Yossefa Even-Shoshan/ Dalia Shimko, Israel 2023
Dalia Shimko, has been an active actress in Israeli theatre and cinema for over 40 years, during which she played major roles in films and in the big theatres. Dalia started directing in the theatre 20 years ago, and since 2003 she is the founder and artistic director of Ensemble Aspamia, an independent theatre group that has been producing quality shows in Tmuna Theatre. Among the productions of the ensemble, Dalia directed ‘Vice Estate” (2009), “Tale of a Ring” (2010), “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (2015) and “Revolutionaries Wives” (which she co-wrote with Yossefa Even-Shoshan) For the last two years Dalia is the Artistic Director of the Acre International Fringe Theater Festival.
Yossefa Even-Shoshan has been writing and directing in the theatre for the last 30 years. Her plays were staged in Israel and abroad. Her writing deals with subversive feminism and draws inspiration from ancient myths. Among her plays: “Revolutionaries’ Wives” cowriting with Dalia Shimko (Ensemble Aspamia 2018), ‘Justice you shall Pursue’ (One man show festival, 2010), “The night before” (Enea Center, Rome & Officinagiovani, Prato, Italy 2009), “Foreign Women” (Arab-Hebrew Theatre in Jaffa, 2007) “Cain and Abel” (Musikwerkstatt-Wien, Vienna 2002), “Tyre and Jerusalem”, An adaptation, (Beit Lessin Theatre Tel-Aviv, 2002), “Creation” (Ako Festival/La Mama New York, 1999), “The Ludmir Maid’,(Jerusalem Rep. Theatre, 1998) and others. Along with her work in theatre, Yossefa conducts writing workshops for playwrights, sreenwriters and writers, accompanying writers as a mentor and literary editor.
Character research
Following our mutual work on the play “Revolutionary Wives” we developed a method of working on historical and mythological characters and turning them into living and modern characters that the actors can connect with from a personal place and make the mythological/historical character their own.
Our workshop will provide the actor with tools for investigating a character and building a short monologue around a significant moment in her life. The players will choose the character from a list consisting of historical and mythological characters that we will send in advance and the work will require a short investigation by the players about the chosen character.
The stages of the workshop:
*Choosing the character and researching it
*Choosing a significant moment in the character’s life where she is in an internal conflict
*Improvisations on the character’s life situations and finding an internal connection between the actor and the character
*Choosing the moment when the monologue takes place and investigating the inner voices of the character and writing the monologue
*Body work, movement and voice, building a mise-en-scene and presenting a monologue to the workshop participants.