Rejuvenation: Theater and Theology

[Music] hi everybody Eve hair oh I'm rejuvenation for the Land of Israel Network it is a very cold day in Israel beautiful rain with of it January 9th 2019 and some pre-taping this for a couple days from now I am sitting with the El Valle AO I've actually known for a long time she is creative director of theater and theology I'm so glad I remember to say that when in alphabetical order Irie ran into her at ly mood UK a couple of weeks ago where she was presenting some of what she does so this sounds like so totally intriguing white is theater and theology high even I'm happy to be with you today theater and theology is a theater company based in Jerusalem performing at the Hahn theatre that makes people think I'm I love theater I love theology and I decided to combine the two all the production's I do have some kind of theological underpinning that doesn't mean that they're they're necessarily heavy to get through I do comedies too but after every production I interview a scholar either Jewish or Christian so far about the theological underpinnings of the show that the audience just sat through and enjoyed okay so I think theater we all pretty much understand what theater is but I would like you to describe see what you think theology is how do you describe what is what is theology I mean we all think we know what it is like study of God study of religion but how do you interpret it okay good question first of all I didn't know that thing about Josephus cool yeah okay so I'm I'm not approaching this as a philosopher and I'm not too worried about pinning the meaning of theology down exactly what I'm looking for is a place that will make people think exactly about what you said religion God how we handle religion nowadays how religion changes or should chain and what motivates us as people and how you know all our existential crises shown on the stage so I mean I think in the olden days from what I understand everybody believed in God or in gods but what we have today is that it's not that's not a given and I'm sure there's a lot of people then who are gonna be in your audience who for them God or religion maybe even if they were born into a religion it's not really where they're sitting do you then want to wake up questions with them is there a God is their religion or you're very happy for them to see it as kind of a theoretical interesting thing but nothing that relates to them no good question absolutely I'm interested in shows that that are deeply relevant to audiences nowadays and when I'm looking for a play I'm looking as a first of all as an artist it has to be a great play and then I'm looking for the content so for example my last play Hail Mary by Tom Dudzik a great playwright living in in the USA right now go check out his place and I actually renamed with his permission I renamed the play to off the Derrick Dolorosa which has a twist that Christians and Jews in Israel could appreciate so his comedy Hail Mary or off the derrick della Rossa is all about a young novice she wants to be a nun she teaches in a Catholic school and she wants to revolutionize the way religion is taught to focus more on the love and less on the strict rules things that we all think about Jews or Christians or Muslims or anyone how can we make religion meaningful to us beyond the rules and the comedy is all about her her successes and her failures and after each production of this show I talked to people on a spectrum of religious practice from a secular humanist atheist Jewish educator all the way to a a her ad and ultra-orthodox educator each time a different person about how they view the struggles of this young nun are her doubts legitimate you you asked me before about doubt short doubts are legitimate we all have them are her doubts legitimate are her complaints about the way we teach religion legitimate is there room for the rules and regulations what positive aspects do they have all these things so the audience sits through the play has a great time laughs their way through it I hope they're not analyzing too much and then the analysis comes so tell us a little bit about like your background how did you what did you study I studied theatre but did you also you didn't study theatre I'm getting a head shake yes so how did you get into this position where you are here you're producing yeah you're producing theater shows and directing these shows and also I want to know before I forget do you have original content or do you tend to do like what you did with Hail Mary or off the Derek della Rossa which is a great name to just kind of adapt somebody else's work to what you're doing here okay um well I don't know what you mean by original content all all content was that you write your own play okay no I for the things I produce I don't write my own actually right now something I wrote with a Toby Kline Greenwald ten years ago is being produced right now I am a musical about the Prophet Devorah but that's not my my theatre company isn't putting it on somebody else's that's exciting for me I look to put on plays by contemporary playwrights two plays ago I put on a play by a Jerusalem might and the play I'm just begun production of is also by a Jerusalemite marionette singer so I do look to promote the work of M playwrights local playwrights I don't remember the rest of your question is it in English it's always in English yep always in English there's a a tremendous amount of English speaking acting talent in Jerusalem there are many english-speaking theater companies some at a really high level and a lot of actors out there it's a it's a rich world pretty surprisingly given the yeah and it's a fun world to be in okay so the the first part of the question was what your background was right Wow okay well my formal studies were in a psychology