Academic Studies Press Acco Festival: Between Celebration and Confrontation (Israel: Society, Culture, and History Series)

This research follows the history of Akko Festival for Other Israeli Theatre in the years 1980-2012 as a site of a celebration as well as a confrontation. Thus Akko Festival is a borderland bringing together established directors and producers from the center of the field with young and alternative artists outside of it, as well as bringing together the center's cultural hegemony and Akko's residents periphery lower-class Jews and Arabs. The research is based on approach of five aspects and their tight links and interrelations to investigate the festival: 1) artistic direction; 2) performance repertoire; 3) organization, budget and infrastructure; 4) reception; 5) host community. Review The significance of the Acco Festival as a hub of artistic and social provocations can hardly be overestimated. Naphtaly Shem-Tov’s book offers an overview of three decades of avant-garde performances, including their controversial themes and innovative settings. Politics is the analytical key to the repertoire as well as to the organization of the festival. In addition, the role of Acco as the host community is carefully investigated. Altogether, an exemplary way of presenting this influential theatre festival.” -- Willmar Sauter, Professor of Theatre Studies, Stockholm University “This book is the first comprehensive inquiry into “marginal” theater in Israel, whose dimensions―in terms of number of productions―have long equaled that of “mainstream” theater. The exploration of the Festival repertoire focuses on several topics: Jews and Arabs, the Holocaust, and women. The work is interesting, clear, innovative, and well-documented. The chapter on the organization of the Festival is fascinating and unique and is only the second study of Israeli theatrical organizations since the study of Emanuel Levi on Habima in 1981! While this work “dialogues” with “Festival” research and the related field of the sociology of theater, it never gets lost in the fog of jargon; Shem-Tov clearly shows the artistic and social story of a central institution in Israeli culture.” -- Dan Urian, Professor of Theater Arts, Tel Aviv University About the Author Naphtaly Shem-Tov is a senior lecturer at The Open University of Israel, Department of Literature, Language and the Arts. Her research interest is in the social aspects of Israeli theatre and applied theatre. Her book Improvisational Teaching, Tel-Aviv: MOFET (in Hebrew) deals with improvisation as pedagogical tool and mode of knowing.