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ABSTRACT
This article suggests re-reading documents that remain from Li-La-Lo theatrical events, which include playbills, programmes, photos, archive files, and television shows. Through this historiographic way of working, that is, the re-reading of what remains from past performances but differently, this article will demonstrate what Tel Aviv offered to the artists, what the theatre as a cultural institution offered to the residents of the city and, in the broader circle, how Li-La-Lo was an intersection of performance traditions. Historical circumstances brought the Li-La-Lo artists to Tel Aviv, and the leaders and residents of the city, who cultivated normalcy, enabled them to continue to do what they knew best: perform. Thus, performance artists strengthened Tel Aviv’s status as a cultural centre, a symbol, and embodiment of cultural heterogeneity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dorit Yerushalmi is a senior lecturer in The Theatre Department, University of Haifa, and the Head of the department. She is the coeditor of Please Don’t Chase Me Away: New Studies on the Dybbuk (Tel Aviv: Assaph Theatre Studies and Safra Publishing House, 2009), and coeditor of Habima: New Studies on National Theatre. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2017. She is the author of The Directors’ Stage: On Directors in the Israeli Theatre (Or Yehuda: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir and Heksherim Institute, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, 2013). Her publications are related to Hebrew theatre historiography, aesthetics and ideological aspects in the works of contemporary Israeli directors, theatre and gender, and pedagogies of theatre.
Notes
1 Bet Ariela serves only as a repository for this theatre archive and does not own the archive nor can it provide any letter regarding copyrights for these photos. There was no photographer’s signature on the back of the photos and no dates, so there was no one to contact.
2 The author and editor have sought to obtain copyright permission for all reproductions. It was not possible to determine the owners of the copyrights for all the illustrations. Where feasible, owners of the relevant copyrights are urged to contact the editorial team.
3 On performing archives, see Schneider (Citation2001, Citation2011).
4 Moshe Valin (1906–1980) left his parent’s home nearby Vilnius in 1926 and arrived in Palestine through his activities in the “Halutz” Movement. Very quickly he gave up realizing himself as a farmer-pioneer and moved to Tel Aviv where he began to forge his path to the world of the stage. During the 1930s Valin established himself as an accomplished producer, and his productions turned popular culture into a part of the culture of leisure that had developed in Tel Aviv.
5 Seventeen performances, 14 of them never previously performed, were staged until February 1948. In May 1946, after seven new productions, the thousandth performance was celebrated in the seaside San Remo Garden Cafe which seated 800 guests, signifying a rousing success.
6 The conferencier is the Master of Ceremonies, MC, who introduces each segment and shapes the show’s atmosphere and the audience’s reaction with his/her jokes and patter.
7 I reconstructed the progression of the revues according to the descriptions of the theatre reviewers. The reviews are in the Alterman Archive, file 33-15:2. The Kipp Center, Tel Aviv University.
8 Qui pro Quo, opened in 1919 in the Luxemburg Gallery on Senatorska Street and closed in 1932. Successive core groups of former Qui pro Quo writers and performers managed to revive its model of literary cabaret and strong ensemble work in different incarnations until the 1939 German invasion closed them down.
9 David Asaf, The Evolution of a Melody: The Last Tango in Warsaw”. The Oneg Shabat blog, 27.3.Citation2015. Retrieved http://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2015/03/blog-post_27.html.
10 On Tel Aviv’s consumer culture see Anat Helman (Citation2010, 77–104).
11 On directing and acting patterns at the Mandate period, see Yerushalmi (Citation2013) (Hebrew); see also Yerushalmi (Citation2014, 340–359).
12 On Fryderyk Járosy and the Qui Pro Quo see Nowicki (Citation1992, 63–88). See also Holmgren (Citation2013, 205–233).
13 “Hatraklin”, archive file No. 12.3.5, The Israeli Centre for Documentation of the Performing Arts, Tel Aviv University
14 Holmgren (Citation2014) Posted by Holmgren, 14 June 2014 at 3:30 pm.
15 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
16 For a city to attract the Creative Class, Florida argues, it must possess “the three ‘T’s’”: Talent (a highly talented/educated/skilled population), Tolerance (a diverse community, which has a “live and let live” ethos), and Technology (the technological infrastructure necessary to fuel an entrepreneurial culture). See Florida (Citation2005).