clinical social work and grief counseling so nothing to do with theatre I actually have studied a physical theatre with rooty Tamir who is an Israeli physical theater and mime artist she's superb but that also is it's tangential to the kind of theater I do I got into theater just over I guess 15 years ago living in a front through the razor spirits company I think you've spoken about raise your spirits on your show before it was born of a need to do something positive during the Second Intifada when life was hairy around here since then I've gone on to act right and direct for different companies in in Jerusalem also and when I desperately wanted to put on a particular play because I loved it so much I wasn't able to find a theatre company willing to put it on so I decided darn it I'll start my own and I thank God it's gone really really well what is that entail to start a theater company courage and frankly a monetary risk because and nobody's going to put money into some harebrained scheme like that so yeah it it entails finding the perfect play you know for me as a director and finding the actors and doing all the producing stuff that is tough you know finding rehearsal venues show venues doing all the publicity doing it legally which means paperwork and you know doing getting the licenses and doing doing all that stuff but it but it's worth it the specific direction that you've taken which is to work the theological aspect in so where does that come from for you I've spent the last ten years in the think tank of rabbi nuts on Lopez Cardozo I interviewed him last year amazing yeah he's an amazing person actually and and he came along and did me a great service I would say not not on purpose although I guess what he does I take it back it was on purpose though he didn't know it was particularly directed at me I heard him in a lecture about just over 10 years ago and he said something astonishing and greatly comforting for me which is that God is not benevolent now why was this astonishing and greatly comforting it's because I had gone through sort of a tough religious period I would say for a number of years where where I was struggling with that same realization or opinion that God does not seem to be benevolent and to see a guy looking all traditionally Orthodox with his beard in his suit and his great accent standing in front of an audience and saying look God has not been Evelyn's and he can't you know he explains himself I wouldn't let it stand and anyone who hears me say this should not you know go out and and think that they know what rabbi Cardozo thinks without investigating further but it was a very comforting for me and I thought hey look at that I can be an Orthodox Jew which is you know I want to do and I can have respect for orthodoxy and I don't have to sort of bend my mind to trying to think something that I don't believe and so I became an instant fan of Rabbi Cardozo's and I had been reading theology and philosophy on my own for a number of years trying to figure this out and I joined his think tank half a year after I heard him lecture I was lucky that there was a spot open and I got it and so I was able to do the thinking in a in the context of a small group of interested passionate diverse people and so I've never stopped being interested in the theological aspects of life and with my love of theater it was natural for me to combine them may I ask what was there something particular that kicked off this you know search that you had let's say that accidentally landed you because you believe there's no accidents you know ten years ago with Rabbi Cardozo like you were open to hearing what he would say because I'm sure there are other people in the audience that night who said okay and then left the room but it hit you probably at a time where it you needed to hear that anything going on there you can share with us that might have primed you for that moment I mean that's a great question and I really don't know the answer I don't remember if there was a particular trigger I think what happened is I would say that I'm a realist perhaps it you know someone else would say I'm a cynic and I keep my eyes open and if you look around and you you hold as an axiom that God is all-powerful I'm not sure right I'm not sure but let's say we hold that as an axiom then that I mean it's embarrassing to say this because I sound I feel like I sound like a you know a teenager why do bad things happen to good people but you know when when you start to think about why do bad things happen to good people one of the conclusions one of the conclusions that you have to consider as well maybe God is not benevolent I don't know if God you know has reasons or what you know there are all these things that we can a but from a human perspective if God can if God has the power to allow good things to happen and doesn't then God doesn't seem benevolent you know we can answer yes free choice or not free choice and all that stuff but that's what I saw and it was yeah it was a crisis for me for several years and I actually started to read a lot I went to Calvinism first which sounds crazy but and I've has since spoken to two Calvinists about this and they actually disagree with me but but from my perspective Calvinism seemed unflinching in that they believe that God pre elects a certain number of people and that everyone else is going to hell and so this seems very harsh and I think it is very harsh and I don't I mean I it doesn't it's not relevant whether I believe that or not what was relevant to me is that it seemed like an approach that is willing to believe that God is not benevolent because it seems to me like a benevolent God would not do that and so I went to the Calvinists first to see well how do you cope how do you cope with a god that's not benevolent of fur for