Last night I saw this great theatre production of The Red Tent, an interesting look at the biblical story of Jacob through the eyes of his one and only daughter, Dinah. It took part in the Arab-Hebrew theatre, in the old city of Jaffa. What was so spectacular about the performance was how the story completely drew me in. There were various reasons – the space was compact and warm. An old stone building, with several arches. Men sat on one side, while women sat on the other (or at least the director wished for that… didn’t really work out last night, as there were much more women than men in the audience!). In the beginning, when each character came onto the stage, their bags would spill sand onto the bare ground, creating the scenery as the characters themselves evolved. This was ultra effective, helping to draw the audience into the performance as the story evolved. Towards the middle of the first act, the floor was filled with sand.
Sand was also utilized in later scenes – acting as a waterfall, which surprisingly worked really well. With the proper lighting, sand falling on stage can have a stunning effect (made me think of Compana Nacional de Danza’s piece which ended with a tall sand waterfall). At the end of the play, a red utah hidden under the sand was raised as the red-tent. The actors were intense and did not need much props/set pieces to make me completely fall into their tale. This production plays for a couple of days every month. Needs all the support it can get.
The Red Tent is a novel by Anita Diamant, published in 1997 by St. Martin’s Press. It is a first-person narrative which tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and sister of Joseph, a talented midwife and proto-feminist. The book’s title refers to the tent in which women of Jacob’s tribe must, according to the ancient law, take refuge while menstruating or giving birth, and in which they find mutual support and encouragement from their mothers, sisters and aunts. (source: wikipedia)