Tziporela serves up slapstick in Tel Aviv

Take a spoonful of innovation, mix it with chutzpah, satire and dance and you’ve got Israel’s most creative new performance ensemble.

Tziporela has international ambitions.

Take a spoonful of innovation, mix it with chutzpah, satire and dance, then cut it into short sketches and you’ve got Israel’s most creative performance ensemble: Tziporela. This nine-person troupe recently raised the curtain on its first English-language production, “Tziporela Worldwide,” to standing ovations in Tel Aviv.

The young actors poke fun at everything and everyone. They serve up a different kind of theater whereby every movement, every spoken word and every intonation is essential.There’s no one plot. The new show comprises 16 skits. Every few minutes there’s another short story, song, dance or joke being told or acted out on stage.

There’s a great skit that mashes lines from famous songs into one ballad; a funny airport immigration scenario that pits two flamingly gay officers against a traveler; and a dance routine in which a girlfriend helps her boyfriend understand how to treat her.
“Crazy skits somewhere in between theater and the circus. It’s physical comedy. This is crazy, funny — come laugh yourselves to death,” actor Ben Perry tells ISRAEL21c.

And though one may not expect Hebrew-speakers to launch a slapstick English-language indie production, that’s exactly what these hilarious young women and men have done. But playing to an Israeli audience can get stuffy, so their eyes are now trained on a global audience. “Humor is a global concept,” says Lotus Etrog, who acts and helps manage the group. “Sketches that are funny in Tel Aviv are also funny in London, New York or Paris. We want to go abroad.”

Birds of a feather flock together

Watching the nine-member collective on stage is energizing. It is obvious that these 30-somethings are so familiar with one another that the fun they have on stage is contagious. They met as students 12 years ago at the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio, Israel’s preeminent drama school. Though each hails from a different background, their mix of culture and personalities have made Tziporela what it is today. “We are very representative of Israel. Tamara [Klayngon] was born in Ukraine, I had my childhood in all kinds of places in the world, but we’re all Israeli,” says Perry. “Everyone is so different and has different influences. I like British humor, others like Israeli humor. Everyone brings something with them.”

Tziporela members also include Efrat Aviv, Dana Ivgy, David Golan, Omri Doron, Tomer Nahir Petluk and Gal Friedman. Six of them are married and balance family lives alongside their growing fame. “We are very different than from where we were at the beginning,” says Etrog. “We really know one another; there’s a language of creation.”