Award-Winning Israeli Film Headed for U.S. Stage
Americans have grown accustomed to seeing Israeli entertainment adapted for U.S. screens big and small, and now an Israeli production is making its way to the stage.
Ynet reports that “The Band’s Visit,” a 2007 movie that won three prizes at Cannes, will be staged as an off-Broadway play, with a cast that includes the father and brother of one of the film’s stars. The article doesn’t say when or where the show will be staged, but says it will be directed by off-Broadway director Maxwell Williams and produced by Orin Wolf, whose previous credits include Broadway’s “A View From the Bridge.”
Set in a fictional town in southern Israel, “The Band’s Visit” should offer some interesting challenges for its creative team. The film tells the story of an Egyptian military band that gets lost on its way to a performance at an Israeli cultural center. Instead of playing as planned, the musicians spend a night in a small southern city, where they and their unexpected hosts struggle to communicate in English, and strike up a charming, if temporary, friendship.
One of Israel’s biggest hits on the international film festival circuit, “The Band’s Visit” claimed top prizes at the European Film Awards and at Israel’s versions of the Oscars, but had to sit out the American Academy Awards because too much of its script was in English to qualify for the foreign-language film category.
Playing an Egyptian conductor and musician in the stage version will be Mohammed and Adam Bakri, a father-and-son team from one of Israel’s most prominent acting families. The role of the musician was originated onscreen by Saleh Bakri, Mohammed’s son and Adam’s brother.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO