Ouriel Zohar
Encyclopedia
Ouriel Zohar is an Israel
i and French
theater director, playwright
and translator from French to Hebrew. He created the Technion theater in 1986 and has been visiting Professor
at the University of Paris VIII and HEC Paris since 1995.
on the theme of the collective
and universal
Kibbutz
Theatre, presented it at the University of Paris VIII, where he was Assistant Professor from 1980 to 1985. He has published 150 articles in the field of theater and academic journals in English, French and Hebrew. His university writings are also about Peter Brook
, Constantin Stanislavski, Jerzy Grotowski
, Augusto Boal
, Martin Buber
and Aaron David Gordon, who profoundly influenced theater. Until now he has staged 70 plays in Israel, Europe, Canada and Africa. He has written and edited some thirty original plays in Hebrew. He has staged classic plays by Molière
, Shakespeare, Marivaux, Henrik Ibsen
and George Bernard Shaw
etc.
His Technion Theater takes part in festivals in Europe, Canada and Israel. He teaches stage aesthetics
, playwriting and actor performance in Paris and Israel. He has been a playwright of the Habima Theatre in 1989–1990 and the Haifa Municipal Theatre in 1995–1997. He has conducted Judeo–Arab
collaborative projects by means of art and is among the founders of the El Midan Arab Theatre in Haifa in 1994. Between 1993 and 1999 he was vice-president of the International Association of University Theatre (IUTA), based in the University of Liège
, Belgium, and Honorary Member in 2005; From 1995 he is a visiting Professor at HEC, and from 1997 at the University of Paris VIII. In 1993, he staged Season of Migration to the North
the novel by Sudan
ese writer Tayeb Salih
, with the participation of Mohammed Bakri, a Palestinian
-Israeli actor who has received the award for best actor at the Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre
in Acre
. With his actor, Bakri, he staged the "Bakri Monologue" in French, Arabic and Hebrew and appeared with Bakri on stage in Paris, at the Boris Vian
Hall Theatre of Paris-Villette
, on the national stage of Cergy-Pontoise
, Lille
, at the Peace Festival in Brussels
and in other countries. From 2002 he played the leading role of Prospero
in The Tempest
in the theater of Béatrice Brout, and the Earl of Northumberland
in Richard II
, by Shakespeare, and interpreted texts of Victor Hugo
and other writers in France.
In 2006 he founded his own theatre company, 'Compagnie Ouriel Zohar' in Paris, with An Enemy of the People
by Henrik Ibsen, first performed in Paris, then in Frejus
and Besançon
, in Liege
, Belgium, in Minsk
, Belarus
, in Valleyfield
Canada and Porto Heli, Greece. In 2010 he staged "Seraphita
", his adaptation of an 1834 novel by Honoré de Balzac
, performed in Paris at the Theatre de l'Ile Saint-Louis
, Brussels, Greece, and Congo-Brazzaville. His staging in Hebrew of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" was accorded the best actor award at the Festival of Benevento
, Italy in 2009. From 2007, after being appointed international judge of international competitions in Europe University Theatre, Paris, Minsk, Moscow, etc., he presented master classes for staging and acting in festivals in Europe.
Among his most famous students, Scandar Copti, director and screenwriter of Ajami
won 5 Ophir awards 2009, including the best film award in Israel and was nominated for an Oscar of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
in Los Angeles in 2009.
Zohar has published 6 books in Hebrew and a book in French with his wife Martine Zohar: "My life in Israel in the light of the pines" published by Persée editors, France, 2009.
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i and French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
theater director, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and translator from French to Hebrew. He created the Technion theater in 1986 and has been visiting Professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
at the University of Paris VIII and HEC Paris since 1995.
Biography
Zohar started directing in Paris in 1978. He completed a doctorateDoctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
on the theme of the collective
Collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective...
and universal
Universal (metaphysics)
In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For example, suppose there are two chairs in a room, each of...
Kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
Theatre, presented it at the University of Paris VIII, where he was Assistant Professor from 1980 to 1985. He has published 150 articles in the field of theater and academic journals in English, French and Hebrew. His university writings are also about Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
, Constantin Stanislavski, Jerzy Grotowski
Jerzy Grotowski
Jerzy Grotowski was a Polish theatre director and innovator of experimental theatre, the "theatre laboratory" and "poor theatre" concepts....
, Augusto Boal
Augusto Boal
Augusto Boal was a Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical popular education movements...
, Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
and Aaron David Gordon, who profoundly influenced theater. Until now he has staged 70 plays in Israel, Europe, Canada and Africa. He has written and edited some thirty original plays in Hebrew. He has staged classic plays by Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, Shakespeare, Marivaux, Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
and George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
etc.
His Technion Theater takes part in festivals in Europe, Canada and Israel. He teaches stage aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, playwriting and actor performance in Paris and Israel. He has been a playwright of the Habima Theatre in 1989–1990 and the Haifa Municipal Theatre in 1995–1997. He has conducted Judeo–Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
collaborative projects by means of art and is among the founders of the El Midan Arab Theatre in Haifa in 1994. Between 1993 and 1999 he was vice-president of the International Association of University Theatre (IUTA), based in the University of Liège
University of Liège
The University of Liège , in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium, is a major public university in the French Community of Belgium. Its official language is French.-History:...