fairness sake I will tell you that Calvinists answer which is you know because because it's not fair I think to represent them without doing that a Calvinist would answer that nobody deserves salvation since we're all born in sin and therefore it is benevolent to save any number of people because that's showing God's grace it and I don't buy it as it as a Jew that's hard for me to swallow but but you know to be fair that's a that's like healthy just answer as far as I can make it out I'm sure it's much much more complicated and nuanced then I just represented it it almost sounds kuzari like what you're doing you know the famous book of faith the middle the middle-ages book that was written about the king of kazaar who's inviting everyone to kind of speak as represented as their religion and eventually you know he chooses Judaism I mean your search here is very interesting because you're going out of Judaism to find whatever true I don't even know if I want to use the word truth but just to get the information as part of your struggle and as part of your search right I would state strongly that I was not interested in becoming Christian or Calvinist or anything like that at all but it interested me to go to see and another philosophy that was dealing it seemed to me with him that's that my same problem I was also at the time this was many years ago I'd say more than 15 years ago I was interested in looking outside of Judaism because I didn't want to get any Jewish people involved in my struggle because I didn't want to have a bad effect on anyone I don't I'm not interested in trying to make people not believe in God or not believe in a benevolent God or not follow Jewish law and so it seemed to me a better better thing to start outside of Judaism I'm not sure if that was wise or not but that's what I did I've been just putting together a couple things that you said the 15 year mark that's also when you joined raise your spirits and got into acting and that's also when we were living in a terrible time period where horrific things were happening to really good people and I think that you know people look at Israel and they see terrorism and Wars but we're living in it and and as many people hear people of faith and I'm not saying religious observance intentionally we're constantly having to struggle with why on earth that this just happened so it seems that you took that what was happening around is politically if you will and turned it into like trying to find some personal answers for questions that a lot of us struggle with it I don't think that you're unusual here may be unusual and that you went to the Calvinists maybe that but so when you say the didn't want to bring anyone into it even the closest people around you your husband if children this was like this was a very personal search for you at what point did you come out and say this is what I'm doing well you ask good questions yeah actually I I kept it personal for a really long time eventually I started talking to my husband about it because I can be quite convincing and when you know when you're debating theoretically with yourself it's okay but when you're playing devil's advocate with somebody else it's it's not necessarily okay luckily for me my husband is an unbelievably straight stable loving faith-filled person lucky me so first of all he wasn't shocked by anything that I thought or said and I knew he wouldn't be and in May I realize that I should have discussed these things with him earlier than I did because he's just so wonderful and you know he was the he sat and he listened and and didn't try to do anything silly like tell me I'm wrong or anything like that yeah and how about your kids my kids were little it's very hard to handle this kind of thing when your kids are little right because they're going to they're little they're not supposed to be thinking about why bad things happen to get to good people they're they're supposed to be learning in school about their religion and and about how God loves them and and things like that um so no I didn't discuss it with my children and I don't think it would have been appropriate to and more than that I remain dedicated and now even much more so I'm in a much much better position than I was 10 years ago let's say in that there was a time when I thought oh well my conclusions might lead me to understand that that let's say religion is irrelevant I didn't want to come to that conclusion but and I was afraid of it and I might have but I didn't and now I'm much much more confidence in where I stand practice wise I think that I love being Jewish I never stopped loving Jewish I loved being Jewish I loved Judaism I think that it's a wonderful system and way of life and I think that it really does it's not going to magically turn an immoral person into a moral person but I think it does help us become better and I think that it does help us become more giving and more loving not just toward each other but in its training of love for each other we become sensitized to to greater and greater circles beyond our family and our own communities and Beyond Judaism and so I I advocate you know I think judyann's Judaism is great and I also think not only Judaism but in particular Jewish law is fantastic training for a meaningful and moral life so that's where I would love my children to go and I don't think it's a you know it it wouldn't have been relevant to start talking to them about my existential crises when they were little what happens though is that as your kids get older you become more and more frank in your discussions with them which is fine for the older kids but I have six kids and the younger ones are still little when I was having sophisticated conversations with the older ones which means inevitably my my younger kids became aware of these issues