dream about the woman of forever.
The black space breaths, moves, and changes like a magic box. Scenery, images, objects, are nearly all black, staged pictures appear from the absolute darkness - barely visible. They mock the observer with their illusive flickering.
The performance offers a visual experience that is sensory and inclusive. The viewer is free to choose the perspective and angle from which to observe, remaining passive and protected by the darkness. The dreamlike quality is driven by the physical calmness felt while sitting or lying on the mattresses that cover the whole area.
The consuming music and the visual imagery, enhanced by the monochrome in black, allows limited vision of the figure or object, disappearing and reappearing unexpectedly from various directions in the darkness.
The Clipa Theater group has created five pieces that are site specific for the Israel Festival: Hide and Seek at Kikar Safra (1998), Labyrinth at the Rose Garden (1999), Deus Ex Machina, at the festival opening in the Botanical Gardens (2001), Reconstructing Game, at the opening of the festival (2005), K, at the Underground Prisoners Museum (2009). The works that were created for the festival are important stepping stones towards the formation of the artistic vision of the group and its creations. The Observatory and its unique visual experience is created to suit the black space of the (former) Tel Ad Television Studios at the Jerusalem Theater for the 50th Anniversary of the Israel Festival.
Performance Duration: 50 minutes (no intermission)
Orpheus was the first musician and father of all song. His music relaxed beasts and moved stones.
Unable to accept his beloved wife's death, Orpheus descends to the underworld to bring her back.
His gentle notes soften the hearts of demons and of hell's master, who agrees to release Eurydice under the strict condition that Orpheus does not look back at her on their way to the surface.
He looks back.
Clipa Theater's Orpheus moves through the narrative, using dance and live music in a rich visual world of object manipulation and symbolism.
"Orpheus is a mosaic of object manipulation....brilliant and groundbreaking"
Shiga Nobuo, Butoh-Art, Japan
"Clipa's artists are revolutionary warriors. They are forever pure!"
Yoshito Ono, DANCE DANCE DANCE, Japan
"This unique theater piece is pure poetry, it opens up the soul to declare: what awesome beauty"
Yediot Acharonot newspaper, Israel
"Visual theater at its best; tight, well made, very impressive"
Haaretz newspaper, Israel
Created, performed, designed and composed by: Dmitry Tyulpanov and Idit Herman
Light: Uri Morag
Sound: Dirk Kunesch
Duration: 60 minutes
Orpheus premiered at Session House Theater, Tokyo in April 2006 and in Israel, at Clipa Center for Performance Art, in July 2006.