Gesher Theater

Gesher Theater is an Israeli theater company founded in 1991 in Tel Aviv by new immigrants from Russia.

Gesher Theatre was founded in Israel in 1991 with the support of the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Jewish Agency, the City of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, The Tel Aviv Development Foundation and the Zionist Forum. Gesher Theatre consists mostly of new immigrants from Russia, and is now regarded as an inseparable part of Israeli culture.

Yevgeny Arye, Gesher Theatre’s Founder and Artistic Director to this very day, was a reputable and successful stage and screen director in Moscow, laureate of many prizes in Russia and elsewhere.

Gesher Theater is one of the only bi-lingual theaters in the world, performing with the same troupe in Russian and in Hebrew alternately. Nowadays most of the productions are staged in Hebrew. The unique quality of the theater may also be attributed to its artistic conception, which combines the principles of traditional Russian theater with an original and innovative approach.

Gesher’s first production, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, debuted in April 1991, immediately after the Gulf War. The headline “The Russian Miracle of Israeli Theatre” (Dvar Hashavua, August 1991), captures the essence of the unprecedented reactions with which the production was received. The play was chosen to represent Israeli theatre in New York in January 1992.

In September 1992, Gesher staged the triumphant Molière in Hebrew at the Zurich Festival.

In July 1993, Gesher was the first Israeli theatre to be invited to the prestigious Festival d’Avignon. The French media praised Director Yevgeny Arye and Gesher’s actors, who played Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the festival. In late August 1993, the play was staged at the Basel Festival.

Gesher’s production of The Idiot was hailed as an exceptional theatrical achievement. The Idiot, which won the Meir Margalit Theatre Prize for 1993, was played in the Manchester Festival in Autumn 1994 and entered the competition for “best play”, with Israel Demidov contending in the “best actor” category. In 1993, after only two years of activity marked by impressive achievements, Gesher won institutional recognition and was awarded the status of public theater.

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