earlier than I would have liked them to and there's not much I can do about that and I don't even know if it's bad um I think it's just a different way to grow up I found that around my table as well where I have seven kids and definitely the younger ones are exposed to things not just religious discussions but a whole lot of other things and a much earlier age and other kids because they were hearing their older siblings talk about this in that so yeah it's very different we have a large family that little ones tend to grow up I think in some ways a little too fast and we prefer them not to do that so in the recent past though have you has your faith been tested okay you're asking because one of my children committed suicide a year and a half ago a little less than that just over a year ago no the short answer is no and the reason it's no for me is because I already went through all that in other words and I'm sort of grateful that I went through my crisis before my son died I already went through a period of wandering about God and wondering why bad things happen to good people and so when it happened in my family it it wasn't a shock I mean it was you know I mean that aspect of God's God was not a shock I didn't suddenly wake up to a grim world I I don't walk around thinking the world is grim all the time by the way I thank God I'm a pretty happy person actually I can attest to that when I think of you it's with a smile on your face and I would say that most people feel the thing yeah I don't know how that works but I'm grateful for it so it wasn't it wasn't an existential shock for me I already I already knew that that innocent people suffer and so this time it became personal but but that but I had already gone through a long process of many years of coming to deal with reality and I'm grateful that I had gone through it already so that those phases of grief you know the the kubler-ross right the phases of grief so one of them is anger so you didn't have that because as you said you'd already come to grips with the fact that bad things happen to good people no I wouldn't say I didn't go through anger I didn't go through at my son actually because this is gonna sound shocking but he had to do what he did now I'm saying that from his perspective could he have hung on I don't know I mean no actually apparently not the reality says he couldn't um but should he have or were there wait bla bla bla you know um maybe but from his point of view there's no way he would have killed himself if he didn't have to kill himself from his perspective and so I'm not angry at all I'm relieved for him that his suffering is over it sucks for us but I he was a he was a very straight deeply religious person highly concerned with morality there's no way he would have done something like this if he didn't have to because he didn't think it was right so I'm so you know it's I can't be angry with God yeah I'm always angry with God but I was I was angry like I said I was angry with God before that it's not like I'm suddenly become angry with God is suddenly realized that that bad things happen to good people ever we keep saying the same thing but it wasn't it wasn't a shock for me and so yeah I expect more of God I think that we are dependent on God as babies are dependent on their parents and that we there are things we seem to make excuses for for God that we would we would take children away from their parents or put parents in jail for for abuse when when God does this to humanity we seem to think it's fine and dandy I don't get it maybe maybe there's something lacking in my faith as this you know I'm I don't feel guilty perhaps if I had more faith I would I would think that well God must have some good reason that's beyond me and Who am I to ask and leave it at that so anger yes I know so were you able to help your husband and your other kids through this because of this already you know realization or that you had come to before all this happened I think that as a family we've helped each other tremendously I don't think that that that my feelings about God are relevant to that question maybe as my kids have absorbed it over the years and we've had very open religious discussions in this house for you know years and years so my kids know that there's not anything they can't say about God or about suicide or about anything else we never kept this a secret we're not ashamed or embarrassed or anything it's been tragic how many people have come to me since my son killed himself to say oh you know my family member killed him or herself too and we never told anyone or my parents said we had to say it was an accident or that's just awful because it makes it makes recovery to the extent that one can recover so much more difficult so I would say that as a family we've helped each other tremendously on an on many fronts why do you think that is that people don't want to talk about it when it's in so many families or almost there including in my own so many of us have know people who either committed suicide or were just going to and for whatever reason intervention didn't why do you think there is some as you use the word stigma about suicide so first of all I think that the stigma is much less than it used to be and I have not felt stigmatized at all maybe because we're so open about it I don't know but I think that there's definitely a religious stigma or there used to be at least and I understand that there there used to be sanctions against people who had committed suicide or families whose loved one had committed suicide the people who had committed suicide used to not be buried with other people etc I think that one of the things I love about Judaism is that it adapts I think this is mind-blowing for for such an established entity to be able to adapt and Judaism lives in the modern