Israeli playwright and director Yael Ronen has built a strong reputation for conflict-driven works, at the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin, Germany, where she has been the in-house director for almost three years and in earlier productions for Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater and Habimah Theater and in Austria.
Her plays, often created with the actors, mesh biography, history and fiction — with a lot of black humor thrown in — as with the award-winning Common Ground (共同境地) that she created for the Maxim Gorki in 2014, which opens at the Metropolitan Hall tonight as part of the Taipei Arts Festival.
Common Ground tells the stories of Bosnians, Croats and Serbs who fled Sarajevo, Belgrade, Novi Sad and Prijedor during the Bosnian War and ended up in Berlin in search of a temporary refuge or a new life.
Photo Courtesy of Thomas Aurin
Ronen did research for the play with a trip to Bosnia and talks with experts and the family members of the protagonists.
The play runs 100 minutes without intermission and will be performed in German and English with Mandarin and English surtitles. There will be a post-show discussion following tonight’s performance.
■ Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm at the Metropolitan Hall (城市舞台), 25 Bade Rd, Sec 3, Taipei (台北市八德路三段25號).
■ Admission is NT$500 to NT$2,000, available NTCH box offices, online at www.artsticket.com.tw, convenience store ticket kiosks and at the door. On the Web: eng.taipeifestival.org
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