Sarah: Text and Presence represents an electrifying vision of what can happen when we take traditional text – full of magic and mystery in itself – and, with our 21st-century sensibility, give it wings to soar. When two of Jerusalem’s powerhouse directors unite to dream up a new form of engagement, I want to see it with my own eyes, and I will.
Sarah: Text and Presence is the second collaboration between Theatre Company Jerusalem (TCJ) and Theater and Theology. Created and performed by their respective directors, Gabriella Lev and Yael Valier, it draws on materials from TCJ’s iconic Hebrew play Sara Take 2. This new project differs in a number of ways from the first collaboration, Shards of Laughter, which played to packed houses earlier this year.
Shards was conventional theater, solo and intimate, telling a personal story. In contrast, Sarah: Text and Presence, billed as “a performative beit midrash,” is an experimental interactive event featuring multiple genres and performers. Live music, biblical and midrashic texts, and contemporary writing are interwoven with performances of monologues by Aliza Elion Israeli and haiku poetry by Sara Tropper, along with special light design by John Krug.
What can ancient art tell us about living in modern times?
Lev explains what, for her, is the driving force behind this production: “As a theater artist living through the two great events of our decade – the pandemic and Oct. 7 – I keep returning to one question: where is theater in such a time and what is its duty? These are not small disturbances: what can this ancient art still do in the face of them?” For her, the answer lies in the genre’s most basic quality: “Theater depends upon presence. Deep human contact is becoming increasingly rare. In theater, people go to sit in a room with strangers and experience something together, to share the same time and air. That cannot be reproduced by a screen.”
Valier observes: “In Jewish tradition, learning is interactive. We’ve made the paired debate chevruta study model three-dimensional, bringing text into dialogue with actors and audience, and drawing also on imagination, humor, association, interpretation, and empathy.” She too makes the connection with our time: “I think the moment demands that we climb out of artistic boxes and use whatever performance, music, text, conversation, and imagination can give us.”
This collaboration is a dream come true for both women. Lev notes: “Despite our different theatrical histories, Yael and I are both interested in Jewish text as living material, moving beyond conventional theater and changing the relationship between performer, text, and audience.” This move required courage: “The challenge in this hybrid play and beit midrash form is that the artists surrender some control to the living energy in the room, so the form has to be strong enough to hold it,” says Lev.
Sarah: Text and Presence in the words of its creators
How does ‘Sarah: Text and Presence’ build on the earlier play ‘Sara Take 2’?
GL: It inherits a great deal – and yet this is not ‘Sara Take 3,’ it is a new event.
Sara Take 2 emerged from a lecture by Avivah Zornberg and a central question we were asking ourselves: how can we recover the woman’s voice within our ancient texts? That production included monologues by the late Aliza Elion Israeli and innovative vocal work from my sister Ruth Wieder-Magan. We also developed Theatre-Beit Midrash and Midrash-Bama, in which the audience first studied the texts and then encountered our theatrical derash. This work has now been fundamentally renewed in Sarah: Text and Presence.
Why Sarah?
GL: Sarah is a figure full of contradictions, and contradiction is inherently theatrical. And the midrashic association of Sarah’s cries with the shofar means that we can ask, ‘What is Sarah saying now, and what do we hear in her voice today?’ In the new work, she is also placed within the larger landscape of the hagim: beginnings, re-creation, gratitude and celebration.
What is exciting about this production?
YV: What excites me about this piece is the way it expands text learning through theater. The Talmud itself – especially in aggadic passages – often thinks poetically and associatively, allowing ideas to emerge through juxtaposition, image, and resonance. Many people have lost both the habit and the pleasure of learning this way. A performative beit midrash can help kickstart that mode of engagement. I hope that audiences, especially those used to more conventional theater, will take the plunge and come along with us.
GL: I’ve long wanted to create an event that is “unplugged,” without amplification, microphones, or lighting effects. I’m also excited by the meeting between very old material and the present moment, and by how the text’s meaning is changed through what surrounds it: candlelight, the shofar, celebratory haikus by poet Sara Tropper, and live acoustic music from composer-cantor Daniel Fox.
History changes meaning too. These words are being spoken after COVID and Oct. 7, in a society that has experienced profound rupture. The words may sometimes be identical. We are not.