world and learns from the modern world in the modern world we understand that suicide is not wicked and people don't kill themselves because they are lightly taking God's gift of life or anything like that and and so our Jewish attitudes have changed also there was no question not for a second about where my son would be buried and whether people would attend his funeral and whether people would come to comfort us as traditionally in Jewish society they would not have as a as a deterrent I suppose I take back I don't know you know I'm not a I'm not an expert in Jewish law so I can't comment so I think that people are still embarrassed for those reasons they the our traditional beliefs even though they change we still have a collective memory and I ice I suppose that that affects us do you believe in an afterlife hmm no that's a really tough question because that's a big question in Judaism um right I actually think that in Judaism we don't worry too much about the afterlife and if that's something very different from Christianity and I don't worry about it either in other words nothing would surprise me there's either a God or there isn't a God if there isn't a God there's there's nothing and in terms of my son nothing is better than when where he was and so that that's an improvement for him as far that's a terrible and tragic thing to have to say but it's true so that's fine by me if there is a God there is either an afterlife where there isn't if there isn't I won't know if there if there is I'll find out if there is it's either gonna be good or bad yeah if there is I can have absolutely no idea of what it looks like and I think that nobody else can have any idea despite everybody's theorizing and so I don't spend too much time worrying about it right well that Christian idea of Heaven and Hell I think is something that's kind of impacted Judaism I don't think it's inherently Judaism again I might be wrong but my read of Judaism is that's something that especially Ashkenazi Jewry european-based jury or what used to be European based jury that lived with Christians for fifteen sixteen hundred years was affected by that and that's what I find so interesting also about rabbi cordosa is that even though his background is Dutch and from Jewish on his father's side and not on his mother's side he's very very open about that for those of my listeners who heard the interview with him he talks about the very distinct tradition not just traditions but thought processes between Ashkenazi and the Middle Eastern Jews and where we've gone and I love how he says like I scream nosy Jews are colder maybe because it's just a colder climate and so the truth you know the whole ideas become like that so yeah so that's a question that but it's one of those things that like you just said we don't know so waste a lot of brainpower thinking about that and I think people should be good in this life because you should be good because you live in a world not because you'll get heaven or hell if not okay that's that's something that's gonna kick that can down the road so tell us a little bit getting back to the theater and the people that you have speak do they get you I'm sure they get you thinking because you're just that kind of person but are you looking at the audience when you're you know when you're having the conversation you invite a theologian for lack of a better word to come and talk to the audience are you fascinated by the give-and-take afterwards and the kinds of questions that people will ask absolutely and the whole point of having the scholars come is in fact to have a dialogue with the audience which is one of the reasons I prefer to do my plays in a very small theatre I'd rather do more performances but I do it at the the small theater at the pecan which by the way was built over a thousand years ago and the Crusader period you know that because you're a tour guide I love I just love doing shows there it feels so so good anyway so I do my plays in the small theater there which holds 70 people I've tried doing it in the big theater and I find that the the closeness of the intimacy where the audience is lost so yes I always leave space for time time for debate and discussion with the audience I pull them to see who's whose point of view we are which character's point of view on stage they most identified with and sometimes I argue with them and sometimes not it's a lot of fun you do realize that this ties in your training because to some degree I would imagine it's therapy for people to be able to have a safe place to you brought out the issue they haven't so they're really just responding to something that's already out there and perhaps it's creating a safe place for people to discuss things that they wouldn't feel comfortable discussing and another kind of mulu absolutely and after every production I have people write to me and say hey let's let's continue the conversation hey I've been thinking about this too and I want to emphasize again because we're focusing on the theology aspect which is important to me that the theatre aspect is also very important to me I strive to have a high quality theater production for people to watch and I know that a certain percentage of their sorry a certain percentage of the audience is going to leave after the performance and not stay for the discussion so it's important to me that the play be excellent also and so so sometimes I'm gratified because I get emails or calls saying hey I loved your show sorry I couldn't stay for the discussion and I love hearing that even if they couldn't stay for the discussion because it means that the show was was good too so what's your typical audience you have young people there do you have older people there mm-hmm that's also a very good question I'm actually striving to get a white a wider