A young Israeli couple sets out for a camping trip. They find themselves in distress over a lack of water and encounter two young Arabs smoking a hookah. The situation feels familiar, mundane, and seemingly innocent—yet it remains trapped within stereotype, bound to the fate of this land, caught in a cycle of self-perpetuating myths.
Avshalom is a play about our story here, in this place. Its attention to detail is forensic. Nothing is innocent: an object, a word, a sound, timing, a facial expression or a glance, all become symbols of the larger story, each carrying that strong, familiar borderline feeling that “something bad is about to happen.”
Maya Rachel Schiff creates a spectacle of innocent mistakes and deliberate misdirections, wrapped in thick layers of embarrassment. Through hesitant, everyday play, and by working with the clichés and stereotypes that make up Israeli identity, she touches the essential human core of the fear of the “other”. The result is a gaze filled with both struggle and compassion toward the people of this land.
Maya is a theatre, performance, dance, and video creator and performer. Her works have been presented at the Manofim Festival, the Jerusalem Arts Festival, the International Student Film Festival, Barbur Gallery, Pyramid Gallery, and more. She is a graduate of the School of Visual Theatre. The performance began as her final project at the School of Visual Theatre, and was further developed over the past year in a production by HaZira Theatre with the support of Mifal HaPais’s debut productions program.
