It looks like the last time I made anything resembling a real post was on April 8th last year, which I had titled Day 24 so I can only imagine we were in the 24th day of what would become the first of three major lockdowns (the Passover lockdown, the High Holidays lockdown, and the Novy God lockdown), and here we are, one year later, and I have just returned from - this actually happened - the THEATER. Real, live, theater.

A few weeks ago they announced that culture could, gradually, start to return. Theaters got a greenlight to start performing within limitations sometime in March, but none of them were in shape to start anything yet. I immediately started browsing for tickets to buy, and was hoping to get tickets for a First Performance of - anything, really, just for the extra fun of seeing an industry that's been shut down for 13 months get back on stage.

I may have overindulged, but ended up watching three shows in about 2 weeks, all three of them being Firsts (and yes, it was emotional).

First, a local fringe production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. They had planned to perform in a bigger theater last March, when it was canceled; now they performed in a small underground venue under a bar. They checked vaccination passes before letting people in; there were less than 100 people in the audience, sitting side by side. During the performance, people were supposed to leave their masks on; looking around, it looked like about half the audience did. It was my first time watching Hedwig, and it was fun, nicely done, thought-provoking.

Second, a school adaptation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which I love, done by third years at a local Academy of the Arts. We were maybe 30 people in the audience, at least one empty seat between each audience capsule (marina and I went together, so no one sat on either side of us), so less crowded. Vaccination passes checked at the front, and audience members mostly kept masks on during the entire performance, with the occasional chin mask or no-nose mask, from what I could see around me.

The CCC has its flaws but I still really love that play. We heard about the performance due to - wait for it, MORE CULTURE - two weeks ago we went to a screening of a few short films produced by someone I went to school with. That someone will be getting on a plane to LA in 1-2 weeks because one of those shorts was nominated for a freaking Academy Award, but anyway - the lead actor of one of the shorts also attended, and he told us about his upcoming role in The CCC on stage. Watching a movie with an audience on a big screen for the first time in a year was also a !!!! moment. (There, if you are wondering, there were maybe 20 people in a spaced out room. No one checked vaccinations and hardly anyone wore masks.)

And third, tonight's show, Masada 1942, or in English original, Imagine This. This one took place in the National Theater (Habima), and it was so exciting to go in after what felt like forever. An embarrassing glitch in my plan: when I ordered the tickets, I hadn't realized tonight was Holocaust Memorial Day (Eve), which I literally only realized this morning ///o\\\ So not the kind of evening one would regularly spend in the theater, and also not the kind of evening in which performances would usually take place to begin with. However, since this show was about the Holocaust, an exception, I guess, was made, so I felt okay with myself about going anyway.

The theater itself was super organized. At the entrance, three guards checked IDs and vaccination passes. All of the hallways and bathrooms were marked with clear 2-meters/social-distancing markings, the ushers were wearing branded "I'm vaccinated too!" pins, and there were spaces between audience capsules here too. Tickets were all delivered digitally, so no need to line up at the box office. An announcer reminded people to keep masks on for the entirety of the performance, and from peeking around, this time everyone did. There was a five-minute "operational intermission" in the middle of the play, where people were asked in advance not to leave their seats. Before the show, Moshe Kepten - the director of the play, and artistic director of the theater - came out to say a few words, thanking everyone for coming after all this time, and saying he and a few of the actors would stick around for a Q&A after the show.

Moments that just made me remember, oh, right, this is what it's like:
1. Lady crinkling open a candy bar wrapper for like a full minute while there was complete silence on stage
2. Teenagers giggling where they shouldn't
3. Dude in front of us quietly, making me feel like I need an ATIA post to understand whether it's an asshole move to nudge awake a compete stranger during a play because his snores are distracting me, or whether I should let him snore in peace.
4. The theater being colder than I was expecting, good thing I'd brought a jacket
5. How are there still plays in this world that come with gunshot noise effects without a warning?? And in a Holocaust play?? What even. (That said: it was a Holocaust play. I knew it was coming.)
5. Theater being utter MAGIC

The play itself, mid you, was not quite amazing. It was about a (Jewish) theater group in the Warsaw ghetto putting on a play about Masada as their own kind of subtle resistance; then, on the night of the show's premiere, which was also the eve of the first deportation, being ordered to announce to the audience mid-show about the train that would leave Warsaw the next day and encourage the audience members to pack a suitcase and leave. In the background, we have the love story between the playwright's daughter and a Christian resistance fighter, who shelters with the theater group as an actor (in the play-within-a-play, they play Tamara, the daughter of Masada rebel leader Elazar, and her forbidden love, a Roman captain); and the story of the former well-known actress from Berlin who now "trades" sex with the Nazi captain for survival.

The actors were talented, the staging and lighting were beautiful, but the plot itself was a little too predictable and a little too kitsch, the character motivations weren't all there, and the songs themselves felt waaay too Hollywood. Or, not quite Hollywood - more like the kind of musical Slings & Arrows parody in season 3? A little bit of that. The music was very bombastic and grand for the size of the theater and the type of story they were trying to tell. The show is marketed as a "musical play", which is a smart move, because who in their right minds would market a "Holocaust musical" here, but let's face it, it was absolutely a Holocaust musical. I am not against making musicals of - loaded, let's call it, topics? - if done well, it can be done well - but this play is not the example I'd use if I were trying to argue the topic.

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Other things that happened tonight:

-I finished listening to Jeanette Walls's The Glass Castle on audio.

-Arrived at the theater to realize that two events were about to happen in the square outside: a large outdoor screening of a survivor's testimony, and a Holocaust Day memorial ceremony.

-Realized that what I'd thought was a memorial ceremony was actually that but was ALSO an antivaxxer demonstration, comparing vaccination pass discrimination to the Holocaust. They had signs like "No Selection - We Are One People" and wearing fake vaccination passes that said Never Again. On Holocaust Memorial Day. So that's something humans are doing.

-Was hit on by a dude. Don't think I'll go anywhere with it but hey, it was nice for a few minutes there.

-After the play, sat on the benches by the flowers in Habima square with my mom and talked for a while. We couldn't find where it was coming from, but there was a super rich fragrance of nighttime blossoms in the air. A few benches away, a group of 5-6 people were singing softly with two guitars - randomly, the anthem (??) and then a bunch of Israeli and Beatles songs. I could not figure out what to think about it all but I did figure I'd approach them about joining the acapella choir I'm in because we are always in need of guys, but my plan was FOILED because they are apparently already in a DIFFERENT acapella choir. (A good one. I know of them.)

I mean, sitting down to write a post and then realizing two hours have passed definitely reminds me of why I find myself hesitant to click the 'post new' button, but hopefully I will be back to writing more. Hello.

(And this is all without me even mentioning Winter Falcon or whatever the show's really called! Looking forward to more weirdness this Friday. Meanwhile, I've been enjoying sineala's comics backstory posts, as someone who has not read any of these comics.)