Israel's Rising Stars
Twenty-one aspiring Israeli performers join the second phase of the Broadway Musical Project
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| From right: Jane Summerhays, Jack Lee, Wally Harper, and Efrat Kahanav, administrative producer |
The second phase of Israel's most exciting program in the theater arts-- the
Broadway Musical Project -- was held under the auspices of TAU's Department of Theater Arts and the Samuel Rubin Israeli Academy of Music. For the second year running, three of Broadway's leading personalities -- actress/dancer/singer Jane Summerhays (Chorus Line, Peter Pan, Grand Hotel), and director/performers Jack Lee (Sweet Charity, Peter Pan, Calamity Jane) and Wally Harper (Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, My One and Only, Sensations) -- made the trip from New York to Tel Aviv. They put students through a concentrated but exhilarating program of swinging, singing and sweating which looked as if it were taken straight out of the TV series Fame.
The three-week Project proved more intensive and sophisticated than in 1996, with the addition of weekly symposiums before an invited audience. Dr. David Zinder, TAU faculty member and coordinator of professional workshops and extracurricular training in the Department of Theater Arts, said that "although the Department has been organizing summer workshops for theater professionals in Israel for years, the Broadway Project is a unique experience. It's a tremendous contribution to Israeli theater culture -- a way of connecting students with the Broadway musical experience at the highest level."
Industrial-strength training
Nilli Nehaissie, a fourth-year drama student in the Department of Theater Arts, says that the Project "packed more into three weeks than I could have possibly hoped." Department alumna, Lilach Caspi, added that the Project
"taught us to integrate acting, singing and dancing into one cohesive form."
In the past it was good enough for a musical performer to be an excellent singer or dancer, explained Zinder. "Nowadays this just won't wash. A performer must have strong acting skills as well as a great voice and dancing ability."
The two students stressed the extremely high level of expertise taught in the Project: "We might work on just one single step for an entire day -- getting it right. No program in Israel has ever placed so much emphasis on process," added Lilach.
Above all, the two students were starry-eyed about the "positive energy" emanating from Jane, Jack and Wally. "We worked extremely hard -- sweating it out for as many as 8 hours a day -- but the experience was great because they coaxed the very best performances out of us."
Process, not product
 The moving force behind the project, Jane Summerhays, stressed that the
Project's emphasis is on the "process of performance, not final results. When you are result-oriented from the start, you miss out on the process of building a performance layer upon layer so that song, text and movement are seamless."
Dr. Zinder added, "The overall goal is to train a cadre of
actors for a professional theater company that can perform in the Broadway musical genre and also to give Israelis the tools and skills to create their own uniquely Israeli musicals -- which reflect their own cultural milieu."
This fall the Project will go into high gear in anticipation of the American-Israel co-production scheduled for Spring 1998. In preparation for this event, the most promising graduates of the Summer mastercourse will be given the opportunity to spend four weeks in New York in a rigorous study program which will include masterclasses at the Julliard School of Music.
At this year's opening ceremony, greetings were given by TAU President Professor Yoram Dinstein; Dean of the Katz Faculty of Arts, Prof. Eli Rozik-Rosen; and Chairperson of the Department of Theater Arts, Prof. Tom Lewy. Attending were many of the ProjectÕs founders including former Minister of Arts, Science and Culture, Shulamit Aloni; former Head of the Arts and Culture Administration, Mr. Yossi Frost; and former Consul-General of Israel to New York, Collette Avital, who encouraged the students by quoting the famous Broadway motto: "anything you can do we can do better."
The Project culminated with a special performance in which participants performed solos, duets, and full-scale production numbers from classical and currently-running musical theater works to a packed audience.
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