, Belgium, and Honorary Member in 2005; From 1995 he is a visiting Professor at HEC, and from 1997 at the University of Paris VIII. In 1993, he staged Season of Migration to the North
Season of Migration to the North
Season of Migration to the North is a classic post-colonial Sudanese novel by the late novelist Tayeb Salih...
the novel by Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
ese writer Tayeb Salih
Tayeb Salih
-Early life:Born in Karmakol, near the village of Al Dabbah in the Northern Province of Sudan, he studied at the University of Khartoum before leaving for the University of London in England. Coming from a background of small farmers and religious teachers, his original intention was to work in...
, with the participation of Mohammed Bakri, a Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
-Israeli actor who has received the award for best actor at the Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre
Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre
The Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre is a four-day performing arts festival held annually in the city of Acre, Israel during the Intermediate Days of the Sukkot holiday in early autumn...
in Acre
Acre, Israel
Acre , is a city in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel at the northern extremity of Haifa Bay. Acre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the country....
. With his actor, Bakri, he staged the "Bakri Monologue" in French, Arabic and Hebrew and appeared with Bakri on stage in Paris, at the Boris Vian
Boris Vian
Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered today for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their...
Hall Theatre of Paris-Villette
Villette
-Places:Villette or La Villette is the name or part of the name of several places in Europe:-France:*Villette, in the Meurthe-et-Moselle département*Villette, in the Yvelines département*Villette-d'Anthon, in the Isère département...
, on the national stage of Cergy-Pontoise
Cergy-Pontoise
Cergy-Pontoise is a new town in France, in the Val d'Oise département, northwest of Paris on the Oise River. It owes its name to two of the communes that it covers, Cergy and Pontoise....
, Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
, at the Peace Festival in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
and in other countries. From 2002 he played the leading role of Prospero
Prospero
Prospero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
in The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
in the theater of Béatrice Brout, and the Earl of Northumberland
Earl of Northumberland
The title of Earl of Northumberland was created several times in the Peerages of England and Great Britain, succeeding the title Earl of Northumbria. Its most famous holders were the House of Percy , who were the most powerful noble family in Northern England for much of the Middle Ages...
in Richard II
Richard II
-People:*Richard II of England , King of England.*Richard II of Normandy , Duke of Normandy*Richard II of Aquila *Richard II of Capua *A nickname for Richard M...
, by Shakespeare, and interpreted texts of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
and other writers in France.
In 2006 he founded his own theatre company, 'Compagnie Ouriel Zohar' in Paris, with An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, which at that time was considered scandalous...
by Henrik Ibsen, first performed in Paris, then in Frejus
Fréjus
Fréjus is a commune in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.It neighbours Saint-Raphaël, effectively forming one town...
and Besançon
Besançon
Besançon , is the capital and principal city of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. It had a population of about 237,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 2008...
, in Liege
Liege
Liège is a municipality and a city of Belgium. The term Liège or Liege may also refer to:* Liege, a party to the oath of allegiance in feudalism .* Liège Island, in the Antarctic...
, Belgium, in Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
, in Valleyfield
Valleyfield
Valleyfield may refer to:* Valleyfield, Fife, Scotland* Valleyfield, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada...
Canada and Porto Heli, Greece. In 2010 he staged "Seraphita
Séraphîta
Séraphîta is a French novel by Honoré de Balzac with themes of androgyny. It was published in the Revue de Paris in 1834.The work plunges into the fantastic and the supernatural self ....
", his adaptation of an 1834 novel by Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
, performed in Paris at the Theatre de l'Ile Saint-Louis
Île Saint-Louis
The Île Saint-Louis is one of two natural islands in the Seine river, in Paris, France . The island is named after King Louis IX of France ....
, Brussels, Greece, and Congo-Brazzaville. His staging in Hebrew of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" was accorded the best actor award at the Festival of Benevento
Benevento
Benevento is a town and comune of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, 50 km northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill 130 m above sea-level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino and Sabato...
, Italy in 2009. From 2007, after being appointed international judge of international competitions in Europe University Theatre, Paris, Minsk, Moscow, etc., he presented master classes for staging and acting in festivals in Europe.
Among his most famous students, Scandar Copti, director and screenwriter of Ajami
Ajami (film)
Ajami is a 2009 Arab/Jewish collaboration drama film. Its plot is set in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa.-Overview:Written and directed by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani , Ajami explores five different stories set in an actual impoverished Christian-and-Muslim Arab neighborhood of the Tel...
won 5 Ophir awards 2009, including the best film award in Israel and was nominated for an Oscar of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
in Los Angeles in 2009.
Zohar has published 6 books in Hebrew and a book in French with his wife Martine Zohar: "My life in Israel in the light of the pines" published by Persée editors, France, 2009.