audience I would say 50% at least of my audience tend to be Orthodox Jews which is not surprising in anglo Jerusalem but I am slowly getting a wider range of practice in my audience I think that's because I invite a range of scholars it's not it's a it's not always an Orthodox Jew or an orthodox theologian um and I'm getting a following of Christians also which is great I've struck up some friendships and working relationships with with some Christian clergy who have come to see my place I'm going to be leading culture day at the radish bone monastery on March 1st for Catholic seminarians because a priest came to see my last play loved it came to see it again came to our house for Shabbat discussed the issues and and now I'm starting to work with him so I'm going for a range I've also had you know there's a Mormon University in in Jerusalem and I've had Mormon audience members coming because we're all dealing with the same issues not I wouldn't say weird dealing with all of the same issues but meant we share many issues and we're discussing them and we have the same existential crises and the same need to to laugh and to be entertained at a high level and so so yeah we're we're reaching we're reaching the audiences we want to reach so the obvious question since we're in the Middle East is how about Muslims it's a good question I would so love interview you you make me feel so good when I look for plays I look for plays with that are first of all good place and with theological content and so people have asked me well why did you why have you been doing Christian place and or plays with Christian content and my my answer from a theatrical point of view is there good place and they talked about what I want them and what I want to talk about it people have been so I read a lot of place I haven't yet found a play that I would be happy to produce that involves Islam or Muslim characters there are there a couple that I I've considered but I would love it if someone said hey here's a play a are you willing to produce it and I loved it the things that I produce have to be I'm not I'm I love history but I'm not interested in putting on things that are just historical or just political I'm really interested in the the theological aspect that's relevant to audiences today and so if someone gives me a play that is that that underlines an issue in Islam or in Islam and Judaism together that is relevant right now then I would be happy to put it on I also tend there are good plays out there well written that have content I'm not actually interested in having on my stage it's an interesting challenge being an Orthodox director and it's an interesting challenge directing in Jerusalem because there are certain things I'm not going to have I'm not going to have naked characters on I actually just read a play that was excellent excellently written but I can't do it without having naked characters onstage I'm not going to do it I'm not gonna have people fondling each other on stage that actually rules out a whole lot of stuff um I don't really mind curse words if they are necessary to underlying underlining an important point but a lot of plays just have curse words all over the place not because it's artistically or linguistically necessary I'm not gonna put on those place and so the shock factor yep not interested I don't mind shocking people for other reasons but I'm not interested in in wasting oh you know shot the shock value for the sake of shock value I'm just wondering if the Muslim audiences aren't ready for what you're doing it's not that you know that aren't the plays but I'm looking at it now from the perspective the audience from people coming that I think it's great that Orthodox Jews are coming to see plays that are coming that are the written by Christians are coming from a Christian perspective because it's showing a and openness to just discussing God and it doesn't matter where it's coming from but also I think of security and one of the things that I'm finding and that's why it's not surprising to me that this is happening in Jerusalem is that and I've started talking this to people about living in Israel we're in our slippers here there's a confidence that comes when you're home a security that comes from your home you can be open to different things because you're in your own nest and and maybe that's why it's you and it's Jerusalem now and that you're having these audiences of you know people who might not be comfortable going to play like this let's say in New York or in Melbourne or somewhere else but in Jerusalem it's okay because it's a Jewish cultural world so you can take the risks to step out and think about other things because you know what's home is that youth do what do you say about that idea I think you mean it makes intuitive sense that you're right I would also keep in mind that I'm doing things in English right and so people who tend to move to Israel or from english-speaking countries tend to be as certainly to Jerusalem tend to be Jewish or Christian you know Christian there are Christian educators here educating Christians who come through in English if I were doing things in Hebrew there would be much more of an opportunity to involve Muslim content and Muslims and that is happening as far as I know which is not I don't know tons but as but I know some about what's happening in the Jewish theater and sorry in the Hebrew theater world and there is more of that in Hebrew would you reverse to somebody taking your place and translating them into Hebrew first of all they're not my place and absolutely not I hope that my next play Miriam met singers play in a stranger's grave and excellent play I'm really excited to start production we're having our first table read this Friday I hope someone translates it I actually have a translator in mind and I hope she goes on to produce it in Hebrew because it's all about something that that Israelis are talking about anyway and that is the the conversion crisis and the power of the rabbinate to confer and withdraw it seems conversion status which is provoking a crisis so in a stranger's grave is all about that from one family's perspective that's something that robbing our town cordosa talks about extensively as well so since you're in English have you been invited well I met you at lamode which was you know I saw you there in England so you were out of the country and you were you were showing your play in in the UK have you done this let's say in the United States or in Canada and other places have you been invited and could you do it if you were invited or was it too complicated no it's not too complicated at all I was delighted to be invited to Lee mood and it was fun to present there and the audiences were gratifyingly interested they had fun we had fun together I did mostly for of my sessions were based on excerpts from either plays I'm producing or plays that of which I'm a cast member if some even if someone else is producing them and one was a straight lecture and they were all well attended so that was gratifying and yeah I could certainly do that I I have a spoken in various venues this is the first time I was invited to go outside of Israel to speak but it's not uncommon for me to be invited to to speak about this stuff and and to run programs that are either experiential or or lecture style so if someone's listening and they're thinking wow I'm wherever and this sounds like something that I think my community is ready for be interesting how would they get in touch with you so people can write to me at Yael why AEL at theater and theology dot-com or they can just go to my website theatre and theology calm and contact me through the website that's theater with an ER I debated for a long time should I spell it re shall I spell er you know it's sort of high-class to spell it re but oh absolutely and I actually grew up for many years in England even though I don't sound it so I thought I have an excuse to spell at the British Way but I decided to go for go for the plain old American spelling so how are you how do you kids are reacting to this like this kind of a new career last decade or so what what are their feelings about what you're doing they think it's cool well actually most of my kids are are have acted some of them extensively and so I know we we overlap we know a lot of the same people it's weird when your kids grow up and you get invited to the same parties from from you know not because not because you're the mother or the son but because you are cast members or directors or whatever it is one of your kids was with you right in England one of my kids came with me he loves to study and he also he he loves studying religion and politics and language so he was just in seventh heaven he and I spent three days in London before going to see productions and going to museums it was wonderful I have a I have a son I have two sons who are actively involved in the Jerusalem theatre world right now not necessarily in my productions although they have been in my productions ones also a ballet dancer he's a he's dances full-time ballet in contemporary so he's in that world so to them it's not so surprising to have a mother who's in theater that everyone they know is in theatre yeah okay so what a like where do you see yourself in five years if somebody would give you you know wish list I know you're producing plays in your but like what's your to have a long term a little more there towards you have a are you just kind of rolling with it and seeing where it's going or is there some place that you're trying to get to I've learned that in good ways and in bad ways life is full of surprises I'm so grateful to be where I am now I can't think of anything more wonderful and I I can't believe how privileged I am to be doing meaningful theater in Jerusalem when I think about it I get all choked up at because my mind blows and so in five years I would love to be doing more theater and I also I also work in translation and I specialize in translating rhyming children's books so I feel from Hebrew to English and I feel so grateful to be doing that because I can't imagine a more fun job and the other thing I do is I I do regular voiceover and dubbing work for various companies if you have small children you may have heard my voice on the Fox networks baby TV channel although you probably wouldn't recognize it and so when you ask me what I would like to be doing in five years I love doing dubbing and voiceovers for for children's animation and I love directing so I would be delighted to be doing more of that and hopefully I'll be able to be doing more more more of what I'm doing is which is you know it's a blessing to be able to say that and I feel really really privileged to be able to say that so God gave you a gift and you're using it I guess so I wouldn't want to put it more beautifully than that so I'll leave it at that okay yell failure thank you so much for Wow just for being you and for sharing it with my audience repeat the website one more time theater and theology calm everyone you heard it here leave Harrow rejuvenation on the land of israel network thanks to Ben and to Tabitha and tal for bigamy thanks for having me take care of you Betty goodbye for now [Music] this week on Israel uncensored with Josh hastin an exclusive interview with ambassador Johan Ettinger this race control of the Golan Heights is critical for America's interests and it's time that we have missed in Israel realized that the u.s. does conduct its affairs based on its own interests not somebody else's interest that's Israel uncensored with Josh hastin on demand of the throw network at